Science And The Media

How science and technology are covered by the media is a central factor in scientific illiteracy. Journalists value timeliness, speed, simplicity, and clarity. Yet stories about science and technology may be long-building, complex, and without dramatic, time-pegged events. The need to grab and hold attention, to write tight stories or produce short segments, can come at the cost of context and nuance. One observer, noting journalism's preference for attention-grabbing, conflict-driven events, has joked that reporters two thousand years ago would have covered the heck out of the crucifixion - and missed Christianity. As the world grows more complex, there is an increasing need for citizens to understand the scientific and technological dimensions of daily news events. Journalists play a critical role in helping readers, listeners, and viewers appreciate the science underlying major policy choices. And scientists, in turn, must effectively communicate to the public, especially through the media. We hope that the essays gathered in this volume will generate a broader understanding of the intertwined roles of the media and the scientific and technical community in helping to ensure a well-informed public.

This timely and accessible text shows how portrayals of science in popular media—including television, movies, and social media—influence public attitudes around messages from the scientific community, affect the kinds of research that receive support, and inform perceptions of who can become a scientist. The book builds on theories of cultivation, priming, framing, and media models while drawing on years of content analyses, national surveys, and experiments. A wide variety of media genres—from Hollywood blockbusters and prime-time television shows to cable news channels and satirical comedy programs, science documentaries and children’s cartoons to Facebook posts and YouTube videos—are explored with rigorous social science research and an engaging, accessible style. Case studies on climate change, vaccines, genetically modified foods, evolution, space exploration, and forensic DNA testing are presented alongside reflections on media stereotypes and disparities in terms of gender, race, and other social identities. Science in the Media illuminates how scientists and media producers can bridge gaps between the scientific community and the public, foster engagement with science, and promote an inclusive vision of science, while also highlighting how readers themselves can become more active and critical consumers of media messages about science. Science in the Media serves as a supplemental text for courses in science communication and media studies, and will be of interest to anyone concerned with publicly engaged science.

This book provides a theoretical framework which allows us to understand why and how scientists address the general public. Bucchi's theories on scientific communication in the media make a valuable contribution to the current debate.

The Yearbook addresses the overriding question: what are the effects of the ‘opening up’ of science to the media? Theoretical considerations and a host of empirical studies covering different configurations provide an in-depth analysis of the sciences’ media connection and its repercussions on science itself. They help to form a sound judgement on this recent development.

The proposal to vaccinate adolescent girls against the human papilloma virus ignited political controversy, as did the advent of fracking and a host of other emerging technologies. These disputes attest to the persistent gap between expert and public perceptions. Complicating the communication of sound science and the debates that surround the societal applications of that science is a changing media environment in which misinformation can elicit belief without corrective context and likeminded individuals are prone to seek ideologically comforting information within their own self-constructed media enclaves. Drawing on the expertise of leading science communication scholars from six countries, The Oxford Handbook of the Science of Science Communication not only charts the media landscape - from news and entertainment to blogs and films - but also examines the powers and perils of human biases - from the disposition to seek confirming evidence to the inclination to overweight endpoints in a trend line. In the process, it draws together the best available social science on ways to communicate science while also minimizing the pernicious effects of human bias. The Handbook adds case studies exploring instances in which communication undercut or facilitated the access to scientific evidence. The range of topics addressed is wide, from genetically engineered organisms and nanotechnology to vaccination controversies and climate change. Also unique to this book is a focus on the complexities of involving the public in decision making about the uses of science, the regulations that should govern its application, and the ethical boundaries within which science should operate. The Handbook is an invaluable resource for researchers in the communication fields, particularly in science and health communication, as well as to scholars involved in research on scientific topics susceptible to distortion in partisan debate.

Exploring the interactions that swirl around scientific uncertainty and its coverage by the mass media, this volume breaks new ground by looking at these issues from three different perspectives: that of communication scholars who have studied uncertainty in a number of ways; that of science journalists who have covered these issues; and that of scientists who have been actively involved in researching uncertain science and talking to reporters about it. In particular, Communicating Uncertainty examines how well the mass media convey to the public the complexities, ambiguities, and controversies that are part of scientific uncertainty. In addition to its new approach to scientific uncertainty and mass media interactions, this book distinguishes itself in the quality of work it assembles by some of the best known science communication scholars in the world. This volume continues the exploration of interactions between scientists and journalists that the three coeditors first documented in their highly successful volume, Scientists and Journalists: Reporting Science as News, which was used for many years as a text in science journalism courses around the world.

"This volume represents the social constructivist turn of the field. It is evident that social constructivism made a major impact on the field during the 1970s and 1980s. The diverse papers included here highlight the role of ethnography in STS. In addition, we are exposed to new perspectives of the multicultural and gendered nature of knowledge production." —Science, Technology, and Society For the most current, comprehensive resource in this rapidly evolving field, look no further than the Revised Edition of the Handbook of Science and Technology Studies. This masterful volume is the first resource in more than 15 years to define, summarize, and synthesize this complex multidisciplinary, international field. Tightly edited with contributions by an internationally recognized team of leading scholars, this volume addresses the crucial contemporary issues—both traditional and nonconventional—social studies, political studies, and humanistic studies in this changing field. Containing theoretical essays, extensive literature reviews, and detailed case studies, this remarkable volume clearly sets the standard for the field. It does nothing less than establish itself as the benchmark, one that will carry the field well into the next century. "The long-awaited Handbook of Science and Technology Studies sponsored by the Society for Social Studies of Science is a truly substantial work, both in size and in the breadth of its many contributions. It is a rich and valuable guide to much that is transpiring in the field of Science and Technology Studies. In the editors′ words, it is ′an unconventional but arresting atlas of the field at a particular moment in its history.′" —Science, Technology & Society "This book is not only an important resource for practitioners, but it also may help to spark the curiosity of those who are outside the field—including scientists and engineers themselves—and so pull the ′half-seen world′ of science and technology studies even more fully into the light of day." —American Scientist "The book as a whole is an impressive testimony to the vitality of a burgeoning field." —New Scientist "It reflects the international and interdisciplinary nature of the society. An excellent resource" —Choice

The prevailing view of scientific popularization, both within academic circles and beyond, affirms that its objectives and procedures are unrelated to tasks of cognitive development and that its pertinence is by and large restricted to the lay public. Consistent with this view, popularization is frequently portrayed as a logical and hence inescapable consequence of a culture dominated by science-based products and procedures and by a scientistic ideology. On another level, it is depicted as a quasi-political device for chan nelling the energies of the general public along predetermined paths; examples of this are the nineteenth-century Industrial Revolution and the U. S. -Soviet space race. Alternatively, scientific popularization is described as a carefully contrived plan which enables scientists or their spokesmen to allege that scientific learn ing is equitably shared by scientists and non-scientists alike. This manoeuvre is intended to weaken the claims of anti-scientific protesters that scientists monopolize knowledge as a means of sustaining their social privileges. Pop ularization is also sometimes presented as a psychological crutch. This, in an era of increasing scientific specialisation, permits the researchers involved to believe that by transcending the boundaries of their narrow fields, their endeavours assume a degree of general cognitive importance and even extra scientific relevance. Regardless of the particular thrust of these different analyses it is important to point out that all are predicated on the tacit presupposition that scientific popularization belongs essentially to the realm of non-science, or only concerns the periphery of scientific activity.