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From Public Understanding to Public Engagement: An Empirical Assessment of Changes in Science Coverage
Mike S. Schäfer*
Free University of Berlin
* To whom correspondence should be addressed. E-mail: mike.schaefer{at}fu-berlin.de.
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Abstract |
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Science communication is said to have changed in the past decades. It is widely assumed that science is no longer merely transported and translated by the mass media to a passive audience, but "medialized": Many authors believe that scientific issues are discussed extensively in the mass media nowadays, that these discussions are plural in its participants and in the arguments used, and that the issues at stake are evaluated controversially. It is still unclear, however, if this change applies to all science topics or only to some. The article at hand argues that science issues from different epistemic cultures can be expected to be "medialized" to different extents, and analyzes mass media coverage on stem cell research, human genome research, and neutrino research to underline this claim. The findings show that the described change only applies to some issues, and that further differentiation of the concept of "medialization" is necessary.
First published on November 26, 2008, doi:10.1177/1075547008326943
Science Communication 2009;30:475.
A more recent version of this article appeared on June 1, 2009
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