Performing ‘the authoritative account’: How the BBC’s Horizon produces epistemic authority

Abstract

Viewers have often looked upon the BBC’s science documentary strand, Horizon, as an authoritative source for scientific knowledge. Through interviews with the series’ producers, this article examines the practices its producers perform to buttress their authority and generate the view that this show is itself a producer of knowledge, even while it is also televising and mediating science. Of particular note are references to science fiction to police boundaries between science and pseudoscience, and the use of original experimental trials to generate witnesses. These position Horizon as at least a node in the network of scientific knowledge production.