Discussion
sciencepunk | June 7, 2010Last week I joined Brendon Connelly and Colin Murphy of the Pulse Project Podcast to discuss some of the week's science stories and chat about zombies, blogging and the origins of SciencePunk. Among the highlights are the sheer PR audacity of teaching an dolphin to communicate using an iPad and a guy who takes x-ray images of big things and alters them to fit the way we think the world should look in the x-ray spectrum. Safe to say it's an aural geekout!
You can follow the Pulse Project on Twitter and join them on Facebook. The organisation aims to "reflect and inform debates amongst…
nisbetmc_2 | August 31, 2007
Science has published four letters in response to our framing article along with a fifth letter as our reply. Over at Framing Science, I have posted the text of the reply that I wrote to all four letters. Hopefully I will be able to get an author referral link in the near future so that readers can have access to the full text of the other letters.
In an upcoming issue of The Scientist magazine, I team up with Dietram Scheufele in contributing a feature article that elaborates on framing and its relevance to new directions in science communication. For the past couple of weeks, at its Web…
nisbetmc_2 | July 17, 2007Everyone claims it's a major societal problem, but what does science literacy exactly mean? What does past research suggest are the valid definitions of this frequently used term? Similarly, what is meant by the "public understanding of science"? Is it the same thing as "public engagement"? As I explain in our Framing Science article at Science and in the Speaking Science 2.0 road show, these definitions matter when it comes to effective public communication.
Over at my blog Framing Science, I repost a 2005 column that I wrote for Skeptical Inquirer Online. The short piece offers a lot for…
nisbetmc_2 | June 27, 2007Over at Framing Science, I've posed a question to readers to comment on:
In the coming decades, what are the next great framing controversies? What are the public engagement flashpoints to anticipate? On what issues can we apply a scientific understanding of the public and the media system to avoid communication failures?
Here's the chance to offer some of your own thoughts.
nisbetmc_2 | June 26, 2007Over at Framing Science, I describe what I find so troubling about the Dawkins/Hitchens PR campaign:
It has radicalized a New Atheist movement of complaints and attacks that is almost completely devoid of a positive message about what it means to live life without religion.
Long before the New Atheist movement, sociologists began to identify an increase in the number of Americans who report "no religion" in surveys. What this growing segment of Americans needs is not a set of leaders who employ a form of "us vs. them" binary reasoning to add further division and polarization to the country…
nisbetmc_2 | June 13, 2007Over at Framing Science, I have a post describing how James Hansen's efforts to frame the scientific agenda on climate change are proving once again influential, as evidenced by a news feature last week at Science. In commentaries and media interviews, Hansen is using the frame device of "reticence" to challenge the assumptions applied by the IPCC in arriving at predictions of seal level rise. Joined by other climate scientists, Hansen backs up his efforts with scientific papers recently published at leading journals.
nisbetmc_2 | June 12, 2007As we argue in the Nisbet & Mooney Framing Science thesis, infotainment dominates science as a news narrative. Despite record amounts of media attention, climate change still routinely falls short of a top news agenda item, making it exceedingly difficult to engage a broader American audience by way of traditional science communication efforts.
In my latest blog entry at Framing Science, I detail the latest from the Pew Media Index, which finds that while climate change failed to crack the top 10 issues covered by the media during the first quarter of 2007, Anna Nicole Smith did quite…
nisbetmc_2 | June 11, 2007The answer is probably not, but journal editors do have other motives and incentives involved than just publishing technically sound research. With the publication of two studies last week that shaped the framing of the stem cell vote in Congress, over at Framing Science, I explain the "negotiation of scientific newsworthiness" that goes on between journal editors and news organizations.
In fact, I argue that journal editors and news editors share many common imperatives, notably that they work for profit-driven organizations that need to maintain a subscriber base by generating drama,…
nisbetmc_2 | May 29, 2007In a letter published this past week at Science, Cornell University professors and media relations staff offer their recommendations on media training courses and activities for scientists. (The authors include Bruce Lewenstein, a member of my committee when I did my PhD at Cornell and also my MS advisor.) The recommendations are based on a media relations course for graduate students taught this past year in the Biogeochemistry and Environmental Biocomplexity program.
They open the letter by calling attention to the proposal in Congress as part of the NSF re-authorization bill to provide…
nisbetmc_2 | May 25, 2007Historically, scientists and journalists have followed closely a set of ground rules that govern their interactions, leading to a "negotiation of newsworthiness" when it comes to science. Yet this co-production of coverage often leads to what Andrew Revkin calls the "tyranny of the news peg," defining news in science as the release of a new journal study or discovery. Absent in this type of coverage is exactly what many readers need: scientific context and forward looking policy discussion.
In order to break the tyranny of the news peg, journalists and scientists have to establish new…
nisbetmc_2 | May 25, 2007Over at Framing Science I have a post up about the vast potential that social networking sites, particularly Facebook, hold for reaching non-traditional audiences for science. Effective use of Facebook by scientists, science organizations, and science enthusiasts would incorporate two of the central strategies we advocate in our Speaking Science 2.0 tour. Specifically, Facebook 1) facilitates incidental exposure among audience groups who might not otherwise hold the motivation or interest to seek out science information and 2) it uses opinion-leaders or "science navigators" to pass on…
nisbetmc_2 | May 18, 2007
In a segment from the recent Frontline special "Hot Politics," GOP pollster Frank Luntz explains his 1997/1998 memo that became the playbook for how conservatives like President Bush and Senator James Inhofe redefined climate change as really a matter of "scientific uncertainty" and "unfair economic burden." (Luntz says he has since changed his views on climate change.) We detail the strategy and its impact on public opinion in our Framing Science thesis and in our talks as part of the Speaking Science 2.0 tour.
Below you can watch a clip of Senator Inhofe's appearance on Fox & Friends…
cmooney_2 | May 17, 2007
On May 3, as part of the annual AAAS Forum on Science & Technology Policy, retired Congressman Sherwood Boehlert (R-NY), the former chair of the House Science & Technology committee, gave the keynote William Carey lecture (full text). In his address, he devoted several pages of his speech to our Policy Forum article at Science and our Sunday Outlook commentary at the Washington Post.
We've long admired Congressman Boehlert's work on science, technology, and the environment, and we deeply respect his commitment to scientific advice and bi-partisan policy making. The scientific…