Towards a Better Map: Science, the Public and the Media

Excerpt from The Study

"This report provides an in-depth contemporary assessment of the media's role in the public understanding of science. It is based on:

• an extensive analysis of the way science and science related issues were reported on television news, radio news and in the press during a seven and half month period in 2002 (involving a total of 2,214 stories).
• two nationwide surveys (both with representative samples of over 1,000), conducted in April and October 2002, tracking the public's knowledge, opinion and understanding of science-related issues reported in the media.

While there is now a body of research both on the public understanding of science, and, to a lesser extent, on the media coverage of science, there have been few empirical attempts to relate the two. This study addresses this gap, and looks at what and how people learn about science from the media. While the study looks at some general aspects of science, we focus our attention on three contemporary issues: climate change, the MMR controversy and cloning/genetic medical research. All three issues have received regular attention in the media, and all have serious implications for public policy. They are, in short, the kind of issues that people in a deliberative democracy should know something about."

According to the authors, these three issues have important social policy implications and should be part of a "deliberative process" where the public is involved. What is happening instead is the government is making these decisions.

The authors outline the three issues in these words:

• "Climate change – one of the biggest science stories of the last decade, and one which continues to be debated nationally and internationally with, in some quarters, a growing sense of urgency."
• "Development in cloning and genetic medical research – with its wide ranging medical and ethical implications."
• "The MMR vaccine – perhaps the most conspicuous scientific controversy in Britain in 2002, following suggestions linking the MMR vaccine with bowel disease and autism."

The study examined how these issues were "reported, framed and interpreted" from January 28th to September,15th, 2002. Coverage of science and scientists in general were also explored. Two national surveys were conducted, in April and in October, 2002, to see what the public knew and thought the three issues. The study also investigated "the extent to which public understanding (or misunderstanding) could be seen as reflecting the nature of media coverage."

In Conclusion, the study exhibited the following:

• It is "the broad themes of the coverage – rather than the details – that establish the building blocks for people's understanding and opinions."
• "We saw much less consistency in the media coverage of cloning and genetic medical research. Coverage here, by contrast with MMR, tends to be dichotomous, focusing on either the medical potential of stem cell research or the ethical risks associated with cloning."
• "public understanding comes from the generality of often repeated media frameworks rather than one-off stories."
• the results indicate "that more science in the media does not leads to greater public understanding."
• "The news media clearly play a role in informing the way people understand science."