Communicating Science Effectively A Research Agenda (2017) / Chapter Skim
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4 Communicating Science in a Complex, Competitive Communication Environment
4 Communicating Science in a Complex, Competitive Communication Environment
Pages 67-80
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From page 67... ...
. This chapter examines in turn trends in the communication of science news, how journalistic decisions affect the coverage of and audiences for science, and emerging research on use of the Internet as a source of science news.
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From page 68... ...
. Several tools available through Google enable keyword searches and queries that provide a potentially useful source of data about the public's interest in science generally and in specific topics over time, including how public interests compare with news coverage.
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From page 69... ...
This is the new, and not entirely understood, media environment with which science communicators must cope. HOW JOURNALISTIC DECISIONS AFFECT SCIENCE COVERAGE AND AUDIENCES Despite the growing impact of new media, much of the scientific information Americans receive through media still originates from traditional journalism, including information transmitted via links on social media.
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From page 70... ...
. When a new issue, such as food biotechnology or stem cell research, taps familiar themes from previous political conflicts or evokes story lines familiar from popular culture and history, journalists cast the new issue's actors and events to fit these well-known story lines.
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From page 71... ...
The inappropriate fears over Ebola and swine flu fanned by the media illustrate how the media's narrative frames can make it difficult to get accurate science onto the public agenda.
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An important question for research is how these processes operate and affect audiences for scientific information in rapidly changing online environments. As their audiences have decreased and turned to online media as primary sources for scientific information, traditional media organizations have devoted less space and time to science (National Science Board, 2016a; Su et al., 2015)
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From page 73... ...
Opportunities for Communicating Science: Social Media, Social Networks, and Blogs Social Media Social media offer expanded opportunities for science communication and the exchange of ideas, but they differ in important ways from traditional media and even online versions of traditional media outlets. Social media offer platforms with user-generated content and interactions, and their information is tailored and targeted toward specific individual users (Cacciatore et al., 2016)
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From page 74... ...
. Social Networks Social networks long predate web-based platforms such as Facebook and Twitter.
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But given that all people exchange information through such connections, social networks may offer science communicators a means of reaching audiences who do not follow journalistic media or use web-based platforms. These underserved audiences (generally less educated and less affluent)
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. EMERGING RESEARCH ON USE OF THE INTERNET AS A SOURCE OF SCIENCE NEWS Research on how changing online news environments have influenced the way scientific information is communicated is still in its infancy.
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From page 77... ...
. Some empirical work combining search histories from Nielsen NetRatings, Google recommendations, Google search results, and analysis of web content, for example, has shown that the way popular search engines such as Google present search results affects the scientific information people are likely to encounter (Brossard and Scheufele, 2013)
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From page 78... ...
An emerging body of research suggests that this social contextualization of news can have a significant effect on how audiences view and process science news. Work on what has been called the "nasty effect," for instance, has shown that being exposed to uncivil reader comments on objective scientific reporting on a topic can increase readers' perceptions of bias in the story itself and can even polarize perceptions of the risk associated with the topic of the story (Anderson et al., 2014; Brossard, 2013; Brossard and Scheufele, 2013)
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From page 79... ...
People who visit museums, watch documentaries such as Nova Science Now on the Public Broadcasting Network, or attentively read the science coverage of a national newspaper are an easy audience to reach. But they are not the majority of the American population, and in education and wealth, they represent a kind of elite.
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