Matthew C. Nisbet

What’s next for science communication? Promising directions and lingering distractions

In this essay, we review research from the social sciences on how the public makes sense of and participates in societal decisions about science and technology. We specifically highlight the role of the media and public communication in this process, challenging the still dominant assumption that science literacy is both the problem and the solution to societal conflicts. After reviewing the cases of evolution, climate change, food biotechnology, and nanotechnology, we offer a set of detailed recommendations for improved public engagement efforts on the part of scientists and their organizations. We emphasize the need for science communication initiatives that are guided by careful formative research; that span a diversity of media platforms and audiences; and that facilitate conversations with the public that recognize, respect, and incorporate differences in knowledge, values, perspectives, and goals.

Framing Science: The Stem Cell Controversy in an Age of Press/Politics

Applying the theories of agenda building and frame building and previous work related to the shared negotiations between sources and journalists in constructing news dramas, this article examines the role of the mass media in the evolution of the stem cell controversy. How does a scientific issue gain, maintain, or lose political and media attention? What forces combine to emphasize certain dimensions of an issue over others? Using data from a content analysis of stem cell–related articles appearing between 1975 and 2001 in the New York Times and the Washington Post, the authors analyze patterns of media attention, media framing, and media sourcing across stages of scientific, political, and policy development.

Biotechnology and the American Media The Policy Process and the Elite Press, 1970 to 1999

The authors present a quantitative content analysis of biotechnology-related coverage appearing in the New York Times and Newsweekbetween 1970 and 1999, examining patterns of media attention and evaluating the source impact of various political and social actors on the themes, frames, and tone of coverage. Although media attention to biotechnology steadily increased across the 1980s and most of the 1990s, it has been highly episodic, peaking and plummeting in response to major scientific announcements. Even in its peak years of coverage, biotechnology still rests rather modestly on the overall media agenda compared with other issues related to science, technology, or popular culture. The character of biotechnology-related coverage has been overwhelmingly positive, with heavy emphasis on the frames of scientific progress and economic prospect. A departure from this trend only occurs in correspondence to the late 1990s debate over cloning, as a greater media emphasis on ethics and controversy emerges.

Social Structure and Citizenship: Examining the Impacts of Social Setting, Network Heterogeneity, and Informational Variables on Political Participation

In this study, we develop a model of the interplay between sociostructural determinants of an individuals discussion behavior, such as the setting of primary discussion networks (work, church, and volunteer groups) and the nature of discussion (i.e., level of exposure to non-like-minded ideas), and individual-level outcomes, such as hard news media use, political knowledge, and participation in political processes. In doing so, we synthesize many of the different and sometimes competing models that political communication scholars have used to examine the link between more macroscopic sociological variables and the individual-level behaviors that political scientists often focus on. Data to test our theoretical model come from a national telephone survey conducted in October and November 2002. Our analysis showed that the social setting in which citizens discuss politics is an important antecedent of political participation. Discussion networks as part of volunteer groups, for example, indeed serve as important networks of recruitment. In other words, discussing politics frequently in this setting is positively and directly linked to political activity. The impact of conversational networks in church and work settings on participation, however, is only indirect. In fact, our data show that the impact of church and work networks on political participation is to a significant degree mediated by the different viewpoints that individuals are exposed to when they discuss politics in these settings.

Knowledge, Reservations, or Promise? A Media Effects Model for Public Perceptions of Science and Technology

This study introduces a media effects model specific to public perceptions of science and technology. Analysis of the National Science Boards Science and Engineering Indicators Survey provides evidence that different media—newspapers, general television, science television, and science magazines—do affect perceptions differently. These media effects are direct but also indirect, as mediated through effects on science knowledge. Although newspaper reading, science television viewing, and science magazine reading all promote positive perceptions of science, given the relative size of its audience, the impact of general television viewing remains the most compelling finding. The negative images of science on television appear to cultivate scientific reservations, whereas televisions portrayal of science as sometimes omnipotent, and offering hope for the future, appears to also promote a competing schema related to the promise of science. Televisions direct effect on reservations is reinforced through the mediums negative relationship with science knowledge.

Science communication reconsidered

As new media proliferate and the publics trust and engagement in science are influenced by industry involvement in academic research, an interdisciplinary workshop provides some recommendations to enhance science communication.

A public health frame arouses hopeful emotions about climate change

Communication researchers and practitioners have suggested that framing climate change in terms of public health and/or national security may make climate change more personally relevant and emotionally engaging to segments of the public who are currently disengaged or even dismissive of the issue. To evaluate these assumptions, using a nationally representative online survey of U.S. residents (N = 1,127) conducted in December, 2010, we randomly assigned six previously identified audience segments on climate change to one of three experimental conditions. Subjects were asked to read uniquely framed news articles about climate change emphasizing either the risks to the environment, public health, or national security and the benefits of mitigation and adaptation-related actions. Results show that across audience segments, the public health focus was the most likely to elicit emotional reactions consistent with support for climate change mitigation and adaptation. Findings also indicated that the national security frame may possibly boomerang among audience segments already doubtful or dismissive of the issue, eliciting unintended feelings of anger.

A Two-Step Flow of Influence? Opinion-Leader Campaigns on Climate Change

In this article, we review concepts, measures, and strategies that can be applied to opinion-leader campaigns on climate change. These campaigns can be used to catalyze wider political engagement on the issue and to promote sustainable consumer choices and behaviors. From past research, we outline six relevant categories of self-designated opinion-leaders, detailing issues related to identification, recruitment, training, message development, and coordination. We additionally analyze as prominent initiatives Al Gores The Climate Project and his more recent We campaign, which combines the recruitment of digital opinion-leaders with traditional media strategies. In evaluating digital opinion-leader campaigns, we conclude that there are likely to be significant trade-offs in comparison to face-to-face initiatives. The challenge for both scholars and practitioners is to understand under what conditions are digital opinion-leaders effective and in which ways can online interactions strengthen or build on real-world connections.

Attention Cycles and Frames in the Plant Biotechnology Debate: Managing Power and Participation through the Press/Policy Connection

Power in policy making revolves in part around the ability to control media attention to an issue while framing an issue in favorable terms. These two characteristics of media coverage both reflect and shape where an issue is decided,by whom,and with what outcomes. In understanding this process, a number of studies have observed cyclical waves in media attention and historical shifts in how an issue is framed,linking these features to policy decisions. Yet there has been little theoretical specification and testing of the social mechanisms that drive these cycles. With this in mind, this study outlines a model for understanding “mediated issue development.” The theoretical components of the model include the type of policy arena where debate takes place,the media lobbying activities of strategic actors,the journalistic need for narrative structure,and the competition from other issues for attention across policy and media environments.Related factors include the type of journalist assigned coverage and the level of attention from opinion pages. Using data from a content analysis of twenty-five years of coverage at the New York Times and Washington Post,the model is applied and tested against the issue of plant biotechnology. Generalizability of the model is the primary goal,and the authors conclude with comparisons to other issues such as the Human Genome Project and intelligent design. Understanding, however, why plant biotechnology remains at low levels of controversy in the United States compared to the rest of the world remains the object of considerable curiosity, and the focus of this study posits several explanations.

Restarting the conversation: challenges at the interface between ecology and society

The exchange of information between researchers, resource managers, decision makers, and the general public has long been recognized as a critical need in environmental science. We examine the challenges in using ecological knowledge to inform society and to change societal actions, and identify a set of options and strategies to enhance this exchange. Our objectives are to provide background information on societal knowledge and interest in science and environmental issues, to describe how different components of society obtain information and develop their interests and values, and to present a framework for evaluating and improving communication between science and society. Our analysis strongly suggests that the interface between science and society can only be improved with renewed dedication to public outreach and a wholesale reconsideration of the way that scientists communicate with society. Ecologists need to adopt new models of engagement with their audiences, frame their results in ways that ar...