The risk information seeking and processing model predicts information-seeking behavior based on a number of factors, including information insufficiency. Using the risk information seeking and processing model, the present study experimentally manipulated the two components of information insufficiency (i.e., sufficiency threshold and current knowledge). Sufficiency threshold was manipulated using information about radon risk with varying levels of social distance, whereas current knowledge was manipulated using information about radon coping strategies. Results showed that the high sufficiency threshold condition resulted in greater information seeking intention. On the other hand, the current knowledge manipulation did not affect information seeking intention.
This study tested responses to traditional or interactive material about NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) project. A total of 660 participants were divided into three groups: a science guide group that viewed an online PDF, an interactive group that viewed a YouTube video and FlyBy simulation, and a control group that received no supporting texts about JWST. Interactive media outperformed traditional texts in increasing levels of support for JWST construction. However, the traditional text and interactive media showed no difference in other measures of support for JWST construction. No texts increased support for NASA funding or prompted participant advocacy.
This study examined how news media framed West Virginia’s 2014 Elk River Chemical Spill, an industrial disaster that began a national discussion about chemical safety. A content analysis of media was conducted to explore disaster coverage. Additionally, in-depth stakeholder interviews were conducted to examine how audiences interpreted and evaluated media coverage. Both content analysis and interview findings highlighted the media’s reliance on the attribution of responsibility news frame, which dominated media coverage, although the dominance of particular frames differed according to media channel and time period.
This article investigates the ways in which food author Verburgh has attempted to engineer credibility for himself, his book The Food Hourglass, and the arguments it contains. Through a careful reading and analysis of the text, interviews with the author, and other "credibility conquest" participants, we show that Verburgh engineers credibility through enlisting the authority of science, questioning the integrity of others, and positioning himself as a dissident. This initiates a constant renegotiation of credibility in the interaction between Verburgh, nutrition scientists, and others, in which Verburgh actively constructs his public credibility at the expense of scientific credibility.
Trust in many government organizations is low, creating a challenging environment for communication during outbreaks of emerging infectious diseases, like Ebola. In a thematic analysis of 1,010 tweets and four Twitter chats during the 2014-2015 Ebola outbreak, we found that the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention emphasized organizational competence, extant protocol, and facts about transmission to manage public fear. We argue that an emphasis on certainty in a rapidly changing situation leaves organizations vulnerable to charges of unpreparedness or obfuscation. Our results also speak to the contested definition of engagement online, particularly during health crises.
This study focuses on climate journalists as key mediators between science and the public sphere. It surveys journalists from five countries and five types of leading news outlets. Despite their different contexts, journalists form an interpretive community sharing the scientific consensus on anthropogenic climate change and agreeing on how to handle climate change skeptics. This consensus is particularly strong among a core of prolific writers while climate change skepticism persists among a periphery of occasional writers. The journalists’ attitudes toward climate change are connected to their usage of sources, indicating that interpretive communities include journalists and scientists.
This article examines the trial of participatory theater for disseminating new agricultural knowledge among subsistence farmers in Timor Leste, a small underdeveloped country in the Asia-Pacific region. The aim of the trial was to provide information on improved seed varieties and appropriate agronomic practices to maximize their yield among rural communities where rates of adult illiteracy are high and the reach of mass media forms of communication is low. The findings highlight the potential for entertainment-education forms to provide effective science communication tools in contexts where approaches more typical in developed countries are severely constrained.
This study investigated how highly experienced environmental journalists view the professional norms of objectivity when covering climate change over time. Elite journalists were sought, and all had a minimum of 10 years of experience in climate coverage. In-depth interviews revealed a paradox: Most still profess belief in objectivity even as they reject or redefine it. Participants said that journalists should use objective practices and refrain from revealing their own biases, including advocating for the environment. However, participants have radically redefined the component of objectivity known as "balance." They now advocate a "weight-of-evidence" approach, where stories reflect scientific consensus.
Satire has long offered social and political commentary while entertaining audiences. Focusing on a Canadian stage play and its local reception, this article considers some of the key benefits and challenges of using satire to promote public engagement with climate change science. It demonstrates that satire can promote active and positive engagement with climate change debates. However, using satire risks confining representations to the humorous realm and requires communicators to consider the humor preferences of different publics. The article proposes recommendations for using satire in science communications.
Journalism has been a key site for communicating science, and public relations departments at universities and research hospitals are a vital institutional link between science and journalism. Located betwixt scientific demands for didactic explanations of science and journalistic desire for interesting stories, biomedical public relations writing juggles competing rhetorical demands. This study shows that press releases favor the concerns of internal scientific audiences over journalistic audiences. Yet stories that provide journalistic appeals to application are more likely to gain a journalist’s attention, although journalists will then develop their own appeals to application to incorporate into the story.
This article contributes to the debate on the influence of organizational settings on scientists’ media contact. Drawing on a quantitative survey of researchers (n = 942) from 265 German universities, the results indicate that a large proportion of scientists from all disciplines participate regularly in the dissemination of research findings. The authors provide evidence that scientists’ media efforts are influenced by how they adopt their university’s desire to be visible in the media, as well as by the university’s PR activities. The increased orientation toward news media is discussed in the light of the new governance of science within Europe.
Geoengineering is an example of a highly political science-driven topic. We explore how researchers frame geoengineering and what implications these frames have for the science-policy interface and the politicization of science. Our analysis revealed three main ways to frame geoengineering in scientific literature. The "Risk-benefit" frame emphasizes calculation and further research, the "Governance" frame emphasizes the need to develop institutions and procedures, and the "Natural balance" frame focuses on the ethical aspects of geoengineering. The researchers’ frames have different political implications, indicating a need to ensure transparency and dialogue at the science-policy nexus.
Social science disciplines generate diverse forms of research utilization, given the various contexts in which disciplinary knowledge is produced and translated for the fields of policy and practice. We examine this issue from the perspective of academic researchers in the social sciences across education, economics, sociology, political science, and psychology. We use survey data from a study of university-based social science researchers in Australia to examine factors that influence perceptions of the policy uptake of social research. Our results show that disciplinary and methodological context matters when it comes to understanding the translation, dissemination, and utilization of academic social research.
New developments in digital technologies are enabling scientists to explore novel avenues of engagement beyond face-to-face approaches. "Gamifying" science through the creation of computer games based on scientific research is part of this trend. Recently, the Wellcome Trust held a competitive "hackfest" called "Gamify Your PhD." Six finalists were selected to develop their research into a computer game with the help of professional games developers. I was able to observe this event with the aim of exploring the collaboration between scientists and games developers and observing how science-based computer games can be used to engage the wider public.
Social and political interest in science regularly prompts scientists to assume the role of public spokesperson. The article investigates this role of representing science as both "speaking on behalf of" science and symbolically "standing for" science and its organizations. With inspiration from the field of organizational communication, it is argued that science communication should be considered as an activity intimately linked with perceptions of identity and organizational culture. When scientists communicate publicly, they do not just disseminate knowledge, they also represent a particular sense making about what science, scientists, and scientific organizations are. Based on a qualitative analysis of 20 leading Danish scientists’ views on their own role in public communication, three different modes of representation are identified: Expert, Research Manager, and Guardian of Science. Each of these modes of representation implies particular notions of quality, audience, motivation, and learning in science communication.
Because research indicates that people’s value orientations significantly affect their opinions about advanced technologies some risk scholars argue that technology policy should reflect the recommendations of experts rather than the opinions of a value-driven public. This suggested approach might be bolstered to the extent that people use substantive (value-driven) rather than formal (reason-driven) rationality when assessing the recommendations of experts. We found evidence that people’s opinions are indeed influenced strongly by their substantive rationality. We nevertheless argue that technology policy formation should rely more rather than less upon public opinions, thereby encouraging further efforts at improving science communication theory and practice.
This article uses data from two U.K. studies in order to explore the meanings attached to public engagement. It focuses on two issues of importance to contemporary discussions of science communication: the degree to which there has been a smooth transition, in practice, from models of public understanding of science to those of public engagement with science and technology (PEST), and the histories, or genealogies, of such models. Data from two qualitative studies—a case study of one of the United Kingdom’s six Beacons for Public Engagement and a study of contract research staff—are used to characterize the ways in which U.K. academic communities understand PEST. It is argued that engagement is construed as multiple, relational, and outcomes oriented, with seven key outcomes ranging from better research to empowered individuals. These differences are traced to personal and professional backgrounds, suggesting that multiple and overlapping meanings around PEST are derived from particular histories that have been brought together, through the rubric of public engagement, in assemblages such as the Beacons.
This study explores the factors that moderate first-person perception of socially desirable messages and the behavioral consequences of the perceived self-other perceptual disparity. A total of 255 participants watched An Inconvenient Truth and completed a survey thereafter. The participants acknowledged themselves to be more receptive to the film than others and acted on this perceived difference by supporting the distribution of the film. The message desirability, perceived message quality and sensation value, sensation-seeking tendency, and issue knowledge not only affected assessments of the perceived effect on the self and others differently but also increased the willingness to take action and stop global warming.
The relation between science and the media has recently been termed a medialization of science. The respective literature argues that interaction of scientists with the media and journalists as well as scientists’ adaptation to media criteria has increased. This article analyzes whether German climate scientists are indeed "medialized." The results of a survey among 1,130 scientists suggest that medialization phenomena exist in climate science but that they differ significantly among different subgroups. While media interactions are more common for high-ranking scientists, an adaptation to media criteria is more typical for scientists with less experience.
This article focuses on the news coverage given to the CERN (European Organization for Nuclear Research) announcement that neutrinos might exceed the speed of light, flying in the face of Albert Einstein’s theory. By studying 140 cartoons about the news item published between the CERN’s announcement at the end of September 2011 up until its refutation in February 2012, we selected 33 devoted to Albert Einstein. We study the iconographic use of Einstein’s figure, and how the suggestion he might have been wrong stirred up greater interest among the cartoonists than when it was proven his ideas are still fully in force.
An experiment with 243 young communication scholars tested hypotheses derived from role congruity theory regarding impacts of author gender and gender typing of research topics on perceived quality of scientific publications and collaboration interest. Participants rated conference abstracts ostensibly authored by females or males, with author associations rotated. The abstracts fell into research areas perceived as gender-typed or gender-neutral to ascertain impacts from gender typing of topics. Publications from male authors were associated with greater scientific quality, in particular if the topic was male-typed. Collaboration interest was highest for male authors working on male-typed topics. Respondent sex did not influence these patterns.
Studies have shown that narrative is a valid tool to transmit science in a school context. We explored science theatre to promote earthquake knowledge and risk preparedness by readapting an old legend describing the 1908 Messina earthquake into a script, which was then performed in a primary school. We evaluated the experience designing a questionnaire inspired by the Düss Fairy Tales method and a semistructured questionnaire. Preliminary results strongly encourage science theatre as a means to transfer knowledge and open new opportunities to use this method as an agent of change in behavior before and during an earthquake.
The study investigated the relative contribution of selected predictors of knowledge-sharing behaviors among local community leaders involved in natural resources management programs within the Okavango Delta, Botswana. The theory of reasoned action and the responsible environmental behavior framework guided the study. Thirteen community-based natural resources management projects’ boards of trust, comprising a total of 120 subjects, participated in a quasi-experimental study. Results indicate that a combination of knowledge, attitude, and locus of control significantly predicts knowledge-sharing intentions, with knowledge and attitudes as the most important predictors. Implications and recommendations for practice are discussed, and directions for future research are suggested.
Under what conditions does the perceived "unnaturalness" of a specific application of synthetic biology influence its public acceptability? Using data from a framing experiment embedded in a national survey of Canadian adults, we argue that this consideration leads to negative perceptions of the technology only when opponents of the application use rhetoric that refers to its unnaturalness and when characteristics of the application itself, such as the use of genetic material from "dissimilar" organisms, increase the perceived relevance of such arguments. Additionally, we find that individuals who view nature as sacred or spiritual are most responsive to unnaturalness framing.
Although it is implicitly acknowledged that many aspects of contemporary geothermal energy utilization are shrouded in ignorance, this is rarely appreciated or in any way well communicated. Using Jules Verne’s science fiction novel A Journey to the Center of the Earth as a means to highlight the inevitable normality of knowledge gaps and uncertainty, certain aspects are discussed that can be applied to communication strategies regarding the unknown in current geothermal energy utilization. This may be important given that risk assessments can often not be communicated meaningfully to citizens and decision makers.
Over 6 years, a U.S. Federal health agency, the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration, has developed a science-based communications strategy. Agency staff reviewed the scientific literature, discussed implications of it for meeting communications goals of the agency, created a strategy based on what was learned, and refined it over time as informed by experience. Doing so led to eight significant changes in ongoing operations of the agency’s Office of Communications. Discussion of these activities is followed by an analysis of possible next steps this agency or others like it could take to enhance communications strategy.
Recently, the literature has emphasized the aims and logistics of public engagement, rather than its epistemic and cultural processes. In this conceptual article, we use our work on surgical simulation to describe a process that has moved from the classroom and the research laboratory into the public sphere. We propose an innovative shared immersion model for framing the relationship between engagement activities and research. Our model thus frames the public engagement experience as a participative encounter, which brings visitor and researcher together in a shared (surgical) experience mediated by experts from a range of domains.