The study contributes to mediatization research. Mediatization is understood as a process during which individual and collective actors adapt towards the demands of publicity and public attention. The manuscript introduces a differentiation of mediatization strategies, ranging from defensive to offensive strategies. This conceptual differentiation is applied empirically regarding relevant stakeholders within the German science-policy constellation from politics, science, and science funding. Results are based on 35 in-depth interviews with decision makers. The results section deals with
The Ebola virus disease outbreak in West Africa (2013–2016) claimed over 10 000 lives in less than 18 months. Low levels of familiarity with the disease, ease of transmission, scale of infection, gruesomeness of symptoms, lack of cure and high fatality rate created a global panic. From the perspective of the social psychology of communication and content analysis, this study examines media coverage of the crisis in Africa with a view to unpacking the scientific and non-scientific information that may have framed public understanding of the disease. Findings show that accepting scientific
The question was raised in the 4th November copy of The New York Times when it entitled the editorial of Garry Wills (political and cultural historian), regarding the re-election of George W. Bush, "The Day the Enlightenment Went Out". Wills' theory, with which the directors of the newspaper palpably concur, is that Bush was re-elected because "many more Americans believe in the Virgin Birth than in Darwin's theory of evolution".
After being cosseted by the media for what they incorrectly considered to be a scientific feat, the author found himself widely boycotted by the more “responsible” media. The reason for this was his critical view of the evolution of science, which he felt had become a tool at the service of innovation, and, therefore, of industrial interests. The traditional image of science, which serves to help us to understand the world, still persists despite being perverted by commercial interests, because it is defended by naive people as well as by lobbies, themselves responsible for this debasement
Throughout the second half of the twentieth century a varied collection of pressure mechanisms were deployed from nuclear technology exporting countries — mainly from the US — to obstruct the development of a group of semi-peripheral countries’ autonomous nuclear capabilities. Argentina was part of this group. This article focuses on how “fear” of nuclear proliferation was used by US foreign policy as one of the most effective political artifacts to construct and protect an oligopolistic nuclear market. Spread by the press and by some prestigious social science sectors from the US and some
This paper tries to 1) identify the dominant media frames of science and 2) compare media selection and framing of science-related articles in Croatian daily newspapers during two politically and socioculturally different periods: the late socialism and the (post)transition. The research methodology was based on content and frame analysis which encompassed articles on science in daily press with the highest readership between 1986–1988, and 2006–2008. The main findings indicate changes in the selection of science topics as well as in the representation of individual frames. Changes reflected
The attacks of September 11 2001 and in particular, the sending of letters containing anthrax spores the following October had a profound effect on society, and at the same time on science and its communicative mechanisms. Through a quanto-qualitative analysis of articles taken from four publications: two daily newspapers, the Corriere della Sera from Italy and the New York Times from the United States and two science magazines, Science and Nature, we have shown how the aforementioned events provoked the emergence of media attention regarding bioterrorism. A closer reading of the articles
I would like to start with a brief news item in the August 1999 issue of National Geographic which gives some food for thought: "With 5,000 climbing routes, such as Double Dogleg and Walk on the Wild Side, California's Joshua Tree National Park attracts about 140,000 enthusiasts a year to test their skill on granite boulders. But some visitors view their metal bolts as defacements hammered into rocks.
The people of Val di Susa (Italy) blocked the construction of the new high-speed railway line that should connect Turin with Lyons (France). This project is regarded as a strategic achievement for the economic development of the European Union, but local communities have a different concept of development and are asserting their rights through ad hoc experts’ reports and the production “from the bottom” of new specialised knowledge. We shall describe these events as a case study to put ecological democracy to the test of facts, also through a comparison with the experimental actions taken in
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Yurij CastelfranchiGiancarlo Sturloni
"Weapons of mass destruction" is the word of the year 2002, at least according to the American Dialect Society, an association which has been studying the English language in North America for more than one century and which yearly chooses the word having more relevance to American society and information. The word of the year 2001 was "Nine eleven", and the passing of the baton was very significant. September 11th has actually marked an extraordinary media watershed in the debate on the dangerousness of weapons of mass destruction. The bioterrorist threat, for instance, seems to have gained
"We can only appeal to society, considering that governments and parties have fallen constantly short of expectations since the late eighties. The public must know that without research there is no innovation, and without innovation there is no state-of-theart. The lack of research is a handicap for the development of the country". The words of Silvio Garattini, director of Milan's Mario Negri Institute, reveal rage and passion. This is how he explained the reasons why more than one year ago 1,500 Italian scientists made an unprecedented, resolute and unmediated appeal to the general public to