nanopublic

Social media and the future of (polarized) news - a primer for 2012

2011-12-04T09:50:00.005-06:00

With an eye toward the 2012 election cycle, my colleague Matthew C. Nisbet at American and I recently summarized some of the recent trends in how journalists and audiences use new (social) media and what it means for the political process. Here are a few excerpts from the pre-publication version of a chapter we wrote for the next volume of Communication Yearbook:

[Excerpt from: Scheufele, D. A., & Nisbet, M. C. (forthcoming). Online news and the demise of political debate. In C. T. Salmon (Ed.), Communication Yearbook (Vol. 36). Newbury Park, CA: Sage. | PDF]

[W]ith more Americans saying that they get their news on a daily basis from online sources than from local newspapers (Purcell, Rainie, Mitchell, Rosenstiel, & Olmstead, 2010), the presentation, selection, and availability of news is no longer chiefly controlled by journalists. Nor is the primary goal to attract diverse audiences to a hierarchically organized portfolio of coverage defined by an entire broadcast or newspaper edition. Instead, the objective is to lure a combination of habitual and incidental news consumers to specific online stories by way of search engines, aggregators, and social networks. This strategy allows news organizations to maximize page views while also tracking and selling personal information about consumers via third party partners such as Facebook. At least three related trends enable this goal.

a. Opinionated news and niche audiences: The proliferation of niche cable channels such as MSNBC and Fox News and highly specialized online information environments such as Huffington Post or The Daily Caller have led to an increasing fractionalization of news choices and audiences. Driven by commercial concerns, much of this fractionalization has occurred along partisan fault lines. Or as Rachel Maddow put it: “Opinion-driven media makes the money that politically neutral media loses.” (Maddow, 2010, p. 22). And as more recent research shows, these fragmented news environments have the potential to produce more apathy among some segments of the electorate and more partisan polarization across the population overall (Prior, 2007).

b. Algorithms as editors: The increasing shift toward online presentation of news, even among traditional news outlets, has also provided media organizations with new real-time metrics of audience preference and the ability to make decisions about news selection and placement based on these metrics. This use of “algorithms as editors” (Peters, 2010) is not without pitfalls. Increasing the influence that reader preferences have on story selection and placement also increases the likelihood of a spiral of mutual reinforcement. In other words, stories that readers selectively attend to will be placed more prominently on news(paper) web sites, which – in turn – increases the odds of readers finding them in the first place. This makes it easy for readers to select content based on popularity, interest, or political identity; opting out of the professional hierarchy of front page headlines and lead stories that might appear in a printed newspaper or broadcast.

c. Self-reinforcing search and tagging spirals: This notion of reinforcing spirals is exacerbated in online search environments where search engine rankings and search suggestions can heavily influence the overall information infrastructure. The process depends not only on the algorithms used by search engines but also on the tagging and optimization strategies pursued by news content providers, aggregators, bloggers, and interest groups (Hindman, 2009). Examining the presentation of scientific information online, Ladwig and colleagues (Ladwig, Anderson, Brossard, Scheufele, & Shaw, 2010), for example, found that the “suggest” function in Google’s search results often did not correspond to the online information environment that was available to audiences (based on systematic analyses of the complete population of web sites and blogs). As a result, the guidance provided by Google search suggestions is likely to disproportionally drive traffic, regardless of the content available, and create a self-reinforcing spiral that reduces the complexity and diversity of the information that citizens encounter online (Ladwig, Anderson, Brossard, Scheufele, & Shaw, 2010).

... Many of these more media-centric filters work in tandem with individual-level behaviors and choices. Prior’s (2007) hypotheses about the polarizing effects of increasing channel diversity, for instance, are based heavily on the assumption that individuals actively make choices about the content (news vs. entertainment) that they attend to. But the social texture that is developing in web 2.0 information environments produces a communication landscape in which at least two new modes of audience-centric selectivity that are likely to influence news choices.

a. Automated selectivity: In online environments, news portals and aggregator sites allow for highly effective individual pre-selection of the information that reaches us. iGoogle, myYahoo and other news aggregators allow audiences to selectively receive and attend to news items, based on a set of fine-grained filters that can include medium, outlet, content, author and a host of other pre-defined criteria. In contrast, visitors to the landing page for online newspapers may be able to skim or skip stories that they disagree with or find boring, but they will have a hard time making a selective choice without at least briefly glancing at the lead or headline. Portals and other news aggregators – in contrast – will make sure that some stories never even reach our computer screen. Smart phones, tablets and other portable devices make it easier to skim and select when consuming news, creating further incentives for news organizations to cater to this selectivity in their design of mobile applications.

b. Networks as filters: This individual-level set of filters, however, is being complemented by maybe even more effective social filters. Based on a series of experiments about online information use patterns in various social settings, Messing and colleagues (2011), for example, predict that “social information, and especially personal recommendations, will emerge as the most important explanatory factor shaping both the media environment to which an individual is exposed, and the content that the individual chooses to view” (p. 29).

And the notion of networks as selective filters may be more prevalent than we think. Seventy-five percent of online news consumers now say they get news forwarded through email or posts on social networking sites (Purcell et al., 2010), i.e., information that is passed along and preselected by people who are strongly likely to share their worldviews and preferences. And much of this information is not presented in an isolated news environment, similar to traditional newspapers or television broadcasts, but instead is socially contextualized almost immediately by a host of reader comments, Facebook “like” buttons, and indicators of how often a story has been re-tweeted.

The potential effects of such social-level contextualization on individual news selection are less clear, and two competing hypotheses can be put forth ... The first hypothesis suggests that we may be moving toward a society where we are less and less exposed to (and less and less used to) disagreement and viewpoints that are different from our own. Highly like-minded and homophilic networks, in other words, may exacerbate the effects of individual-level selectivity and produce an even more fine-grained filter for incoming information. The result would be a very pronounced spiral of self-reinforcing attitude polarization ... Journalists and other professional groups such as scientists are likely to be part of this attitude polarization; since these groups tend to be disproportionately like-minded in their political outlook, are heavier users of online news sources and social media; and face greater demands on their time in managing and using information (Besley & Nisbet, forthcoming; Donsbach, 2004).

A number of recent studies, however, provide some preliminary evidence for a more optimistic hypothesis. It is based on the assumption that friendship networks may often be more politically diverse than the individuals in these networks perceive them to be. In other words, “friends disagree more than they think they do” (Goel, Mason, & Watts, 2010, p. 611). This also means that socially homophilic networks may be characterized by more political diversity than we often assume. Messing et al (2011), in fact, infer that socially-networked information environments can “create at least marginally more cross-cutting exposure to political information” (p. 30) than situations where individuals select news items without additional social cues.

It remains to be seen if these findings are replicated in future work and socially-networked information environments can in fact increase exposure to non-likeminded views. If they do, they could produce some of the same beneficial outcomes that we outlined in our work on heterogeneous face-to-face networks (Scheufele et al., 2006; Scheufele et al., 2004) ... It is clear that communication researchers have only begun to fill in parts of a large grid of research questions which will have to be answered in the near future. … Whatever the answers may be that we as a discipline provide, they will have important implications for how we conceptualize and measure communication effects, effectively design online media, educate professionals and the public, and regulate media content and platforms. But more importantly, they will raise normative questions about the future of a media system that – driven by media-centric or audience-centric shifts – no longer provides a commonly shared and professionally defined hierarchy of stories and ideas.

References:

Abramowitz, A. (2009). The disappearing center. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press.

Bennett, W. L., & Iyengar, S. (2008). A new era of minimal effects? The changing foundations of political communication. Journal of Communication, 58(4), 707-731. doi: 10.1111/j.1460-2466.2008.00410.x

Besley, J., &; Nisbet, M. (forthcoming). How scientists view the public, the media and the political process. Public Understanding of Science. First published online August 30, 2011 as doi:10.1177/0963662511418743.

Bishop, B., & Cushing, R. (2008). The big sort: Why the clustering of like-minded America is tearing us apart. New York: Houghton Mifflin.

Brossard, D., Scheufele, D. A., Kim, E., & Lewenstein, B. V. (2009). Religiosity as a perceptual filter: Examining processes of opinion formation about nanotechnology. Public Understanding of Science, 18(5), 546–558. doi: 10.1177/0963662507087304

Donsbach, W. (1991). Medienwirkung trotz Selektion: Einflussfaktoren auf die Zuwendung zu Zeitungsinhalten [Media effects despite selection: Influences on attention to newspaper content]. Köln, Germany: Böhlau.

Donsbach, W. (2004). Psychology of news decisions. Journalism, 5(2), 131.

Downie, L. & Schudson, M. (2009, Oct. 19). The reconstruction of American journalism. Columbia Journalism Review. Retrieved November 29, 2011, from http://www.cjr.org/reconstruction/the_reconstruction_of_american.php?page=all.

Galtung, J., & Ruge, M. H. (1965). The structure of foreign news. Journal of Peace Research, 2(1), 64-91.

Gans, H. (1979). Deciding what’s news New York: Pantheon Books.

Goel, S., Mason, W., & Watts, D. J. (2010). Real and perceived attitude agreement in social networks. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 99(4), 611-621. doi: 10.1037/a0020697

Hindman, M. (2009). The Myth of Digital Democracy. Princeton, NJ: University Press.

Ho, S. S., Brossard, D., & Scheufele, D. A. (2008). Effects of value predispositions, mass media use, and knowledge on public attitudes toward embryonic stem cell research. International Journal of Public Opinion Research, 20(2), 171-192.

Kim, E., Scheufele, D. A., & Han, J. Y. (2011). Structure or predisposition? Exploring the interaction effect of discussion orientation and discussion heterogeneity on political participation. Mass Communication & Society, 14(4), 502-526. doi: 10.1080/15205436.2010.51346

Kunda, Z. (1990). The case for motivated reasoning. Psychological Bulletin, 108(3), 480-498. doi: 10.1037/0033-2909.108.3.480

Ladwig, P., Anderson, A. A., Brossard, D., Scheufele, D. A., & Shaw, B. (2010). Narrowing the nano discourse? Materials Today, 13(5), 52-54. doi: 10.1016/s1369-7021(10)70084-5

Maddow, R. (2010). Theodore H. White Lecture on Press and Politics [transcript]. Joan Shorenstein Center on the Press, Politics and Public Policy, Harvard University. Retrieved November 21, 2011, from http://www.hks.harvard.edu/presspol/prizes_lectures/th_white_lecture/transcripts/th_white_2010_maddow.pdf

McLeod, J. M., Scheufele, D. A., & Moy, P. (1999). Community, communication, and participation: The role of mass media and interpersonal discussion in local political participation. Political Communication, 16(3), 315-336.

McPherson, M., Smith-Lovin, L., & Cook, J. M. (2001). Birds of a feather: Homophily in social networks. Annual Review of Sociology, 27(1), 415-444. doi: 10.1146/annurev.soc.27.1.415

Messing, S., Westwood, S. J., & Lelkes, Y. (2011). Online media effects: Social, not political, reinforcement. Unpublished manuscript. Stanford University. Palo Alto, CA. Retrieved from http://www.stanford.edu/~messing/PopRecSrcNews2.pdf

Mutz, D. C. (2002a). The consequences of cross-cutting networks for political participation. American Journal of Political Science, 46(4), 838-855.

Mutz, D. C. (2002b). Cross-cutting social networks: Testing democratic theory in practice. American Political Science Review, 96(1), 111-126.

Nisbet, M. C. (2005). The competition for worldviews: Values, information, and public support for stem cell research. International Journal of Public Opinion Research, 17(1), 90-112.

Nisbet, M. C. & Scheufele, D. A. (2004). Political talk as a catalyst for online citizenship. Journalism & Mass Communication Quarterly, 81(4), 877-896.

Peters, J. W. (2010, July 5, 2010). At Yahoo, using searches to steer news coverage, The New York Times, p. B1. Retrieved from http://www.nytimes.com/2010/07/05/business/media/05yahoo.html

Prior, M. (2007). Post-broadcast democracy: How media choice increases inequality in political involvement and polarizes elections. Cambridge, MA: Cambridge University Press.

Purcell, K., Rainie, L., Mitchell, A., Rosenstiel, T., & Olmstead, K. (2010). Understanding the participatory news consumer. Pew Internet & American Life Project. Retrieved August 10, 2010, from http://www.pewinternet.org/Reports/2010/Online-News.aspx.

Scheufele, D. A. (2011). Modern citizenship or policy dead end? Evaluating the need for public participation in science policy making, and why public meetings may not be the answer. Paper #R-34, Joan Shorenstein Center on the Press, Politics and Public Policy Research Paper Series. Harvard University. Cambridge, MA. Retrieved from http://www.hks.harvard.edu/presspol/publications/papers/research_papers/r34_scheufele.pdf

Scheufele, D. A., Hardy, B. W., Brossard, D., Waismel-Manor, I. S., & Nisbet, E. (2006). Democracy based on difference: Examining the links between structural heterogeneity, heterogeneity of discussion networks, and democratic citizenship. Journal of Communication, 56(4), 728-753.

Scheufele, D. A., & Nisbet, M. C. (2002). Being a citizen online - New opportunities and dead ends. Harvard International Journal of Press-Politics, 7(3), 55-75.

Scheufele, D. A., Nisbet, M. C., & Brossard, D. (2003). Pathways to participation? Religion, communication contexts, and mass media. International Journal of Public Opinion Research, 15(3), 300-324.

Scheufele, D. A., Nisbet, M. C., Brossard, D., & Nisbet, E. C. (2004). Social structure and citizenship: Examining the impacts of social setting, network heterogeneity, and informational variables on political participation. Political Communication, 21(3), 315-338.

Tuchman, G. (1978). Making news: A study in the construction of reality. New York, NY: The Free Press.

Vallone, R. P., Ross, L., & Lepper, M. R. (1985). The hostile media phenomenon: Biased perception and perceptions of media bias in coverage of the Beirut massacre. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 59, 577-585.

White, D. M. (1950). The 'gatekeeper': A case study in the selection of news. Journalism Quarterly, 27(3), 383-390.

From Terminator to curing cancer: Wisconsin Academy talk on the societal impacts of nanotechnology

2011-10-07T14:56:00.000-05:00

The Wisconsin Academy of Sciences, Arts and Letters just posted my talk from last week on the political and societal impacts of nanotechnology:

"Recent scientific breakthroughs, such as nanotechnology, are changing the world as we know it. Gold nanoshells, for both imaging and targeting tumors, have the potential to revolutionize cancer treatments. At the same time, nanotechnology has raised concerns about what it means to create and manipulate materials at the molecular scale that do not occur in nature. With over 1,000 nano-based consumer end products entering the market in the past few years, consumer advocates, academics, and policy makers are scrambling to weigh the risks and benefits of this new technology and its applications. How do we form opinions even though most of us lack a comprehensive scientific understanding of emerging scientific fields? How do we use our personal values and moral standards to make sense of scientific facts? And why does all of this matter for the global leadership role of the U.S.--both economically and technologically--in a rapidly changing post 9-11world? Join Dietram Scheufele at the 2011 Wisconsin Science Festival for a crash course on making sense of breakthrough technologies that have the potential to transform virtually all aspects of our everyday lives."

Academy Evenings with Dietram Scheufele from Jason A. Smith on Vimeo

I'm a Scientist - the Film

2011-09-19T08:01:00.002-05:00

Six scientists share their thoughts and stories with biophysicist Stephen Curry about how they got interested in science, what keeps them going and what makes a good scientist.

Thanks to nanowerk for the link.

New study with lessons for Boehner et al.: Talking about our disagreements makes for better politics

2011-07-27T21:48:00.001-05:00

A week before the 2010 midterm elections, House majority leader John Boehner announced that "this is not a time for compromise." And during the recent budget crisis, House Republicans have been following Boehner's doctrine almost religiously. They have walked out on budget discussions, given separate televised statements and avoided talking to Democrats face-to-face whenever possible.

In some respects, Republicans are simply mirroring the broader political culture in this country. Our politics seem to get more polarized, but as findings show, we're reluctant to talk to those who disagree with us in order to sort out our differences. And a new study we just published in Mass Communication & Society suggests that this may be a huge missed opportunity.

Our national survey data show a significantly stronger positive link between hearing different views and being willing to participate in political processes for people who were willing to speak out in these encounters. In other words, disagreement in discussions about politics can be a good thing. But it does depend on citizens' willingness to actively participate in these discussions and actually talk about their disagreements.

I wrote up a few paragraphs about what this may mean for our political system more broadly for a report that the Foley Institute at Washington State University is preparing on a conference on "Civility & Democracy in America" they held out in Spokane earlier this year.

"Political discussions ... may be a little bit like sports. The payoff from sitting passively in our recliners, holding a can of beer and watching March Madness is probably minimal. Watching sports on TV does not get us in shape. In fact, it may make us slightly obese and even more apathetic. But actively participating in a team sport is a different story. Going out on the basketball court and playing against another team may leave us bruised and sore the next morning, but – in the long run – it is what keeps us in shape.

The parallels between sports and civil or uncivil exchanges among citizens go even further than that. Similar to watching a basketball game on TV, passive, armchair disagreement does not strengthen our "democratic" muscle. In fact, some research suggests that it may have negative effects, and that exposure to uncivil discourse in talk shows can have detrimental effects on people’s trust in various aspects of the political system.

The positive effects of disagreement and maybe even incivility may therefore come from entering the fray and actively participating in the game, to stay in the basketball analogy. This would certainly be consistent with the significantly stronger positive link between exposure to heterogeneous views and political participation we found for active participants in political discussions than for those who spoke up.

Like many commentators, I continue to be unconvinced that the political climate in the U.S. is characterized or even threatened by an increasingly uncivil discourse. More importantly, even if there is a trend toward less civility, the tone of public discourse in itself may not be a problem. Instead, many of the studies outlined in this essay point to a slightly more complex diagnosis.

In particular, the U.S. may have reached a point where our discourse is both uncivil and non-participatory. And it is really the combination of both of these characteristics that is the problem, not the lack of civility by itself. Spirited discussions among politically active citizens, even if they are not perfectly civil at times, are a prerequisite of any functioning democracy. A political environment in which chronically apathetic voters see themselves as disconnected observers of hyperpartisan and often uncivil exchanges among pundits and politicians, on the other hand, is equally unhealthy for individual citizens and for the political system, more broadly."

Renewable energy and economic growth ... abroad: The economic lessons that U.S. lawmakers still don't understand

2011-07-25T15:44:00.001-05:00

Ironically, two of the more important headlines earlier this month referred to events that are unlikely to happen. Various ratings agencies announced that they might lower their credit ratings for the U.S. to the level of Zambia if the government does not manage to raise the debt ceiling. And House Republicans launched a number of unsuccessful bids to repeal parts of the 2007 Energy Independence and Security Act that require light bulbs to be more energy efficient. The two news items seem unrelated at first. But at second glance, they are linked in ways that may teach us a valuable lesson about economic recovery in the U.S. and around the world.

And we are in desperate need of new ideas and, if things do not turn around soon, the U.S. could permanently fall from the ranks of the world's leading economies. Of course, the U.S. were not the only country targeted by ratings agencies this week. Financial markets in Italy are in trouble, Greece has just managed to secure another E.U. bailout, and Ireland and Portugal have seen their credit ratings lowered to junk status by Moody's.

But at least two countries seem to be somewhat unaffected by the recent financial crisis. One is China, which is the largest foreign holder of U.S. Treasury debt and now owns well over a trillion dollars of our country's debt. The other is Germany which has financed much of the bailout efforts for struggling EU partners.

The two countries owe their unusual success in this difficult global economy to very different sets of political and societal circumstances. But they have one thing in common: According to a United Nations report on renewable energy investments released this month, both Germany and China handily outspent the U.S. on renewable energies last year. Investments on technologies, such as wind farms and solar panels, totaled over $90 billion combined in China and Germany in 2010, compared to about $29 billion in the U.S.

China's predominance is not too surprising, given the sheer size of the country. Germany out-investing the U.S. by almost 40 percent with a population that is about a fourth of that of the U.S., however, warrants a second look. According to the 2011 U.N. report, Germany had higher growth rates than any other country for small-scale capacity building in areas, such as solar photovoltaic devices. In other words, the German federal government managed to promote grassroots investment in renewable energies, such as solar panels on private residences, through a mix of regulations and incentives provided to ordinary citizens. Every new residential home that is currently being built in Germany, for example, is required by law to satisfy a certain portion of its energy needs from on-site renewable energy sources.

And the economic trickle-up effects of these policies are being felt by most citizens as Germany has created more energy independence, spurred innovation, and shielded itself from the shrinking or stagnating economies that have plagued countries around the world. As a result, there has been widespread political buy-in among the German electorate for the government’s legislative management of these investments. And as the U.N report concluded, policy-makers support solar and other renewable energies since they create manufacturing and installation jobs, and voters like the idea of reducing their monthly energy bill and making a proﬁt on their very own power plant. And that does not even take into account the environmental benefits of these measures.

The idea of promoting innovation and economic growth through environmental regulations and incentives, of course, is not new. In the U.S., we have heard similar proposals from commentators at various ends of the political spectrum, including columnist Tom Friedman and presidential hopeful Mitt Romney. But given the severity of the economic situation in the U.S., it is surprising how little political consensus we have managed to achieve on similar political proposals. So while the recent efforts to kill Bush era requirements for more energy-efficient light bulbs may just be political posturing, they are also indicative of blind spots for the economic potential of sustainable technologies in the U.S. that our economic competitors in Europe and Asia are rapidly capitalizing on.

U.S., Germany and Japan top list of countries most likely to translate nano funding into economic impacts

2011-07-13T14:22:00.000-05:00

Cientifica just released their 2011 report on global nanotechnology funding and impact. The report includes a ranking of countries based on an Emerging Technology Exploitation Factor, measuring the likelihood of translating technology funding into economic impacts. When ranked based on the Emerging Technology Exploitation Factor, the list is led by the U.S. followed by Germany, Taiwan, and Japan. South Korea rounds out the Top-5.

As the report explains, however, the Emerging Technology Exploitation Factor "takes no account of the level of nanotechnology funding which varies widely across different countries. When we factor in PPP corrected funding levels the picture changes dramatically.

Rebasing the Nanotech Impact Factor on the US (=100) gives a clearer picture of where we expect the technology to have the greatest impact. Of course in the US the nanotechnology is in ﬁerce competition with any number of other technologies, from synthetic biology to social networking, while in Russia it is a very high level stand alone project."

The adjusted Nanotech Impact Factor shuffles around things quite a bit with only the U.S., Germany and Japan staying in the Top-5:

Obama administration opposes web censorship ...at least for political purposes

2011-06-12T10:28:00.000-05:00

"The Obama administration is leading a global effort to deploy “shadow” Internet and mobile phone systems that dissidents can use to undermine repressive governments that seek to silence them by censoring or shutting down telecommunications networks."

Laudable. Even though it is somewhat ironic that the U.S. opposes politically-motivated censorship abroad, while corporate proposals to undermine net neutrality at home are still very much on the table.

Stanford in our back yard? A few thoughts on the Badger Partnership ...

2011-04-05T00:10:00.000-05:00

Last week the Walker administration announced modifications to the tuition reciprocity agreement between Wisconsin and Minnesota that would end the subsidies that Wisconsin pays to each resident who chooses to attend the University of Minnesota. And while the new proposal is important, the real story is a different one: Why is in-state tuition at UW-Madison cheaper than at most other Big-10 schools? After all, UW-Madison is routinely ranked among the world's 25 best universities--an exclusive list which includes mostly Ivy League and other private schools.

And the answer is simple: UW has always been committed to providing affordable world-class public education, and we have done a better job than virtually all of our competitors. My own discipline is a good example. In the National Research Council's most recent ranking of doctoral programs, only three Mass Communication programs in the country received a top ranking: The University of Pennsylvania, Stanford, and the University of Wisconsin-Madison. But while annual graduate tuition costs at Penn and Stanford are in the range of $40,000, in-state tuition at Wisconsin is about $11,000 and out-of state is $25,000.

In other words, we have an affordable, public version of Stanford right here in Wisconsin. Not only is UW-Madison one of the best universities in the world, similar to Stanford it also serves as a key economic driver for the region. UW-Madison receives close to $1 billion in outside research funding every year, creating over $12 billion in economic revenue. And a recent report suggested that UW-Madison and its affiliated organizations and startup companies support 128,146 Wisconsin jobs and generate $614 million in state tax revenue.

But things are changing, as a result of tough budget cuts and an increasingly fierce competition among public and private institutions over the best faculty, the best students and shrinking pools of federal funding. And as well as we may have done in the past, the UW System is not immune to these challenges.

This is why Chancellor Martin's proposal for a Badger Partnership is not just a smart but also a necessary move. It provides UW-Madison with the budgetary and administrative flexibility that is absolutely crucial in order to compete with the world's top universities on an equal playing field--over attracting and retaining the best faculty and students, over external research dollars, and over producing impactful science that makes a meaningful difference in people's everyday lives.

But UW-Madison will continue to be different from the Stanfords and MITs of this world in one respect. We are a land grant university that works with and for the citizens for Wisconsin. Keeping a world-class education affordable for the citizens of our state is therefore a key component of the Badger Partnership. Toward that end, Chancellor Martin suggested last month that under a public authority, UW-Madison could pace its tuition increases against those at other UW System institutions.

Most importantly, the Badger Partnership is not a political proposal but an academic one. It outlines changes that are critically important for the future of higher education in Wisconsin, and that will hopefully find support across partisan lines among all of us who want a UW-Madison that continues to provides the very best education at an affordable price tag, that is an economic driver for the state's recovery, and that remains one of the world's premier universities, period.

Nuclear debate fueled by ... natural gas?

2011-03-14T11:28:00.003-05:00

The earthquakes in Japan triggered discussions in most developed nations about the recent renaissance of nuclear energy. They range from the expected knee-jerk reactions among Green party politicians in France and Germany, to more reasoned predictions (here and here) that the recent events in Japan have put a serious damper on the hopes of the nuclear industry to become a key component of a long-term clean global energy strategy (see ad below).

The tragedy in Japan, however, has not put a damper on corporate cynicism more generally. Statoil, a Norwegian gas and oil company, today placed a large banner ad on the home page of Germany's Die Welt newspaper. Positioned prominently above coverage of the rising death toll of the earthquakes and the potential of a nuclear catastrophe in Japan, the ad promotes Norwegian gas as a clean alternative to "support economic growth in Germany" (see below for a screenshot).

It's possible and maybe even likely that the space for these banner ads was bought long before the earthquakes hit, and and that the placement is simply based on contextual advertising algorithms. In that case, it would have been appropriate to put those ads on hold while the unimaginable human tragedy in Japan is only beginning to unfold.

Intentional or not, even the perception that oil and gas companies would try to capitalize on the events in Japan in order to regain some of the political capital they lost during the BP oil spill last year seems beyond inappropriate. But I have a feeling that we may see an increasing number of similar media buys from coal, oil, and gas in the next few weeks, as the nuclear debate heats up and the search for "alternative" alternative energy sources gains momentum.

To donate to the Red Cross relief effort for Japan, please follow this link.

The world's most prestigious universities ... mostly in the U.S.?

2011-03-11T18:18:00.000-06:00

Thomson Reuters is expanding its influence on how academics quantify their work and its impact. One of their more recent additions is the Times Higher Education World University Rankings (THE), a collaboration with The Times newspaper in the UK. A few things are worth highlighting about the 2011 reputational rankings which were just released this week.

First, on a very self serving note, UW-Madison was ranked among the world's 25 most prestigious universities (and in the top-17 among all public and private U.S. universities).

Second, German universities did not fare as well in this international comparison as one might have expected. This is particularly interesting, given Germany's efforts to build clusters of excellence at select universities through a series of competitive reviews by the German Science Foundation (Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft) and the Research Council (Wissenschaftsrat). In spite of these efforts, known as Exzellenzinitiative für Spitzenforschung an Hochschulen, only four German Universities made it even into the top-200 of THE's 2011 prestige rankings, with the University of Munich being ranked highest at #48.

IBM's visualization of the 2011 THE data -- highlighting

countries with four or more ranked universities

The prominence of Anglo-American brand names is due a number of factors, including the fact that the reputational survey was based on a sample of well-published scientists drawn from Thomson Reuters Web of Science database.

"A key feature of the survey was the opportunity for narrow disciplinary focus: respondents could highlight what they believed to be the strongest universities, regionally and globally, in their specific fields, selecting from hundreds of disciplines and from more than 6,000 academic institutions. "Action-based" questions - such as "where would you recommend a top undergraduate should study for the best postgraduate supervision?" - were used to encourage more thoughtful responses and more meaningful results.

The survey was distributed between March and May 2010 and 13,388 people from 131 countries provided usable responses."

The seniority of most respondents (the average respondent had been working at a higher education institution for more than 16 years and had published more than 50 research papers) also helps explain the conservative slant of the results which ranked traditional powerhouses highly, potentially giving less weight to recent efforts, such as Germany's Exzellenziniative.

Click here for a more in-depth description of the methodology.

Modern polis or policy dead end? A few cautionary notes about public meetings and science cafes as tools for policy making

2011-02-05T13:39:00.001-06:00

Public meetings, technology panels, consensus conferences and other similar modes of citizen engagement are increasingly fashionable tools for policy making and engaging the electorate on emerging technologies. In the area of nanotechnology, a 2000 UK House of Lords report recommended making the direct dialogue with the public a mandatory and integral part of policy processes. And the 2003 U.S. Nanotechnology Research and Development Act mandated “convening of regular and ongoing public discussions, through mechanisms such as citizens’ panels, consensus conferences, and educational events” (21st Century Nanotechnology Research and Development Act 2003, STAT. 1924).

“[O]ne in five Britons are satisfied with
the opportunities they have to engage in
local decision making, and in practice,
probably fewer than 1 percent actually
do” (Cornwall 2008, 7)

And without a doubt, consensus conferences and public meetings can serve as important input mechanisms upstream in the policy making process. They seem to be much more popular, however, among the academics and policymakers who propose them than they are among the intended audience, i.e., the general public. In a national telephone survey conducted by Carnegie’s Circle Foundation (Fieldwork from January 12- 15, 1995, N = 801) only eight percent of respondents reported having expressed their views publicly by speaking at a town hall meeting the previous year. It could be argued, of course, that recent trends in online communication have created new ways for citizens to interact and deliberate with each other. But the numbers are even more bleak for web-based deliberative exchanges, and only three percent of web users reported having used the Internet to “participate in an online town hall meeting” in 2009 (Pew Internet & American Life Project, national phone survey, fieldwork November 30 to December 27, 2009, N = 2,258).

So are nano cafes and consensus conferences simply an attempt to recreate the modern equivalent of 17th or 18th century coffeehouses, as described by Habermas and others? And the answer is clearly 'no.' In fact, some of these historical models of enlightened discourse, including Tischgesellschaften in Germany, were highly exclusive deliberative communities that systematically excluded large cross-sections of society based on income, gender, religious beliefs, and social class.

Unfortunately, however, modern public meetings and consensus conferences for emerging technologies continue to be plagued by some of the same participatory inequities as their historical antecedents. And -- as a result -- they have the potential to create or widen gaps between different groups of citizens rather than contributing to the broader societal or policy discourse. In the long run, it is therefore absolutely critical for governmental agencies and policy makers to distinguish the controlled and hypothetical democracy of public meetings from the larger real-world dynamics of the political discourse that precedes them, and to make sure that the political discourses surrounding emerging technologies are framed in ways that allows for an informed and balanced political discussion that does not a-priori favor particular viewpoints or social groups.

During my sabbatical at Harvard's Joan Shorenstein Center on the Press, Politics and Public Policy I had an opportunity to look into some of these issues in greater detail (with the help of Kennedy School student Philipp Schrögel, among others). The product is a white paper on public meetings as a tool for engagement amd policymaking that was just published in the Shorenstein Research Paper Series. Here are a few excerpts:

Shorenstein Research Paper #R-34

In recent years we have witnessed a “growing political commitment at the highest levels to giving citizens more of a voice in the decisions that affect their lives, and to engaging citizens in making government more responsive and accountable” (Cornwall, 2008, p. 11). The renewed excitement about public meetings, technology panels, consensus conferences and other modes of citizen engagement is particularly pronounced for the emerging NBIC field.

...

The renewed attention to public meetings and other modes of engagement, however, is also a function of their perceived potential to replace traditional knowledge-deficit approaches to communicating about science with a truly two-way dialogue between science (policy) and lay publics (Cicerone, 2006). This enthusiasm is also shared by some corporate stakeholders. In a letter to then House Speaker Nancy Pelosi urging the passage of the 2008 National Nanotechnology Initiative Amendment Act, for example, IEEE President Russell J. Lefevre emphasized the potential of public meetings and other outreach tools to “reach tens of thousands of people with information about nanoscience” (Lefevre, 2008, p. 1).

Unfortunately, many of these more normative demands have been formulated in almost prefect separation from empirical work on the real-world applications of these ideas in the policy making process. This has also made it exponentially more difficult to systematically assess the potential of public meetings and technology forums as a policy making tool. And partly as a function of the disconnects between different academic literatures and their policy applications, the enthusiasm in policy circles and academe about the potential of public meetings to reinvigorate U.S. democracy is as pervasive as it is at odds with most empirical research in this area. ... [In fact,] attendance in public meetings tends to be low and characterized by significant self-selection biases due to lack of interest among many members of the lay public, and disproportionately higher motivations among small, opinionated issue publics to participate and express their viewpoints.

...

This paper examines some of this research in greater detail. In a first step, it briefly outlines the policy history of consensus conferences and other forms of public meetings. In a second step, it outlines claims made by proponents about the potential of consensus conferences and related efforts to create a two-way dialogue among lay publics, experts, and policy makers, to discover and debate relevant ethical, legal and social (ELSI) concerns early on, and ultimately to engage in better long-term planning about emerging scientific fields and their societal applications. In third step, the paper provides a comprehensive empirical review of how consensus conferences and related efforts have lived up to the normative hopes of their proponents, or – in most cases – have fallen short or even produced results that are counterproductive to the notion of an inclusive public debate. The paper closes with an argument against small-group deliberative experiments with very limited reach and in favor of creating a long-term infrastructure for a balanced public debate in mediated and interpersonal channels.

Excerpts from: Scheufele, D. A. (2011). Modern Citizenship or Policy Dead End? Evaluating the need for public participation in science policy making, and why public meetings may not be the answer. Paper #R-43, Joan Shorenstein Center on the Press, Politics and Public Policy Research Paper Series. Harvard University. Cambridge, MA.

Global (academic) markets? Structural and philosophical differences between the U.S. and German academic system

2011-02-02T10:22:00.000-06:00

From CERN to the International Space Station, scientists are increasingly working across national boundaries and infrastructures to collaboratively tackle the big questions of our time. And for fields, such as nanotechnology, corporations, non profits, and regulators are trying to harmonize regulatory frameworks across continents to protect consumers and promote science at the same time.

What makes this globalization of the scientific enterprise even more surprising is the fact that all of this is happening with fairly archaic and idiosyncratic structures dominating the academic systems in each country. Earlier this fall I was invited to contribute a short piece to a publication called Länderprofile, published by the Deutscher Akademischer Austauschdienst (DAAD), a foundation in Bonn, Germany. The piece deals with the significant structural and -- more importantly -- philosophical differences between the U.S. and German academic system, and I am reposting a longer version here.

Since this is targeted mostly at German readers, I did not translate it into English. But the punch line is fairly simple: The U.S. academic system is characterized by a significantly higher degree of market orientation than Germany, for both teaching and research. And in most cases that is a good thing, at least for those of us who believe in promoting and rewarding excellence. Ironically, the Economist published an excellent piece just a couple of weeks before I submitted this to the publisher, attacking the U.S. academic system for in fact not being corporate enough in its everyday operations.

Here's the longer version of what Länderprofile used for the published magazine:

Als die ersten amerikanischen Colleges wie Yale oder William & Mary Mitte des 17. Jahrhunderts gegründet wurden, lehnten sie sich direkt an das Britische Universitätsmodell an. Während der letzten vier Jahrhunderte hat sich auf beiden Seiten des Atlantiks viel verändert. Ein Vergleich der deutschen und amerikanischen Forschungskultur lässt daher klare Unterschiede, aber auch einige Gemeinsamkeiten erkennen.

Ein erster, struktureller Unterschied ist die in den USA sehr deutliche Trennung zwischen Undergraduate oder College Education (normalerweise die ersten vier Jahre, die Studierende an der Universität verbringen) und Graduate Programs (Magister- und Doktorandenprogramme). Die deutschen Bachelor-Studiengänge, die mit der so genannten Bologna-Reform eingeführt wurden, sind damit nur bedingt vergleichbar. Manche Ivy League Universitäten wie z.B. Dartmouth bieten in vielen Fachbereichen überhaupt keine Magister- oder Doktoranden-Studiengänge an. Ihr Ruf als Elite-Universitäten basiert daher vor allem auf den Undergraduate-Studiengängen. Auch die meisten der in den USA verbreiteten Universitäts-Ranglisten wie etwa jene der Zeitschrift U.S. News and World Report bewerten vor allem die Studiengänge für Undergraduates.

Amerikanische Universitäten heben sich von deutschen Universitäten auch sehr deutlich in ihrer Finanzstruktur ab. Drittmittel und Stiftungsgelder (sogenannte Endowments) machen selbst an Staatsschulen wie Arizona State oder UCLA einen deutlichen Anteil des Haushalts aus. Privatunis wie Harvard oder Yale finanzieren sich fast ausschließlich über Endowments. Der tägliche Forschungsbetrieb an den Top-Unis wird daher größtenteils von Geldern unterstützt, die von privaten Stiftungen (z.B. Ford Foundation oder MacArthur Foundation) oder von der Regierung (z. B. National Science Foundation, NSF oder National Institutes of Health, NIH) vergeben werden. Selbst die Lehre wird teilweise über Drittmittel finanziert. Beispielsweise mussten Undergraduates an der University of Wisconsin-Madison vor zehn Jahren nur etwa ein Drittel der Kosten ihrer Ausbildung über Studiengebühren selbst begleichen. Der Bundestaat übernahm folglich fast zwei Drittel der Kosten. Heute liegt der Kostenanteil für Studenten bei 60 Prozent.

Einer der wichtigsten Unterschiede in der Forschungs- und Universitätskultur ist jedoch das privatwirtschaftliche Denken amerikanischer Universitäten im Hinblick auf leistungsbezogene Beförderung und Bezahlung von Professoren. Hier geht es dabei nicht um vergleichsweise geringe Leistungszulagen wie in Deutschland, sondern um lukrative Namensprofessuren und Gehaltserhöhungen, die sich durchaus auf $50,000 oder mehr belaufen können, wenn ein Professor oder eine Professorin Angebote von mehreren Top-Unis vorliegen hat. Selbst jährliche Routinegehaltserhöhungen basieren auf leistungsbezogenen Kriterien (merit system), das jede/n Professor/in in den drei Schlüsselbereichen Forschung, Lehre und Service bewertet. Selbstverständlich ist dabei, dass Forschung sehr deutlich als wichtigster Bereich bewertet wird.

Eines der Hauptkriterien für die Bewertung der Forschungsleistung in den USA sind Veröffentlichungen in den besten Fachzeitschriften und dabei auch, wie oft man von Kolleg/inn/en zitiert wird. Entscheidungen über Beförderung oder Verbeamtung fällen universitätsweite Gremien, die in Zitations- und Publikationsanalysen ein Mittel zur Standardisierung über disziplinäre Grenzen hinweg sehen. Ein zweiter wichtiger Maßstab sind Drittmittel. Forschungsvorhaben, die von der NSF oder NIH unterstützt werden, finanzieren nicht nur Laboratorien oder Projekte, sondern werden auch von der Universität “besteuert,” die normalerweise fast 50 Prozent als Gemeinkostenbeitrag (overhead) einbehält. Wer Drittmittel eintreibt, bezahlt daher sein Gehalt beinahe selbst und kann daher normalerweise eine deutliche Gehaltserhöhung verhandeln.

Solche ökonomisch ausgerichteten Modelle haben natürlich auch ihre Nachteile. Die Carnegie Classification of Institutions of Higher Education führte in den 1990ern den Begriff R1 (Research University One) als Klassifikation für ungefähr 40 Universitäten ein, die sich im Drittmittelaufkommen, in der Anzahl von Doktoranden und im Forschungsvolumen deutlich vom Rest der amerikanischen Unis abheben. Und da R1-Universitäten die besten Professoren von jenen Konkurrenten abwerben können, die finanziell schlechter gestellt sind oder ein weniger ausgeprägtes Forschungsprofil haben, wird die Kluft zwischen R1-Unis und dem Rest der US Colleges immer breiter. Drew Faust, Präsident der Harvard University, prophezeite vor einigen Jahren sogar, dass die beste Forschung – vor allem in den Naturwissenschaften – künftig nur noch an Eliteschulen möglich sei. Aber solche Vorhersagen, die Präsident Faust in einem Leserbrief auch sofort widerrief, sind nach dem Bankencrash von 2009 natürlich längst vergessen.

Interessanterweise kommt die lauteste Kritik an US-Universitäten aber aus Wirtschaftskreisen. Die Zeitschrift Economist kritisierte im September diesen Jahres Staats- und Privatschulen gleichermaßen für ihr nichtwirtschaftliches Denken, d.h. für inflationäre Kosten und fehlende Effizienz. Im Kreuzfeuer steht unter anderem die Harvard University, die bis 2006 von Larry Summers geführt wurde – dem ehemaligen Chief Economist der Weltbank und Direktor von Präsident Obama’s National Economic Council.

Here's the citation for the published piece:

Scheufele, D. A. (2011). Hauptunterschied ist das privatwirtschaftliche Denken: Vergleich deutscher und amerikanischer Hochschulkultur. In GATE-Germany (Ed.), Länderprofile: Edition USA (p. 15). Bonn: Deutscher Akademischer Austauschdienst.

Public attitudes toward nanotechnology - a (2011) primer and review

2011-01-22T21:12:00.000-06:00

Here is an initial draft of an article that what will eventually become a chapter on public attitudes toward nanotechnology I am putting together for Susanna Priest's new book on risk communication and public perception of nanotechnology. It's meant to be a current update and comprehensive overview of what we know (and don't know) at this point:

Patterns of news coverage on nanotechnology are developing in ways that mirror issue cycles for previous technologies, including agricultural biotechnology. In particular, early coverage of nanotechnology was dominated by a general optimism about the scientific potential and economic impacts of this new technology (Dudo, Dunwoody, & Scheufele, forthcoming; Friedman & Egolf, 2005; Friedman & Egolf, 2007). This is in part related to the fact that a sizeable proportion of nanotechnology news coverage – at least in newspapers – continues to be provided by a handful of science journalists and business writers (Dudo, Choi, & Scheufele, 2011; Dudo et al., forthcoming).

Attitudes without Knowledge?

The overall positive framing of nanotechnology in news outlets is also linked to support for more research and funding among the general public (Cobb & Macoubrie, 2004; Scheufele & Lewenstein, 2005). This connection between media coverage and support for nanotechnology, however, does not follow traditional knowledge deficit models (for an overview, see Brossard, Lewenstein, & Bonney, 2005). Instead, most research on public attitudes toward nanotechnology does not show an impact of media coverage on lay audiences’ understanding of the technology, which – according to knowledge deficit models – would produce more positive attitudes toward the technology. Instead, most recent research has found that the driving factor behind public attitudes are various forms of heuristics or cognitive shortcuts that audiences use to make sense of the technology, even in the absence of information (Scheufele, 2006).

One of these heuristics are media frames. Frames are ways of presenting an issue that will produce particular outcomes among audiences (Scheufele, 1999). Framing is often traced back to Nobel Prize winning work in experimental psychology that examined how embedding information in particular contexts can shape people’s interpretation of that information (Kahneman, 2003). When applied to mass media, framing theory suggests that even small terminological tweaks in terminology (“death tax” vs. “inheritance tax”) can activate different cognitive frameworks among audiences and shift the interpretation of the technology overall (Scheufele & Tewksbury, 2007).

How people think about nanotechnology or what cognitive schemas they use to make sense of nano-related information, however, also depends on the specific aspect of nanotechnology that is being discussed. Nanotechnology has often been described as an enabling technology. The “nano” label, in other words, simply describes work or observations at a particular size scale. As a result, nanotechnology research bridges a diverse set of research fields and application areas.

And attitudes depend heavily on the specific area that is being discussed at any given moment. Recent national survey data, for instance, shows that people’s likelihood of translating their perceptions of risks associated with nanotechnology to specific attitudes about the technology depends to a significant degree on the specific application area they think about when forming those risk-attitude judgments (Cacciatore, Scheufele, & Corley, forthcoming).

What Types of Attitudes and Cognitions Matter Most?

Virtually all national surveys tapping public opinion on nanotechnology have measured some form of knowledge or at least perceived knowledge. This distinction, unfortunately, is lost to many commentators who often conclude in a very simplistic fashion that the public knows little about nanotechnology, even if a study relies on self-reported awareness of the technology.

Empirically, however, self-reported perceptions and objective assessments of knowledge are clearly distinct. The former taps people’s perceptions of what they think they know. A number of researchers, for example, have tracked perceived levels of awareness about nanotechnology (Peter D. Hart Research Associates, 2006, 2007; Scheufele Lewenstein, 2005) and have found little change over time. Significantly fewer studies have actually administered objective quiz-type measures of what the public knows about nanotechnology (Lee & Scheufele, 2006). Typically, such measures include a battery of true/false-type knowledge questions about nanotechnology.

From the data that are available, we can see two trends: First, levels of knowledge about nanotechnology across the general population have remained fairly static in the last few years (Scheufele, Corley, Shih, Dalrymple, & Ho, 2009, see Online Appendix); second, we see a widening gap among education groups, with highly educated respondents showing increased learning over time, and less-educated respondents falling behind in terms of how much they know about nanotechnology (Corley & Scheufele, 2010).

Aside from cognitive variables, research on public attitudes toward nanotechnology has also explored overall attitudes toward nanotechnology. Most of this research has shown that people’s views on nanotech are generally positive (Cobb & Macoubrie, 2004). Respondents who self-identify as being more aware of nanotechnology tend to show higher levels of overall support than respondents who are less aware of nanotechnology (Scheufele & Lewenstein, 2005).

A second attitudinal variable that has dominated research on public reactions to nanotechnology is people’s judgment about the relative risks and benefits of nanotechnology. Across studies, patterns of results suggest that those who perceive greater benefits for nanotechnology outnumber those who perceive greater risks by 3 to 1 (Satterfield, Kandlikar, Beaudrie, Conti, & Herr Harthorn, 2009). Unfortunately, previous research has relied mostly on a single item to tap these relative assessments of risks and benefits among the general public: "Do the risks associated with nanotechnology outweigh the benefits; do the benefits outweigh the risks; or are the risks and benefits approximately the same?"

A number of researchers have raised serious concerns about these measures and their potential to provide invalid assessments of risk perceptions among the general public. At a conceptual level, these criticisms have focused on at least two areas. First, responses may be biased based on response order effects. Asking respondents first whether “the benefits outweigh the risks”, followed by response options for “the risks outweighing the benefits,” or “risks and benefits being about equal,” for instance, is a much different question than one that offers the “risks outweighing the benefits” as the first response option. Second, ingle-item measures force respondents to make subjective summative judgments about the relative importance of several risks and benefits. Such judgments, unfortunately, are often skewed, given people’s tendency to remember unfavorable information about a topic better than favorable information.

Most recently, however, Binder and colleagues (Binder, Cacciatore, Scheufele, Shaw, & Corley, online first) quantified the potential response biases introduced by single-item measure or risk and benefits perceptions. Specifically, their comparisons of results from two surveys and across different measures of risk/benefits perceptions suggest that single-item measures of risk and benefits perceptions may be slanting answers toward higher risk perceptions. In particular, people perceived more benefits than risks when given the opportunity to evaluate these attributes separately, as opposed to being asked to make a quick summary judgment in a single item. Interestingly, this pattern holds both issues tested in the study – biofuels and nanotechnology (for an overview, see nanopublic.com post from January 19, 2011 ).

Expert Opinions vs. Public Opinion

A growing body of research is also beginning to compare attitudes among members of the lay public to expert surveys. Most systematic surveys among U.S. nano scientists suggest that they are more optimistic than the general population about the potential benefits of nanotechnology, and – in most areas – less pessimistic about its potential risks (Besley, Kramer, & Priest, 2008; Scheufele et al., 2007). Comparisons of answers to identically-worded questions in surveys among the leading nano scientists in the U.S. and a representative sample of the U.S. population, however, showed that there were two areas in which nano scientists showed higher levels of concerns about potential risks of nanotechnology than the general public: human health, and environmental pollution (Scheufele et al., 2007).

Previous research has also examined to which degree experts opinions on nanotechnology are driven by different factors than opinions among the lay public (Ho, Scheufele, & Corley, 2010; Priest, Greenhalgh, & Kramer, 2010). Not surprisingly, much of this research shows that attitudes among nanotechnology experts are strongly correlated to their scientific judgments about potential risks and benefits. What is interesting, however, is the fact that experts’ stances on stricter regulations for nanotechnology are – at least in part – driven by their political viewpoints, even after their judgments on batteries of questions about objective risks and benefits are taken into account. More conservative scientists tend to also be more opposed to stricter regulations, whereas liberal-leaning scientists tend to support them (Corley, Scheufele, & Hu, 2009).

Next Challenges

Two challenges are emerging as public attitudes toward nanotechnology develop along with the technology. The first challenge relates to a long-standing problem surrounding the development of technical innovations in modern societies: knowledge gaps. Knowledge gaps do not simply refer to different levels of understanding about a technology across social groups. Instead, the concept goes back to work by Tichenor and colleagues (Tichenor, Donohue, & Olien, 1970) who showed that learning effects from informational campaigns were significantly higher among respondents with high socioeconomic status (SES) than respondents with lower levels of SES.

For nanotechnology, we see similar patterns emerge. Recent analyses of nationally-representative trend data (Corley & Scheufele, 2010) show widening gaps for knowledge about nanotechnology between the most and least educated groups in the U.S. In other words, as the technology evolves and has an impact on more and more areas of our daily lives, highly-educated respondents become more familiar with nanotechnology and its applications, but less educated groups fall behind and are potentially becoming less-and-less informed about nanotechnology as societal debates focus on an increasingly complex set of ethical, legal and social challenges (Khushf, 2006).

This has tremendous implications for many outreach efforts, such as nano cafes or museum exhibits, that target a more interested and informed segment of the population and may be less effective as channels for reaching disadvantaged or harder-to-reach audiences. But there is a silver lining. A closer look at the media use patterns among different SES groups shows that online sources of information about nanotechnology can help overcome knowledge deficits for low SES respondents (Corley & Scheufele, 2010), and future research will have to explore how to better utilize online communication channels to more systematically target hard-to-reach audiences (for an overview, see nanopublic.com post from January 11, 2010 ).

A second challenge for researchers studying public attitudes toward nanotechnology is the role that personal values play in helping people make sense of new information about emerging technologies. Previous research has shown how religious views (Brossard, Scheufele, Kim, & Lewenstein, 2009), cultural predispositions (Kahan, Braman, Slovic, Gastil, & Cohen, 2009; Kahan et al., 2008), and views about scientific authority (Brossard & Nisbet, 2007; Lee & Scheufele, 2006) shape how people translate (mass mediated) information into attitudes toward nanotechnology. In other words, values and predispositions can serve as perceptual filters (Brossard et al., 2009) that shape information processing, and the same piece of information will be interpreted very differently by different audiences, depending on their pre-existing values and predispositions.

This role of values as perceptual filters is particularly important given recent comparisons among the U.S. and various European countries. These comparisons showed significant variation in religious views across countries and also a significant relationship between those views and attitudes toward nanotechnology (Scheufele et al., 2009). As regulators in the U.S. work with their counterparts in other countries in order to harmonize regulatory frameworks for nanotechnology, understanding the value landscape in each country will be absolutely critical for evaluating the viability of regulatory choices and restrictions. And future research will have to much more systematically examine public attitudes toward nanotechnology and its applications in an international context.

References

Besley, J., Kramer, V., & Priest, S. (2008). Expert opinion on nanotechnology: Risk, benefits, and regulation. Journal of Nanoparticle Research, 10(4), 549-558.

Binder, A. R., Cacciatore, M. A., Scheufele, D. A., Shaw, B. R., & Corley, E. A. (online first). Measuring risk/benefit perceptions of emerging technologies and their potential impact on communication of public opinion toward science. Public Understanding of Science. doi: 10.1177/0963662510390159

Brossard, D., Lewenstein, B. V., & Bonney, R. (2005). Scientific knowledge and attitude change: The impact of a citizen science project. International Journal of Science Education, 27(9), 1099-1121.

Brossard, D., & Nisbet, M. C. (2007). Deference to scientific authority among a low information public: Understanding U.S. opinion on agricultural biotechnology. International Journal of Public Opinion Research, 19(1), 24-52. doi: 10.1093/ijpor/edl003

Brossard, D., Scheufele, D. A., Kim, E., & Lewenstein, B. V. (2009). Religiosity as a perceptual filter: Examining processes of opinion formation about nanotechnology. Public Understanding of Science, 18(5), 546–558. doi: 10.1177/0963662507087304

Cacciatore, M. A., Scheufele, D. A., & Corley, E. A. (forthcoming). From enabling technology to applications: The evolution of risk perceptions about nanotechnology. Public Understanding of Science. doi: 10.1177/0963662509347815

Cobb, M. D., & Macoubrie, J. (2004). Public perceptions about nanotechnology: Risks, benefits and trust. Journal of Nanoparticle Research, 6(4), 395-405.

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Scheufele, D. A., & Tewksbury, D. (2007). Framing, agenda setting, and priming: The evolution of three media effects models. Journal of Communication, 57(1), 9-20. doi: 10.1111/j.1460-2466.2006.00326.x

Tichenor, P. J., Donohue, G. A., & Olien, C. N. (1970). Mass media flow and differential growth in knowledge. Public Opinion Quarterly, 34(2), 159-170.

On pretested political rhetoric and America's fear of political complexity

2011-01-19T18:59:00.000-06:00

Here's a short excerpt of an Op-Ed I did for the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel today dealing with the social science behind the recent debates about political rhetoric and its links to the Tucson shootings. Unfortunately, the debates following the tragic shooting have turned out to be as simplistic as the rhetoric that supposedly motivated it.

"First, what's now called "lock and load" rhetoric is not a new phenomenon. America has a long and colorful history of declaring war on social problems. "Collectively solving" such problems seems to be a concept that is enlightened in an outdated, old-fashioned way. Instead, we have aligned our discourse carefully along red and blue fault lines and now target, combat, battle and fight anything from video piracy to obesity.

And this is related to a second important aspect. Language and mental images do matter for how we process information. We know from decades of research in political psychology and communication that the way we "frame" a message for audiences influences how people make judgments and attribute political responsibility.

There is a multimillion-dollar industry surrounding political campaigns in the U.S., and pollsters such as Frank Luntz carefully pretest differently worded messages to see how these differences in language and framing affect voters' attitudes and emotional responses. His work is what tells candidates if they should talk about the "death tax" or the "estate tax." And it is hard to believe that Palin's "Don't retreat, reload" comment has not been tested for its effects on voters."

Click here for the full Op-Ed.

Risks and benefits of emerging technologies? Depends on how you ask

2011-01-14T11:34:00.001-06:00

Studies tapping public perceptions of the risks and benefits surrounding new technologies have long relied on a single-item measure asking respondents a variant of the following question: "Do the risks associated with technology x outweigh the benefits; do the benefits outweigh the risks; or are the risks and benefits approximately the same?" More recently, we raised concerns about this single item measure and suggested that -- especially for nanotechnology -- a more application-specific look at risk perceptions might be useful

First, responses may be biased based on what has been called “response order effects” (e.g., Schuman and Presser, 1981). Asking respondents first whether “the benefits outweigh the risks”, followed by response options for “the risks outweighing the benefits,” or “risks and benefits being about equal,” for instance, is a much different question than one that offers the “risks outweighing the benefits” as the first response option. Specifically, research in survey methodology suggests that “the earlier in the list [or response options] an acceptable answer appears, the more popular it will be” (Tourangeau et al., 2000: 250) among respondents.

Second, this form of measurement forces respondents to make subjective summative judgments about the relative importance of several risks and benefits. Such judgments, unfortunately, are often skewed, given people’s tendency to remember unfavorable information about a topic better than favorable information (e.g., Gilovich, 1991).

Third, nanotechnology has often been described as an enabling technology, similar to the Internet. This means that it has applications in many different subfields, with significantly different risk–benefit trade-offs attached to each of them (e.g., the medical field vs. military applications). Abstract measures of risk perceptions, unfortunately, cannot tap these distinctions.

A new study by researchers from NC State, Wisconsin, and Arizona State in Public Understanding of Science now quantifies the potential response biases introduced by this single-item measure. Specifically, comparisons of results from two surveys and across different measures of risk/benefits perceptions suggest that single-item measures of risk and benefits perceptions may be slanting answers toward higher risk perceptions. In fact, people perceived more benefits than risks when given the opportunity to evaluate these attributes separately, as opposed to being asked to make a quick summary judgment in a single item. Interestingly, this pattern holds both issues tested in this study (biofuels and nanotechnology). As lead researcher Andrew R. Binder explains in the NC State press release:

“There was a significant discrepancy among people who responded to the overarching question that the risks of emerging science outweighed the benefits when compared to their responses to the questions about the specific risks and benefits,” says Binder. “Namely, those same people really perceived more benefits than risks when given the opportunity to evaluate these attributes separately.

“For example, in the nanotechnology survey, 50 percent of respondents who said risks outweighed benefits actually evaluated nanotechnology positively in the other portion of the survey,” Binder says. “In fact, only 35.4 percent of respondents who thought risks outweighed benefits actually calculated more risks than benefits in the specific section of the survey.” The researchers found similar, though less pronounced, results in the biofuels survey.
The study also showed that people who said that benefits outweighed risks in response to the overarching question consistently perceived more benefits than risks in the specific question section of the surveys.

“The bottom line is that social scientists and journalists need to be very careful when relying on data from a single, overarching survey question,” Binder says. “These oversimplified questions can result in misleading poll data and create problems for policymakers who base their decisions on those findings. They can also be problematic because they may contribute to different polls showing widely different results, which weakens the public’s faith in surveys generally.”

Call for Papers: S.NET Third Annual Meeting

2011-01-11T14:58:00.000-06:00

Mission Palms Hotel, Tempe, Arizona, USA – 7-10 November 2011

Invitation. S.NET invites contributions to the Third Annual Meeting of the The Society for the Study of Nanoscience and Emerging Technologies (S.NET) to be held in Tempe (Phoenix), Arizona. The workshop will engage diverse scholars, practitioners, and policy makers in the development and implications of emerging technologies.

About S.NET. S.NET is an international association that promotes intellectual exchange and critical inquiry about the advancement of nanoscience and emerging technologies in society. The aim of the association is to advance critical reflection on developments in a broad range of new and emerging fields of science and technology, including, but not limited to, nanoscale science and engineering, biotechnology, synthetic biology, cognitive science, and geoengineering.

Eligibility. S.NET includes diverse communities, viewpoints, and methodologies from across the social sciences and humanities, and welcomes contributions from scientists, engineers, and other practitioners.

To Apply. The program committee (see below) invites submissions from the full breadth of disciplines, methodologies, and epistemologies, as well as from applied, participatory, and practical approaches to studying these emerging fields and from different regional or comparative perspectives. Committed to diverse styles of communication, S.NET welcomes proposals for individual papers, posters, traditional panels, roundtable discussions, and other more innovative formats. In particular, the program committee encourages proposals for topics and formats that will encourage greater dialogue and interaction. Details of the submission process are available online at cns.ucsb.edu/snet2011. All proposals should be submitted online between 1 Feb and 1 March 2011.

Stipends. Travel stipends may be available for US graduate students, and post-doctoral scholars, and non-US participants from the Global South.

Program Committee

David Guston (co-chair, Arizona State University, USA)

Barbara Herr Harthorn (co-chair, University of California, Santa Barbara, USA)

Marianne Boenink (University of Twente, Netherlands)

Noela Invernizzi (FU Parana, Brazil)

Milind Kandlikar (University of British Columbia, Canada)

George Khushf (University of South Carolina, USA)

Jennifer Kuzma (University of Minnesota, USA)

Cyrus Mody (Rice University, USA)

Shobita Parthasarathy (University of Michigan, USA)

Eleonore Pauwels (Woodrow Wilson International Center, USA)

Cynthia Selin (Arizona State University, USA)

Fern Wickson (GenØk Centre for Biosafety, Norway)

Amy Wolfe (Oak Ridge National Laboratory, USA)

Jan Youtie (Georgia Institute of Technology, USA)

UW-Madison #1 in online brand presence in 2010 ... ahead of Chicago, Harvard, MIT and Columbia

2010-12-31T03:16:00.003-06:00

Wisconsin was the top U.S. university in terms of online brand presence in 2010, according to the annual TrendTopper MediaBuzz university ranking released yesterday by Global Language Monitor. The University of Chicago, Harvard, MIT and Columbia rounded out the Top 5.

While other privates, including Stanford and Princeton, did not make the Top 10 this year, UW-Madison moved up from #6 in the 2009 rankings.

Some technical background from Global Language Monitor on the models and indices underlying the rankings:

"The list is compiled using a mathematical model to measure the 'brand equity' of colleges in terms of their global impact on the Internet and social media during the year. It indexes standardized "data collected from the Internet, social media, and blogosphere as well as the top 75,000 print and electronic media. The end result is a non-biased analytical tool that provides a gauge of relative values among various institutions, as well as measures of how that value changes over time."

YouCut: Crowdsourcing anti-science sentiment?

2010-12-06T14:23:00.000-06:00

House Republicans recently presented their latest piece of anti-science campaigning. This follows a failed amendment by Senator Tom Coburn earlier this year to cut off money for the National Science Foundation’s political science program. And funding agencies have been in the campaign crossfire before. During the 2004 election cycle, Congressman Brad Miller was targeted in a campaign ad for having voted against a Republican amendment that would have forced the National Institutes of Health to cancel five specific research grants, including four mentioned in the ad:

"Brad Miller voted to spend your money to study the sex lives of Vietnamese prostitutes in San Francisco. Instead of spending money on cancer research, Brad Miller spent your money to study the masturbation habits of old men. Brad Miller spent your tax dollars to study something called the Bisexual Transgendered and Two-Spirited Aleutian Eskimos, whoever they are. Brad Miller even spent your tax dollars to pay teenage girls to watch pornographic movies with probes connected to their genitalia."

Now, some House Republicans are pushing the idea of stirring up anti-science sentiment among the general public even further, and are trying to crowdsource a "citizen review" of the National Science Foundation:

"We are launching an experiment - the first YouCut Citizen Review of a government agency. Together, we will identify wasteful spending that should be cut and begin to hold agencies accountable for how they are spending your money.

Among the keywords that Republican lawmakers "suggest" the public zero in on:

"success, culture, media, games, social norm, lawyers, museum, leisure, stimulus"

All of this would be somewhat humorous if the stakes weren't so high. Federal government funding of R&D as a fraction of GDP has declined by 60 percent in 40 years (a statistic that was -- ironically -- compiled by the very agency House Republicans are trying to cut). Meanwhile, U.S. leadership in science and technology is being challenged by China, Japan, and a number of European countries. And an excellent Harvard Crimson editorial today outlined what that may mean down the road:

"Republicans ... must consider the reality that science funding has been the backbone of America’s technical development and prowess. Any attempts to cut or draw down this funding are short sighted, and more importantly, undermine the engine that has catapulted the U.S. into its dominant position today."

The last word on this issue goes to Congressman David Obey of Wisconsin:

"I would rather trust the judgment of 10 doctors sitting around a table than I would 10 politicians sitting around a table when we decide how to allocate taxpayer money for those grants."

Talk about controversial science may polarize lay publics

2010-11-04T21:58:00.001-05:00

Deliberative exercises in controlled and moderated settings have been a fashionable tool for public engagement in science for a while now. And the idea is not new. Political science has experimented with the concept for at least a couple of decades, and has come to the conclusion that even the most well-financed and well-meaning efforts are slanted toward specific sub-publics, defined by interest, opinion extermity, and a host of demographic factors (for excellent overviews, see Sanders and Merkle).

Data from one of our most recent NSF projects -- just published as an online-first article in Risk Analysis -- now suggest that real-world talk -- outside of these gated experimental settings -- raises an additional concern: It polarizes already divided publics. Or as lead author and NC State professor Andrew R. Binder put it in a press release today:

When it comes to public issues pertaining to science and technology, “talking it out” may not always be the best option. A new study from North Carolina State University shows that the more people discuss the risks and benefits associated with scientific endeavors, the more entrenched they become in their initial viewpoint – and the less likely they are to see the merit of other viewpoints.

“This research highlights the difficulty facing state and federal policy leaders when it comes to high-profile science and technology issues, such as stem cell research or global warming,” says Dr. Andrew Binder, an assistant professor of communication at NC State and lead author of the study. “Government agencies view research on these issues as vital and necessary for the country’s future, but building public consensus for that research is becoming increasingly difficult.”

For additional commentary from the blogosphere, see here, here, and here.

The end of rankings? ASU's Michael Crow on a new sociology for U.S. universities

2010-10-15T15:30:00.002-05:00

ASU President and former Columbia executive vice provost Michael Crow talks to the Washington Post's Steve Perlstein about the sense and nonsense of educational strategy based on academic rankings and a "new sociology" for U.S. universities:

My (virtual) comments at the July 13-14, 2010 NNI Strategic Planning Stakeholder Workshop

2010-10-06T21:00:00.000-05:00

In anticipation of the release of NNI’s Updated Strategic Plan -- scheduled for December 2010 -- I just uploaded the (virtual) comments I prepared for the NNI Strategic Planning Stakeholder Workshop this past summer. They touch on the key questions posed to all attendees and speakers, focusing particularly on the interactions among science, policy and lay publics:

The full workshop agenda can be found here.

Understanding other religions: Of perceptual filters and cognitive biases

2010-09-29T14:51:00.000-05:00

Matt Nisbet has an excellent post up at Age of Engagement, explaining some of the findings in this week's Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life's U.S. Religious Knowledge Survey. His argument is that "atheists are [not] smarter or superior to other groups, but instead, the social climate in the United States encourages and motivates atheists to acquire higher levels of religious knowledge."

And I think Nisbet's analysis is right on target. Communication research has long studied cognitive tuning effects, i.e., more careful information processing and potentially learning among individuals (or minority groups) who anticipate their viewpoints to be challenged in discussions with others:

"In this process, individuals try to make sense of information—especially contradictory or incomplete information ... —to be able to better describe the information to others or perhaps to defend it during future discussions." (Scheufele, 2002 ).

In addition to these more social-level interpretations, however, there may be a second explanation for some of the Pew findings, rooted in cognitive psychology. In a recent article in Cognition, for instance, Colzato et al. show that religious practice can have a measurable and and long-lasting impact on attentional processes. And many of their findings show distinct differences across denominations and between religious and secular respondents.

On the one hand, this line of work provides an interesting explanation for the role that religion plays as a "perceptual filter" (e.g., Brossard et al., 2008), i.e., the idea that there are distinct differences between highly-knowledgeable religious and non-religious audiences with respect to how they translate what they know into particular issue stances. More directly related to the Pew findings, however, are the direct impacts that Colzato et al. suggest different religious beliefs can have on perceptual biases:

"'Even a rather abstract bias ... is likely to cause diverging perceptions, interpretations and, eventually, conclusions. Very likely, this divergence stands in the way of effective communication between people with different religious background.

NRC: Mass Communications at UW ranked among the very top programs in the nation

2010-09-28T16:06:00.003-05:00

UW's Mass Communications Ph.D. degree, administered jointly by the Department of Life Sciences Communication and the School of Journalism & Mass Communication, is ranked among the very best in the country in the NRC doctoral rankings released today. Using a 90 confidence interval, the new rankings place Wisconsin's Mass Communications program somewhere between #1 and #6 in the nation on both Overall S-ratings (based on field-specific faculty opinions of the relative importance of the various program factors) and Research Activity ratings (based on four variables used in the overall ranking). The University of Pennsylvania and Stanford were the only other communication programs whose range in both of these ranking categories included the #1 spot.

A few additional metrics from the NRC study highlight just how vibrant the research culture at Wisconsin really is for the field of communication. Mass Communications faculty were almost 3 (2.72) standard deviations ahead of the average of the field in terms of the number of publications during the study period. For citations per faculty Wisconsin was 2.20 standard deviations ahead, and for the number of faculty with grants 2.17 standard deviations.

It is important to note, of course, that these rankings are based on faculty surveys and other data collected almost five years ago, and some commentators described the data released today as stale. In fact, Inside Higher Ed went so far as to suggest that even the NRC committee responsible for the rankings were no longer willing to endorse them:

"The advance briefing for reporters covering today's release ... may have made history as the first time a group doing rankings held a news conference at which it seemed to be largely trying to write them off.

While the NRC committee that produced the rankings defended its efforts and the resulting mass of data on doctoral programs now available, no one on the committee endorsed the actual rankings, and committee members went out of their way to say that there might well be better ways to rank -- better than either of the two methods unveiled."

Click here for the full set of NRC data and documentation.

The global importance of closing gender gaps .... including one at Harvard

2010-09-27T18:53:00.006-05:00

Two-time Pulitzer Prize winner and New York Times columnist Nicholas D. Kristof gave an excellent talk here at the Kennedy School tonight on the importance of closing gender gaps in the developing world.

One of his premises: Identifying excellence in every single demographic is a necessity rather than luxury, especially for developing countries who try to succeed in increasingly competitive global markets. And females, Kristof argues, are one of the least tapped demographics globally. To make his point, he borrowed a statement that Microsoft chairman Bill Gates had made at a business seminar in Saudi Arabia back in 2007 -- to a room with segregated seating for men and women. And it directly addressed the men:

"[I]f you're not fully utilizing half the talent in the country, you're not going to get too close to the top."

Gates's observation, of course, is one that even the most cynical economists cannot argue with: If there is a certain probability of finding excellence in any given stratum, any underrepresentation from that stratum undermines excellence.

The notion of tapping the best and brightest in every demographic, however, also raises an interesting conundrum at Harvard -- and one that was not raised during the talk and the Q&A tonight. Last week, the Council of Graduate Schools released a report showing that -- for the first time ever-- more women in the U.S. had received Ph.D.s in the 2008-09 academic year than men. The important factoid related to tonight's talk: Harvard lags almost 10 percentage points behind the U.S. national average in that category. The tricky part with problems closest to home is that sometimes they can be the least obvious ones.

Answers to unanswerable questions? Q&A with Age of Engagement

2010-09-27T14:56:00.001-05:00

Here are a few excerpts from a Q&A I did with frequent collaborator Matt Nisbet over at Big Think's Age of Engagement. It deals with the need for communication researchers (and social scientists more broadly) to grapple with the big, sloppy and potentially unanswerable questions of our time. And of course there is no magic bullet and potentially not even a solution on the near horizon for many of these questions. But vanishing voters, an emerging class system of illiterate and literate publics, and the increasingly politicized debates surrounding emerging technologies highlight the urgency for us to get our hands dirty.

What are the hot topics and trends in political communication research today?
Most recent trends in political communication research have been dictated by the tectonic shifts in how politics is communicated and the issues that we as a society are facing. What used to be the “mass” in mass communication, for instance, has morphed into different publics that generate, exchange, and use content in ways that were unimaginable just a decade ago. And with global warming, synthetic biology or stem cell research, we have seen issues move to the forefront of political discourse that have the potential to bring long-term and far-reaching changes for almost all aspects of people’s daily lives.

Last year there was a proposal to cut funding for research in political science. It prompted a debate over whether the type of political communication studies dominating the journals had lost sight of the "big questions" facing the contemporary media and political system. What is your view on this debate?
Many of the big questions that we face as a society – energy independence, global warming, or an increasingly polarized electorate – require answers that transcend the boundaries of a single field or discipline. This is particularly challenging for a young field, such as political communication, that continues to struggle with its identity and its desire to compete on an even playing field with much larger disciplines, such as psychology and political science. And if we are not careful, we may follow these disciplines down some dead ends.
A good example is the debate surrounding Republican Senator Tom Coburn’s proposal in October 2009 to prohibit the National Science Foundation from “wasting any federal research funding on political science projects.” Coburn, of course, used the label “political science” but targeted social science much more broadly. And his comments rekindled an old debate among political scientists about incremental disciplinary research versus big questions. Cornell’s Peter Katzenstein summarized this intra-disciplinary dilemma best: “Graduate students discussing their field ... often speak in terms of ‘an interesting puzzle,’ a small intellectual conundrum... that tests the ingenuity of the solver, rather than the large, sloppy and unmanageable problems that occur in real life.” Interestingly, President Obama has prioritized the search for answers to many of these supposedly sloppy, unmanageable problems, ranging from mandates for a green economy, to climate change, stem cell research and global warming. All of these issues relate to the increasingly blurring lines between science, politics, society – and of course, political communication. These are the same areas where most societal debates of the next 50 years will take place. And unless we as political communication researchers and educators find a way to make both scholarly and public contributions to these conversations, we will increasingly be marginalized as a discipline.

In recent years, you've applied expertise in political communication research to look at questions at the intersection of science and society such as nanotechnology. What are you finding about how the public reaches judgments and forms opinions about controversial areas of science?
Nanotechnology is one of the most interesting emerging technologies we have seen in a while, and one with implications for almost any area of political communication. The U.S. and China are in the middle of a race for global leadership in research productivity and patenting. At the same time, the over 1,000 products that are already on the consumer end market have raised questions about lagging regulatory frameworks and consumer protection. And some of these policy debates are beginning to trickle down to mainstream news outlets, amplified by various interest groups and other players in the policy arena. Our most recent research is tapping some of these dynamics, and particularly the resulting dangers of creating widening gaps between educational elites and less informed citizens with respect to grasping and capitalizing on the benefits of this new technology early on.

The full Q&A can be found here.

Talk at BU: "From Stem Cell to Nanotechnology: The ‘Science’ of Communicating Controversial Science?"

2010-09-27T14:02:00.001-05:00

On October 21, 2010 (3:30-4:40pm) I will be giving a talk in the Communication Research Canter talk series at Boston University's College of Communication, dealing with some of our most recent research on communicating controversial science at the intersection of bench, policy, and public opinion at UW-Madison.

This talk will also draw on some of the work I am doing this semester as a vising fellow at the Joan Shorenstein Center on the Press, Politics and Public Policy in the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University.)

New JoNR article: Seeing the intrinsic value of modern science ... and why it matters for policy choices

2010-09-07T18:52:00.000-05:00

I have argued before that an innate belief in the value of empirical science among lay publics is critical for the long-term health of the scientific endeavor. And by that I do not mean blind public buy-in to emerging technologies or their applications. Instead, I am referring to a concept that my colleague Dominique Brossard at the University of Wisconsin–Madison has called deference toward scientific authority.

She has argued very convincingly for a while now that modern science requires a long-term commitment to science by the general public. Science is not any different from other institutions, such as law enforcement or the Supreme Court, that may suffer from short-term fluctuations in trust, triggered by accusations of racial profiling or allegedly partisan rulings. Trust in science, in other words, is mostly situational rather than predispositional. And the climate change or oil spills of today will be replaced by a different scientific debate tomorrow. The real danger for scientists, therefore, lies less in fluctuating levels of trust than in long-term declines in deference toward scientific authority, i.e., the belief in the inherent benefit from science for society at large.

The most recent analyses of some of our CNS-ASU's national survey data (led by Prof. Shirley Ho at Singapore's Nanyang Technological University) provide very powerful support for the importance of building long-term, predispositional support for science among U.S. publics. A new article in Journal of Nanoparticle Research (posted as an online-first version today) shows that deference toward scientific authority remained one of the most powerful predictors of people's willingness to support public spending on nanotechnology, even after controlling for other long-terms traits and variables, such as lay publics' levels of religious guidance, trust in scientists, and willingness to process new information.

All of this, of course, further underlines the importance of K-12 education and informal science education, both of which are likely to have a tremendous impact on the importance that lay publics attribute to modern science as a foundation of U.S. economic growth and global competitiveness. The potential of K-12 to promote science, therefore, may be less a function of conveying cutting-edge scientific findings, especially since the knowledge many of us acquired in high-school or even college-level science classes is long outdated. Instead, K-12 and informal science education is much more about cultivating the belief in modern science and scientific principles as a prerequisite for the long-term economic health of this country.

How to Start a NanoScience Cafe

2010-08-27T11:55:00.000-05:00

NISE Net is offering a new online workshop on preparing and hosting your own Nano Cafe during NanoDays 2011. Here's the announcement:

Science cafes are live events in casual settings like pubs or coffeehouses, where scientists engage the public in conversations about current science topics. From September 13 – 24, the NISE Network will offer a two-week online workshop that will introduce you to science cafes with a nano theme. Discussion will be led by three moderators who have run successful cafes series in their own communities: Amanda Thomas (Oregon Museum of Science and Industry), Brad Herring (Museum of Life and Science), and Jen Larese (WGBH).

In this workshop, we'll cover all the basics about starting a science cafe, including tips for selecting a venue, preparing a scientist/presenter, and marketing your event. We'll also discuss nanoscience and technology topics that can be presented in science cafes, to help you start planning an event for NanoDays 2011.

This online workshop will run through asynchronous text discussions using ASTC Connect, the online learning community of the Association of Science-Technology Centers. Once enrolled, you will receive messages for this discussion in your email. You will be able to select whether to receive messages one-by-one as they are posted or in a daily digest form. Respond to messages on your own schedule by logging in to a password-secured course area, where additional supporting resources will be available.

Stipends

A limited number of stipends will be available for workshop participants to organize a science cafe series in their community and host a nano-themed science cafe during NanoDays 2011 (March 26 – April 3). Details about this opportunity will be shared in the second week of the online workshop.

How to Enroll

Enrollment for this workshop will open on August 6 and close on September 3. To enroll, email Margaret Glass, mglass@astc.org. Please enter “NanoScience Cafe” as the message subject line.

Cambridge and nanotechnology

2010-08-22T19:24:00.000-05:00

I am getting ready to take my first-ever sabbatical leave from Wisconsin and spend the fall semester as a visiting fellow at the Joan Shorenstein Center on the Press, Politics and Public Policy, which is part of the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard.

And while reading up on Cambridge, MA last night, I noticed that local nanotech regulations are apparently still a big issue there ... at least according to Fodor's 2010 Boston guide:

"The city of Cambridge takes a lot of hits, most of them thrown across the Charles River by jealous Bostonians. But Boston's Left Bank—an überliberal academic enclave where the city council spends more energy arguing about the regulation of nanotechnologies than on fixing potholes and funding preschools—is arguably a must-visit if you're spending even just three days in the Boston area."

Harvard's Kennedy School (in the background) on Bing Maps 3D

Lectures from my summer course in "Media, politics, and emerging technologies"

2010-08-21T16:53:00.001-05:00

I just finished teaching a summer course in "Media, politics, and emerging technologies" here in the Department of Life Sciences Communication at UW-Madison. Here's an excerpt from the course description:

"We will examine the theoretical foundations from fields like political science, social psychology, and science communication. We will then take a closer look at the communication processes among different stakeholders (players in the policy arena, scientists, journalists, and lay publics) and how they can shape societal debates surrounding science and technology. Based on this more theoretical work, we will explore the real-world political and communication dynamics surrounding issues, such as global warming, stem cell research, nanotechnology, or agricultural biotechnology."

Select online lectures are available on UW's iTunesU site. Click here for a direct link (will open in iTunes or any other video-enabled podcast player)

Reactions to Mooney -- or why more data is a good thing

2010-07-04T22:10:00.000-05:00

Chris Mooney's recent Washington Post piece and American Academy of Arts & Sciences report (see nanopublic post from June 29, 2010) produced surprisingly strong criticsm from some bloggers. The idea that the public may increasingly turn to scientists for answers about the social implications of emerging technologies surely cannot come as a surprise to anyone. Neither can the fact that broad societal debates about issues, such as stem cell, nanotechnology and synthetic biology, will take place if we like it or not.

So what was the fuss all about? Maybe the idea that science as an institution will increasingly be forced to pay attention the social dynamics surrounding breakthrough technologies? That, for better or worse, is a simple fact, backed by countless studies (see here for an overview), and not a debatable issue stance.

It's therefore particularly surprising that a good portion of the arguments against Mooney's overview are based on normative notions of what scientists should or should not have to do, or on guesswork about how scientists could better connect with public audiences. Systematic social science data about what the societal realities are that will likely surround science in the next few years or about the most promising approaches for closing science-public divides are noticeably absent from much of this discussion.

This is not to say that normative policy positions are not worth debating. But in this case, they ironically reinforce the very point Mooney was making in the first place: More social science data would go a long ways toward making all of these debates more fruitful.

PEN nano consumer product inventory under fire?

2010-07-03T21:17:00.002-05:00

Nanotechnology Law & Business today published an online-first version of an interesting piece by David Berube and his colleagues at North Carolina State University’s (NCSU) Public Communication of Science and Technology project (PCOST). The article takes a critical look at the Project on Emerging Nanotechnologies (PEN) consumer product inventory. The inventory has been used widely as a gauge of the number and types of nano consumer products currently on the U.S. market.

The NC State team analyzed the products listed in the inventory based on

"product name, company, product category, country of origin, availability (is the product available for purchase), countries where the product may be available, what elemental type of nanotechnology was employed or constituted in the product (e. g., carbon, gold, silver, iron, etc.), distribution channel, whether the source link was functional (source link is a term used by the CPI to indicate reference and it was often redundant with the product website), whether the product website was functional, whether it utilized nanotechnology (determined against claims from the website or source site), and if it was included on EC21 ..., a business to business (B2B) product listing website."

Based on their analyses, the authors conclude

"that the CPI is not wholly reliable, and does not have sufficient validity to justify its prominence as evidence for claims associated with the pervasiveness of nanotechnology on the U.S. and global markets. In addition, we caution researchers to approach the CPI with care and due consideration because using the CPI as a rhetorical flourish to amplify concerns about market intrusions seems unjustified."

Click here for a PDF of the full article.

On the importance of social science for scientific progress

2010-06-29T19:27:00.001-05:00

Chris Mooney had an excellent piece in the Washington Post on Sunday on the importance of communicating science and social science, more broadly, for scientific progress in the U.S. From his concluding paragraphs:

"Experts aren't wrong in thinking that Americans don't know much about science, but given how little they themselves often know about the public, they should be careful not to throw stones. Rather than simply crusading against ignorance, the defenders of science should also work closely with social scientists and specialists in public opinion to determine how to defuse controversies by addressing their fundamental causes.

They might, in the process, find a few pleasant surprises. For one thing, the public doesn't seem to disdain scientists, as scientists often suppose. A 2009 study by the Pew Research Center for the People & the Press found that Americans tend to have positive views of the scientific community; it's scientists who are wary of the media and the public."

And there may be more of a fertile ground for Mooney's recommendations than he implies in his last point. While the AAAS/Pew survey cited in Mooney's piece suggests that scientists are weary of getting caught up in the often heated public discourse surrounding scientific controversies, more systematic survey data from Europe, Asia and the U.S. show that this is not true for many of the leading scientists in fields, such as nanotechnology or stem cell research. A number of colleagues and I detailed these findings in a piece in The Scientist last year:

"What looks like a widespread anti-media sentiment [in the AAAS data] may also have been triggered, at least in part, by question wording. The AAAS survey did not ask respondents if they agreed or disagreed that news media oversimplified findings but, rather, how much of a problem respondents thought it was that they did. Our surveys of biomedical and nanotechnology experts instead asked scientists to express their agreement or disagreement with various statements about the quality of media coverage of their scientific field.

When asked in this more balanced way, 54% of the nano scientists disagreed "somewhat" or "strongly" that media coverage was "hostile toward science." In fact, when asked about the scientific accuracy of coverage, nano scientists were split, with 27% believing that it was inaccurate, 28% believing it was accurate, and about 45% falling in the neutral middle category. Similarly, 49%of biomedical researchers disagreed that media coverage was "hostile toward science," while only 12% agreed. Their assessments of accuracy were similarly split: 33% believed that coverage of their field was inaccurate, 35% believed it was accurate and 32% were undecided."

The Mooney piece is based on a longer report he did for the American Academy of Arts & Sciences. Also, for a follow-up with reactions from STS, policy and communication scholars, see Andrew Revkin's Dot Earth.

Friends of the Earth turn to web advertising to push their view of EHS nano dangers

2010-06-17T08:22:00.004-05:00

The battle over the summer news hole is on. Friends of the Earth just announced the launch of a web advertising campaign to promote their "public education" effort about potential environmental and human health impacts of nanoparticles in sunscreens:

“What many beachgoers and others enjoying the summer sun don’t know is that the sunscreens they’re using contain manufactured nanoparticles that pose health risks,” said Friends of the Earth’s health and environment campaigner, Ian Illuminato. “What more and more studies are showing is that manufactured nanoparticles may be able to damage cells and have harmful health repurcussions. They also pose risks to workers and the environment, and there’s no evidence that they make sunscreens more effective at blocking the sun’s harmful rays.”

The "education" campaign also dusts off FoE's 2007 Consumer Guide for Avoiding Sun Screens and various other reports from a few years back.

The timing is impeccable, of course, keeping alive a news wave started last week by a push from NY Senator Sen. Chuck Schumer to have the Food and Drug Administration looking into a possible link between retinyl palmitate in sun screens and skin cancer in humans.

PCAST looking for input on innovation potential of bio, nano and info tech

2010-06-16T17:40:00.001-05:00

From the PCAST call for input:

"New technologies are changing our world fast, as is obvious to anyone using the latest smart phone, wearing the latest nano-fiber fabric, or filling a prescription for the latest biotech-derived medicine. Now the President’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology (PCAST) wants to hear from you about how the Federal government can best use its resources so three of the newest and most promising technologies provide the greatest economic benefits to society.

This information-gathering process is being coordinated by the President’s Innovation and Technology Advisory Committee (PITAC), part of the PCAST. Through PCAST, PITAC advises the President on matters involving science, technology, and innovation policy. As part of its advisory activities, PITAC is soliciting information and ideas from stakeholders—including the research community, the private sector, universities, national laboratories, State and local governments, foundations, and nonprofit organizations—regarding a technological congruence that we have been calling the “Golden Triangle.”

Each side of the Golden Triangle represents one of three areas of research that together are transforming the technology landscape today: information technology, biotechnology, and nanotechnology. Information technology (IT) encompasses all technologies used to create, exchange, store, mine, analyze, and evaluate data in its multiple forms. Biotechnology uses the basic components of life (such as cells and DNA) to create new products and new manufacturing methods. Nanotechnology is the science of manipulating and characterizing matter at the atomic and molecular levels. Each of these research fields has the potential to enable a wealth of innovative advances in medicine, energy production, national security, agriculture, aerospace, manufacturing, and sustainable environments—advances that can in turn help create jobs, increase the nation’s gross domestic product (GDP), and enhance quality of life. In combination, through what some have called the nano-bio-info convergence, the potential for these fields to transform society is even greater.

PITAC is interested in gaining a better understanding of how the Federal government can enhance this potential, and would like to gather public information and input as to how to best do so. It is posing the following question:
What are the critical infrastructures that only government can help provide that are needed to enable creation of new biotechnology, nanotechnology, and information technology products and innovations that will lead to new jobs and greater GDP?
We’d like to hear your thoughts regarding unique opportunities at the intersections of these fields; where the basic research is taking us and what knowledge gaps remain; impediments to commercialization and broad use of these technologies; infrastructure required to properly test, prototype, scale, and manufacture breakthrough technologies; where the Federal government should invest and focus; and what Federal policies or programs relating to these technologies are in need of review and whether new programs or policies may be needed in light of recent and anticipated advances in these fields.

There are two ways you can share your thoughts on this topic. First, you can go to the OpenPCAST website, where you can contribute your ideas on this and a few related questions. Second, you can be part of a live Webcast discussion scheduled to take place on Tuesday, June 22 from 10 am to 2:30 pm. You can watch the Webcast on the PCAST website and submit your comments via Facebook or Twitter. See the PCAST site for more details.

The information we gather from these activities will guide PCAST/PITAC as we recommend policies and programs relevant to the Golden Triangle of technologies, and as we continue our work to propose ways to implement the President’s “Strategy for American Innovation.” It will also help us identify studies that might be conducted as part of PCAST/PITAC’s “Creating New Jobs through Science, Technology, and Innovation” initiative.

We look forward to hearing from you!
Shirley Ann Jackson and Eric Schmidt are members of PCAST"

Do search engine suggestions make the most popular angle of an issue more popular?

2010-05-18T19:40:00.003-05:00

A few more follow-ups on the nanopublic post on Google from May 7, 2010. UW-Madison did a press release today, including some commentary from Dominique Brossard:

"Sergey Brin and Larry Page created Google to sort search results, in part, based on how popular particular sites were," [she] says. "For science information, that means that surfers may be offered the most popular results rather than the ones that best represent the current state of the science."

Update: USA Today, Nanowerk.com, Madison.com, science + religion TODAY and UW-Madison eCALS have also posted their takes on this research.

How can we improve public trust of science in America?

2010-05-13T08:24:00.004-05:00

Based on increasing concerns in both developed and developing nations about low levels of public trust in science, science+religion TODAY recently asked me for "a quick and dirty answer" to the following question: "How can we improve public trust of science in America?" Here's my response:

"The good news (and the bad) is that public opinion is somewhat fickle. Like many other attitudes and opinions that we think we hold firmly, our feelings of trust in political actors or institutions are highly susceptible to what is most salient or easily accessible in our minds when we express these feelings. Social scientists refer to this as priming. In other words, whatever considerations are made most salient by heavy media coverage, also tend to be the ones we take into account when forming attitudes. This is not any different for science and scientists.
During the week of December 7-13, 2009, for instance, the subject of global warming occupied one of ten stories published in news media (the most attention it received in the media since the Project for Excellence in Journalism began monitoring the news in 2007). And most of this coverage focused on the potential ethical lapses committed by scientists during Climate-gate (a charge that the UK House of Commons later rejected, by the way). In other words, the public’s thinking about scientists right now is influenced heavily by highly-visible recent coverage of scientific controversies and the politicization of supposedly objective science. At least, those are the considerations that are most easily retrieved from memory when respondents are asked about how much they trust scientists in surveys.

This is not all bad, of course, since it implies that it is up to scientists to reverse this trend and play a more proactive role in informing public debate, and in highlighting the aspects of science that they think are most important for citizens to understand. If this means an all out street fight for public opinion, as some have argued, or more nuanced strategies targeted toward convincing a reluctant public of the benefits of science, is another issue. In either event, the ball is in the court of scientists.

Finally, trust is not everything. Public attitudes toward science and scientists are shaped by a complex interplay of factors, and trust in scientists is just one of many important influences. My colleague Dominique Brossard here at Wisconsin, for instance, has argued very convincingly for a while now that modern science requires a long-term commitment to science by the general public, something she refers to as deference toward scientific authority. Science is not any different from other institutions, such as law enforcement or the Supreme Court, that may suffer from short-term fluctuations in trust, triggered by accusations of racial profiling or allegedly partisan rulings. But the climate change of today will be replaced by a different scientific debate tomorrow. The real danger for scientists, therefore, lies less in fluctuating levels of trust, than in long-term declines in deference toward scientific authority, i.e., the belief in the inherent benefit from science for society at large. Once we start seeing significant declines in these more ingrained values, we are in real trouble."

When art meets science: "Symphony of science"

2010-05-12T17:42:00.001-05:00

“[T]here are two ways, I think, science can learn from the arts – at least two ways: one, very concretely, in terms of ideas, and the other in terms of communication.”

Adam Bly, Founder & Editor-in-Chief, Seed Magazine: "What can science learn from the arts?"

what people think when they think about nano ... and what role google may play in all of this

2010-05-07T20:58:00.004-05:00

When asked in U.S. public opinion surveys which topics or applications they connect with nanotechnology, almost nine out of 10 members of the lay public mention the medical field as one of these connections.

(Based on: Cacciatore, M. A., Scheufele, D. A., & Corley, E. A. (forthcoming). From enabling technology to applications: The evolution of risk perceptions about nanotechnology. Public Understanding of Science. doi: 10.1177/0963662509347815 http://pus.sagepub.com/cgi/content/abstract/0963662509347815v1.)

This is somewhat surprising, for at least two reasons. First, systematic analyses of newspaper coverage of nanotechnology in the U.S. show health-related topics as one of the dominant areas emerging for nanotechnology.

(Based on: Dudo, A., Dunwoody, S., & Scheufele, D. A. (2009, August). The emergence of nano news: tracking thematic trends and changes in media coverage of nanotechnology. Paper presented at the annual convention of the Association for Education in Journalism & Mass Communication, Boston, MA.)

More importantly, however, some of our more recent work in Materials Today -- conducted as part of the Societal Implications Group of the UW Nanoscale Science and Engineering Center on Templated Synthesis and Assembly at the Nanoscale -- suggests that news users' increasing reliance on online sources for science information may explain much more about lay publics' reactions when they think about nanotechnology.

From the paper:

"When searching Google for information about nanotechnology, citizens are likely to encounter health-related content, either through suggested search terms or through the search results provided by Google. This pattern was pervasive across different areas of application, i.e., even for searches not directly related to health. Several non-health searches had more health-related keywords per link than any other domain when averaged over the time period of our study.
...
This raises serious questions about the delivery and social value of scientific information delivered online. Framing, while necessary to efficiently communicate complex information to lay audiences, influences people’s choices about an issue16. It is reasonable to assume that search results that frame nanotechnology in a medical context will also be influencing people’s future searches, further reinforcing Google suggestions and website rankings that are at least partially based on previous searches and indexed web pages. This may create a self-reinforcing spiral that cements a link between health and nanotechnology in online news environments, and reduces the complexity and detail of the information that citizens are likely to encounter online."

New UW study: Internet may be critical for closing science-public divides

2010-03-31T10:15:00.000-05:00

From UW news service:

March 31, 2010

by Chris Barncard

Internet-based science news draws a more demographically diverse, learned and focused audience than print or television news, according to a study by University of Wisconsin-Madison communication researchers.

"Science and technology are among the top reasons people go online," says Ashley Anderson, a UW-Madison doctoral student in life sciences communication. "And those people are more diverse in age and race and more knowledgeable about science and technology than people relying on traditional media. This points to the importance of online communication in reaching a broad audience for science."

Readers of science and technology news online are twice as likely to come from non-white racial groups as consumers of print science news. The Internet virtually levels out gender differences, according to data from the Nielsen Company and UW Survey Center, while shifting upward the percentage of the audience with college degrees and completely missing those without high school diplomas.

Tracking Google search queries and Web content on nanotechnology, Anderson — along with UW-Madison life sciences communication professors Dominique Brossard and Dietram Scheufele — analyzed who goes online for science content, what nanotechnology topics people are looking for, and what they are likely to find when they search for nanotechnology online. Their work will appear in the May issue of the Journal of Nanoparticle Research and is available now on the journal's Web site.

The researchers found that online searchers were most interested in nanobots and health topics, with specialized applications of nanotechnology cropping up slightly less often. In analysis of 19 top sites commonly found in Google searches, health-related information dominated, appearing roughly twice as frequently as technology, research and business nanotech information.

"Clearly, health is the dominant topic for nanotechnology, which somewhat restricts the discourse," Brossard says. "Obviously the technology has much wider applications."

Tracking online content about nanotechnology is important because of the specialized nature of the topic, which is less likely to be found covered in depth in traditional print or broadcast media, according to Anderson.

"Our study tracked 10 different content themes and found that different types of Web sites deal in widely different types of nano content," Anderson says.

Science sites without a particular nanotechnology focus — http://sciencedaily.com and http://nature.com — were more likely to feature stories about applications of nanotechnology in health or environment or national security arenas. Web sites aimed specifically at nanotechnology — http://nanowerk.com and http://foresight.org among them — were more likely to be reporting on policy issues such as research and regulation, while health almost disappeared as a topic. Government sites primarily focused on business information.

Topics like risks, benefits and uncertainty fell well behind the rest of the content.

"How nanotechnology is portrayed online is important because of the broad reach online media has to different audiences of science information," says Anderson. "Online media sources are the predominant information environment for specialized scientific issues like nanotechnology."

beyond cross-tabs ... and toward a more sophisticated understanding of public opinion on nanotech?

2010-03-06T10:47:00.009-06:00

This week, we saw another summary report on public attitudes on nanotech -- this time issued by the UK's Food Standards Agency. And there were no surprises as far as punchlines go: a lack of familiarity with nanotech and its applications among the general public and some concerns. The report's conclusions were based mostly on reports of dichotomous cross-tabs -- with little baselining against insights from social science research more broadly about how attitudes are formed, and few statistical controls to provide more granular information into different sub-publics or rule out alternative explanations.

And don't get me wrong, reports like this are very useful, especially as initial quick snapshots of what the public opinion landscape may look like and where we need more research. But similar to recent discussions about the simplistic polling on the health care debate, continuing to reduce the issue of nanotech to aggregate percentage breakdowns of familiarity and support does little to help our understanding of the dynamics surrounding public communication about emerging technologies or to inform and improve policy decisions.

In fact, it is time for us to move beyond a few often-repeated (but incorrect) assumptions, and look at data in a much more sophisticated (and ultimately useful) fashion:

First, many people (including the most recent report) have argued that knowledge and awareness of nanotechnology have not increased significantly in the last few years. This is true if we look at the U.S. population as a monolithic whole, assuming that 308 million Americans (or the population of any other country, for that matter) approach nanotechnology in the exact same fashion, regardless of political views, education levels, experiences with previous technologies, etc. Of course, we know from previous research that this is not true, and that the U.S. and other countries may differ significantly as far as attitudes toward nanotech go.

Not surprisingly, therefore, more recent data suggest that knowledge levels about nanotechnology are not static, and that we may be witnessing increases in knowledge and awareness among some groups, while other groups show decreases in understanding, as policy discussions about toxicity, regulations and applications becomes more complex. In other words, if we examine public opinion data in a more granular fashion, it becomes clear that knowledge and awareness of nanotechnology seem to be in flux and that gaps between the already highly-informed and those with less familiarity about nanotechnology may be widening. And what makes these widening gaps particularly disconcerting is the fact that those groups who are increasingly being left behind in terms of information levels tend to be of lower socioeconomic backgrounds.

Second, a lot of research has focused on risk-benefits perceptions as a key focal variable, asking the public if they think the risks outweigh the benefits, if the benefits outweigh the risks, or if the two are about equal. Of course, these measures are likely fraught with order effects and the inability of respondents to make reliable summative assessments of risks and benefits. In other words, we need to expand our views on attitudes toward research and funding in particular areas of application. And again, recent research suggests that the link between concrete (as opposed to abstract summative) risk assessments and attitudes is not equally strong for all members of the public, but rather depends on a variety of factors, including people's assessment of likely applications and the risks and benefits associated with them.

This raises a third point: the need for sophisticated modeling beyond bivariate cross-tabulation of data. Offering percentage breakdowns of respondents supporting or opposing an issue may be useful for initial overview reports, but it does little to help us understand the complexities of how different publics understand risks, what informational deficits they may face, or which areas of nanotechnology they'd like to see more of of a societal debate on.

In order to answer these questions we need to move beyond crosstabs and carefully look at what we know from basic research in communication, political science, and other fields about the public opinion and media dynamics in midern democracies. And we need to rely on state-of-the art statistical and analytic tools to tell us about the complex interplay of demographic variables, values, media, perceptual filters, and information, and about their influences on how the public approaches nanotechnology. Figure 1 shows the complexities of some of those interrelationships when predicting general attitudes toward science.

Figure 1; from Nisbet, M. C., Scheufele, D. A., Shanahan, J., Moy, P., Brossard, D., & Lewenstein, B. V. (2002). Knowledge, reservations, or promise? A media effects model for public perceptions of science and technology. Communication Research, 29(5), 584-608.

Ultimately, our ability to systematically plan and evaluate communication efforts that involve all members of the general public in the debates surrounding emerging technologies is very closely correlated to the sophistication and accuracy with which we understand the opinion and communication environment that shapes all of these efforts.

March 11, 2010 event: "The ‘Science’ of Communicating Science: New Approaches to Bridging the Science-Public Divide"

2010-03-02T22:14:00.000-06:00

Flyer:

New study: Public opinion on stem cells in WI shaped more by views on economic potential and scientific competitiveness than religion

2010-02-04T12:52:00.002-06:00

UW-Madison Press release from Feb. 3, 2010:

by Terry Devitt

When it comes to stem cell research as a political issue, Wisconsin voters are more likely to be motivated by ideas of economic benefit and scientific progress than by religious objections, according to a new report.

The study, conducted by researchers in the University of Wisconsin-Madison's Department of Life Sciences Communication and published this week (Feb. 1) in the International Journal of Public Opinion Research, explored the influence of stem cell research in the context of the 2006 race for Wisconsin governor when support for stem cell science was a key campaign issue.

Sorting through data from the summer 2006 Badger Poll, a statewide telephone survey of 508 Wisconsin adults conducted by the UW Survey Center, the researchers found that the stem cell debate, as framed by the mass media's coverage of the issue, was more likely to engage liberal voters than conservative ones in traditional political activities such as signing a petition, attending a demonstration or writing a letter to the editor.

"In Wisconsin, people participated on the stem cell issue because they were motivated by the idea of the economic benefits of continued research and interest in progressive science policy outcomes," says Amy Becker, a UW-Madison graduate student who co-authored the new report with fellow graduate student Kajsa Dalrymple and faculty members Dominique Brossard, Dietram Scheufele and Al Gunther. "At the same time, we did not see a significant relationship between religiosity and issue participation."

Research involving human embryonic stem cells has been a political lightning rod for more than a decade, since they were first successfully isolated and cultured at UW-Madison. The research is controversial because the cells must be obtained from a human embryo, which is destroyed in the process. The all-purpose cells, however, also have important implications for biomedical research and may underpin new companies and industries that capitalize on their potential.

The new study is among the first to examine the stem cell issue in a specific political context and suggests that religious influence on the issue may not be as deep or pervasive as many believed. "What is really interesting is that religion and religious perspectives didn't motivate people to participate directly on the stem cell issue," notes Dalrymple. "People were more interested in the social and economic aspects of the stem cell issue."
However, what was most important in terms of motivating voters on the issue, says Becker, was attention to mass media coverage of the stem cell debate. A key finding of the new study suggests that attention to news media, in particular the written word in newspapers and on the Internet, was an important influence in spurring citizen participation.

The study confirms the importance of the media as "it was guiding voters and motivating them to get involved at the issue level," Becker explains, noting that portrayals of patients who might be aided by advances in stem cell research may have been particularly effective.

The message for candidates of all stripes, according to both Dalrymple and Becker, is that the news media continue to be a primary source of information and exert a strong influence on the electorate and that, at least in the case of embryonic stem cells, religious opposition can be effectively countered by using positive social and economic outcomes as a counterbalance.

The message for scientists, say the authors, is that their voices can be heard as more scientific issues enter the political realm. Says Dalrymple: "When science topics enter campaign discussions, there are opportunities for scientists to have their voices heard."

(See also UW news release and Daily Cardinal story.)

NNI capstone meeting: Risk Management Methods & Ethical, Legal, and Societal Implications of Nanotechnology (March 30-31, 2010)

2010-02-03T12:20:00.000-06:00

New chaired professorship at Wisconsin deals with societal issues surrounding emerging technologies

2010-01-27T12:38:00.001-06:00

UW/CALS press release from today:

"The College of Agricultural & Life Sciences at UW-Madison today announced the creation of the John E. Ross Chaired Professorship in Science Communication. This new Chair – housed in the Department of Life Sciences Communication (LSC) – was made possible in part by a substantial donation from John E. Ross (Ph.D, ’54), Emeritus Professor and former faculty member in LSC. LSC Professor Dietram A. Scheufele (Ph.D, ’99) was named the inaugural John E. Ross Chaired Professor in Science Communication. “This is a tremendous honor,” says Scheufele, “and it is a privilege to continue the long line of scholars who have explored the societal dynamics surrounding science and technology in LSC, including John and his colleagues more than fifty years ago.”

Dietram A. Scheufele, John E. Ross, and CALS Dean Molly Jahn

The establishment of this chaired professorship highlights the critical importance of public communication about science in the 21st century. As John Ross stated, when asked about the reasons for this initiative: “We are in the early stages of a scientific renaissance, a renaissance that will recast our understanding of the nature of things and will reshape our collective behavior in response to scientific discoveries.”

Ross’s links to UW and the Department of Life Sciences Communication are profound, beginning with a graduate assistantship in 1948. He was the first graduate of the doctoral program in the then-new field of “Mass Communications” at UW in 1954. His dissertation examined the public relations ramifications of legislative initiatives fostered by farm organizations. He was appointed assistant professor in 1959 and promoted to associate professor with tenure in 1960. He was named professor in 1966, elected chair of the department in 1969, and named the first Associate Director of the Institute of Environmental Studies in 1970. Over the years, he advised 150 graduate students in environmental communication and resource policy, chaired the Social Sciences Divisional Committee, served on the University Committee, served as executive director of PROFS, and generally served as faculty spokesperson to legislators, regents and governmental agencies.

The Department of Life Sciences Communication at UW is over 100 years old and was the first department to teach communication courses on the UW-Madison campus. Today, the department offers Bachelors, Masters and doctoral education in science communication. LSC’s research, teaching and outreach focus on both applied and theoretical communication issues, and an LSC degree prepares students for professional and academic careers related to communicating science and technology in an era of rapid technological change and media convergence. “The department is delighted to see its record of scholarship, and especially Scheufele’s meteoric rise, reflected in the establishment of the John E. Ross Chair in Science Communication,” said LSC’s department chair, Professor Jacqueline C. Hitchon McSweeney. “The importance of research on public opinion of science has never been greater than now, when science is becoming increasingly politicized and fueling policy.”

Dietram A. Scheufele, the first holder of the John E. Ross Chair, continues the long tradition of scholarship in science communication in LSC. He is Professor and Director of Graduate Studies in LSC, with affiliate appointments in Science and Technology Studies and European Studies. Scheufele’s work deals with the intersection of science, politics, and society, and is frequently discussed in national and international news outlets. He is also Wisconsin PI for the NSF-funded Center for Nanotechnology in Society at Arizona State University, a former member of the Nanotechnology Technical Advisory Group to the U.S. President's Council of Advisors on Science and Technology, and currently co-chair of the National Conference of Lawyers and Scientists. Scheufele's scholarship and teaching has been recognized with the Robert M. Worcester Award and the Naomi C. Turner Prize from the World Association for Public Opinion Research, the Young Scholar Award for outstanding early career research from the International Communication Association, the Young Faculty Teaching Excellence Award from the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences at Cornell University, and the Pound Research Award from the College of Agricultural & Life Sciences at UW."

2010 Science and Engineering Indicators: Do attendance gaps in science and technology museums also lead to widening information gaps?

2010-01-19T17:23:00.003-06:00

Despite increasing levels of informal education aimed at communicating with the U.S. public about nanotechnology, recent studies have shown that there has not been much change in the overall level of nanotechnology knowledge reported by public opinion surveys. Yet, most of these studies have explored the changes in knowledge levels for the public as a whole without analyzing the differences across different types of publics. Data from Chapter 7 of the National Science Board's Science and Engineering Indicators 2010 (published just a few days ago) now suggest that we may be in the middle of a widening rift between different groups of citizens: those with lower levels of formal education and those who go to college.

Education-based knowledge gaps can be expected for a number of reasons. Most importantly, comparisons between the 2008 and 2010 Science and Engineering Indicators (based on data collections in 2006 and 2008, respectively) show that the percentage of Americans with at least some college education who attended a science and technology museum in the past year increased from 37% in 2006 to 48% . This is great news in many ways. But it stands in stark contrast to attendance figures among respondents who had not completed high school and who reported stable attendance of less than 10% in both years.

(Data from keynote presentation at the 2009 NISE Net annual meeting in San Francisco, CA; audio recording here.)

But are these gaps in outreach effectiveness mirrored in levels of public information about nanotechnology? And when I talk about levels of information, I do not mean self reported familiarity or other subjective self-reported assessments of information. Instead, I am referring to the ability to correctly answer factual knowledge questions over time. In a new piece in the current issue of The Scientist (see nanopublic post from January 11, 2010), ASU's Elizabeth Corley and I show that those respondents with at least a college degree displayed an increase in knowledge levels between 2004 and 2007 while respondents with education levels of less than a high school diploma had a significant decrease in nanotechnology knowledge levels between 2004 and 2007.

(Data from: Corley, E. A., & Scheufele, D. A. (2010). Outreach gone wrong?
When we talk nano to the public, we are leaving behind key audiences. The Scientist, 24(1), 22.)

Closing these informational gaps among public audiences is a necessity, especially in light of a projected 2009 U.S. budget that has reduced spending for 'educational and social dimensions' of nanotechnology to $33.5 million from $39.2 million in 2007. In a press release for UW, we outlined some strategies for tackling this problem:

"There is a real urgency to find ways of communicating effectively with all groups in society," says Dietram Scheufele, John E. Ross Professor in the College of Agricultural and Life Sciences at UW-Madison and co-author of the study. "Unless we find ways to close these learning gaps, we will create two classes of citizens: those who are able to make informed consumer and policy choices about these new technologies, and those who simply can't."

But there is a silver lining. The study also found that the Internet is one of the most effective methods in closing gaps and informing the less educated about nanotechnology.

"Online and social media are some of the most promising tools for making sure we reach all members of the public with information about science and technology," says Scheufele, "and tools like Digg, Twitter, or Facebook will only become more important down the road."

U.S. public faces widening information gap on nanotechnology

2010-01-11T14:32:00.002-06:00

A new piece by ASU's Elizabeth Corley and myself, just published in The Scientist, uses national data sets tracking the exact same knowledge questions over time to show that there are widening gaps in nanotech knowledge among different groups of the public, based on formal education levels. This directly contradicts what keeps being repeated as a mantra among most academic scholars, policy makers (both in the US and UK), and outreach specialists in the nano community, i.e., that the public is unaware of nanotechnology and uninformed. Our data show that this unidimensional view is not only incorrect, but that these misperceptions will guide outreach efforts that will be ineffective, especially among already disadvantaged groups of society.

In other words, most commonly-shared beliefs about what people know about nanotechnology are simplistic at best, and largely based on the fact that so far we have not adequately explored the complex dynamics of how people learn about nanotechnology across different types of publics (or have not collected the right data over time in the first place).

As our data show, some publics are gaining nanotech knowledge while the least educated are not. Every day that researchers spend not addressing these emerging gaps will continue to create more of a disconnect between scientifically literate audiences and the information poor.

Here's an excerpt from ASU's press release on the piece:

"As the global nanotechnology industry continues to produce-cutting edge consumer products, the scientific community is leaving a key part of the U.S. public behind when sharing knowledge of this new field of science, according to a new study by Arizona State University and the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

...

As reported today in the January issue of The Scientist, researchers found widening gaps in nanotech knowledge since 2004 between the least educated and most educated citizens. Americans with at least a college degree have shown an increase in understanding of the new technology, while knowledge about nanotechnology has declined over time for those with education levels of less than a high school diploma, according to the study.

“Unfortunately, people with little or no formal education – those who need outreach the most – aren’t getting as much information about this issue, which will likely become even harder to understand over time,” says Elizabeth Corley, Lincoln Professor of Public Policy, Ethics and Emerging Technologies in Arizona State University’s School of Public Affairs, and co-author of the study.

Well-educated people who are already “information-rich” are learning about nanotechnology from traditional outreach efforts such as museums, Corley says.

Closing these informational gaps among public audiences “is a necessity, especially in light of a projected 2009 U.S. budget that has reduced spending for ‘educational and social dimensions’ of nanotechnology to $33.5 million from $39.2 million in 2007,” the article states.

“There is a real urgency to find ways of communicating effectively with all groups in society” says Dietram Scheufele, John E. Ross Professor and Director of Graduate Studies in the College of Agricultural and Life Sciences at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, and co-author of the study. “Unless we find ways to close these learning gaps, we will create two classes of citizens – those who are able to make informed consumer and policy choices about these new technologies, and those who simply can’t.”

And there is a silver lining. The study also found that the Internet is one of the most effective methods in closing gaps and informing the less educated about nanotechnology. “Online and social media are some of the most promising tools for making sure we reach all members of the public with information about science and technology,” says Scheufele, “and tools like Digg.com, Twitter, or Facebook will only become more important down the road.”"

Here is a link to The Scientist article and the UW-Madison press release. Also, what do you know about nano? Take the Discovery.com nano knowledge quiz.

Recession helps museum attendance ... and it may matter for informal science outreach

2010-01-03T05:32:00.002-06:00

Last year, the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) released fairly pessimistic overview data of attendance at art museums in the U.S. 35% of U.S. adults overall (about 78 million people) attended an art museum or an arts performance in 2008. On the plus side, this is much higher than attendance of science or natural history museums, of course, which hovered below 40% for college graduates in 2006 and below 10% for folks without a high school diploma. But the bad news -- back in 2009 -- was the fact that attendance had been on the decline for a while:

""A new study from the National Endowment for the Arts finds a notable decline in theater, museum and concert attendance and other "benchmark" cultural activities between 2002 and 2008 for adults 18 and older, and a sharper fall from 25 years ago. The drop was for virtually all art forms and for virtually all age groups and levels of education." (click here for the full AP story.)

"Surprisingly, the largest drop in arts consumption [came] from people ages 45 to 54, which has traditionally been the most dependable group of arts participants." (click here for full Los Angeles Times article)

These data are somewhat inconsistent with a new report in the December 2009 issue of Art Newspaper:

"A survey ... of 20 museums across the country found that two-thirds have experienced a clear increase in visitor numbers over the past three years."

The New York Times today speculated that the global economic downturn and its impact on U.S. families may be partly responsible for the reversal of a long-term downturn, and at least the 2009 numbers support that conclusion:

"Just as tellingly, evidence can also be found in culture. While one new study shows that attendance at museums and cultural events dropped from 2002 to 2008, it has climbed in 2009 at many major institutions, including the Museum of Modern Art in New York and the Art Institute of Chicago. Movie attendance was also up 5 percent in 2009, and in the world of the Walt Disney Company, product sales have declined as the company’s theme parks enjoyed a 3 percent increase in visitors last quarter." (Click here for the full article.)

According to the Art Newspaper survey, "[t]he trend holds for institutions with free and paid admissions alike, and institutions that show contemporary art have seen the most clear-cut increase. New York’s Museum of Modern Art (MoMA), one of the nation’s most expensive museums at $20 per ticket, had the best year in its 80-year history, bringing in 2.8 million visitors between 2008 and 2009. The size of its membership rose to a record 120,000. The Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum’s Frank Lloyd Wright retrospective was its best-attended show yet, attracting 372,000 people. The New York museum has also broken its 2008 attendance record of just over one million."

So what does all of this mean for science and natural history museums? Will they see a similar renaissance as Americans (re)focus their attention on what to do rather than what to buy? The forthcoming 2010 Science and Engineering Indicators may have some answers, but will have trend data only up to 2008. At the very least, there may be an opportunity for informal science education with an audience that is less distracted during the recession than it used to be in previous years.

U.S. News: UW-Madison in the top-10 again

2009-12-28T13:30:00.000-06:00

U.S. News and World Report's 2010 rankings have UW-Madison at #9 among U.S. public universities. In the overall rankings, UW slipped four spots to #39, but remains ahead of schools like UCSB, Penn State, Austin-Texas, George Washington, and Fordham.

On the importance of understanding the societal aspects of science ... and of having data

2009-12-20T16:24:00.004-06:00

I am just now getting around to posting a few additional thoughts on Daniel Sarewitz and Samuel Thernstrom's recent LA Times op-ed, dealing with the inherent tensions between what is designed to be objective science and its political implications. Discussing the implications of climategate, they write:

"Central to this disaster has been scientists' insistence that they are unsullied providers of truth in an otherwise corrupt and indecipherable world. It was never so. Scholars continue to argue over whether such titans of science as Pasteur and Millikan lied, cheated and fabricated results or were simply exercising good scientific intuition. Popular chronicles of real-world science such as "The Double Helix" demonstrate that, in practice, science is competitive, backbiting, venal, imperfect and, indeed, political. Science, in other words, is replete with the same human failings that mark all other social activities."

Responses in various Twittered and blogged public spheres were as swift as they were simplistic, often endorsing the idea that there is no objectivity in science, period. This is pure nonsense, of course, and was not the point of Sarewitz and Thernstrom's op-ed. Rather, they argue that the assumption that science and politics are two separate entities is false and that there will always be a political element to science.

And recent data from a systematic large scale survey of nano scientists (see nanopublic post from June 17, 2009) provide an interesting empirical illustration of their argument.

"[These] data showed that scientists, when they’re being asked for policy recommendations about emerging technologies, do rely on their professional judgments about the risks and benefits connected to nanotechnology. But what's really interesting is the fact that -- after controlling for their professional judgments -- scientists' personal ideologies have a significant impact on their support for regulations."

In other words, even the leading scientists in emerging scientific fields, such as nanotechnology, rely on their political views when making judgments about uncertain science. Of course, all of this does not call into question the quality of the science that goes into such policy judgments, but it does highlight the fact that when we ask about the societal implications of scientific findings that are still being debated in scholarly circles, we may end up with political answers ... even from scientists.

BUND wants ban of nanosilver in everyday applications

2009-12-06T10:13:00.001-06:00

Germany's Bund für Umwelt und Naturschutz (BUND) -- a subsidiary of Friends of the Earth -- last week called for a ban of all consumer products containing silver nanoparticles in particular, and for labeling all products made from some form of nanomaterials more generally. Currently, there are over 300 nano-based products available to end-consumers in Germany, and the German equivalent of the EPA -- the Umweltbundesamt -- recently issued a blanked consumer warning against nanotech-based products (see nanopublic post from October 21, 2009).

Says Wilfried Kühling, chair of BUND's economic advisory committee:

"Die Käufer von Nano-Produkten im Unklaren zu lassen verstößt gegen elementare Regeln des Verbraucherschutzes und gefährdet die Umwelt." ["Leaving consumers of nano products uninformed violates very basic rules of consumer protection and endangers the nevironment."]

See here for a PDF version of BUND's full nanosilver report, and here for some of their other position papers on nanotechnology.

On the future of communication ... and the importance of answering "the big" questions

2009-11-30T22:12:00.003-06:00

Here are a few slightly modified and shortened sections from a column I just wrote for the AEJMC newsletter, dealing with the future of communication as a discipline, and the importance of finding answers to the big, "sloppy" questions of our time:

"Communication as a discipline has come to a crossroads. The “mass” in mass communication has morphed into different publics that generate, exchange, and use content in ways that were unimaginable just a decade ago. And these changes in how content is produced and communicated are paralleled by much more far-reaching shifts in how some cohorts in society interpret traditional notions of privacy, objectivity, and source credibility. And so far, our discipline has not done a very good job at offering answers to what have become increasingly pressing questions in various societal debates. How do social media change how we interact with one another? How does information get disseminated in a fragmented multi-channel media environment? And what does the future of (mass) communication look like?

The tricky part, of course, is that many of the answers to these questions transcend the boundaries of our discipline. This is particularly challenging for a young field, such as communication, that continues to struggle with its identity and its desire to compete on an even playing field with much larger disciplines, such as psychology and political science. And if we are not careful, we may follow these disciplines down some dead ends. A good example is the debate surrounding Republican Senator Tom Coburn’s proposal in October 2009 to prohibit the National Science Foundation from “wasting any federal research funding on political science projects.” Coburn, of course, used the label “political science” but targeted social science much more broadly. And his comments rekindled an old debate among political scientists about incremental disciplinary research versus big questions. Cornell’s Peter Katzenstein summarized this intra-disciplinary dilemma best: “Graduate students discussing their field ... often speak in terms of ‘an interesting puzzle,’ a small intellectual conundrum... that tests the ingenuity of the solver, rather than the large, sloppy and unmanageable problems that occur in real life.”

Interestingly, President Obama has prioritized the search for answers to many of these sloppy, unmanageable problems, ... ranging from mandates for a green economy, to climate change, stem cell research and global warming. All of these issues relate to the increasingly blurring lines between science, politics, society … and, of course, communication. These are the same areas where most societal debates of the next 50 years will take place. And unless we as communication researchers and educators find a way to make both scholarly and public contributions to these conversations, we will increasingly be marginalized as a discipline.
...

[A]ll of these debates further highlight the need for theory and methodology as a core field of inquiry in our discipline. ... Some of the most significant contributions to societal discourse by communication scholars have been based on (macro)theoretical models, such as the Spiral of Silence or Cultivation Theory, that dominated decades of scholarly research agendas but also influenced how society thinks about communication-related issues, including media and violence, parental TV ratings guides, election polling, and the evolution of social norms.

Communication theory and methodology, ultimately, are also at the center of effective education in the field of communication. Ten years from now, the media landscape will have undergone even more dramatic changes than we saw in the last decade. And as important as skills training may be, many of the medium-specific or industry-specific competencies we can convey to students today will be made obsolete by emerging technologies and changes in our social structure. So the key question becomes: How do we prepare students for jobs that don’t even exist yet? And the answer is simple. We need to prepare our undergraduate and graduate students for a world that no longer thinks along medium-, content- or discipline-specific boundaries. In fact, many of the big social questions outlined earlier require answers that draw from knowledge in multiple disciplines. The challenge, therefore, is to equip our students with skill sets that include abstract, theoretical thinking, methodological sophistication, and other types of disciplinary expertise that make them competitive in specific areas of employment, but to also give them the transdisciplinary outlook on the world that will allow them to take leadership roles in solving society's big upcoming challenges.

..."

Jobs: Sustainability Sciences at UW-Madison

2009-11-23T18:33:00.002-06:00

The Wisconsin Bioen http://www.wbi.wisc.edu/ergy Initiative at UW-Madison is filling a number of positions related to energy and biofuels, with possible foci in communication policy, economics, agronomy, etc.

Degree and area of specialization:

A Ph.D. and a strong proven record of teaching and research as it relates to the sustainability aspects of biofuels, biomaterials, bioenergy, and related fields of energy storage are required. Applicants with experience in cross disciplinary research and non-academic collaboration are strongly encouraged to apply.

Minimum number of years and type of relevant work experience:

Sustained record of professional achievement as indicated by outstanding teaching, sponsored research and publications, and demonstrated leadership activities in the field. A record of scholarship or demonstrated potential for scholarship suitable for tenure at the University of Wisconsin-Madison

Principal duties:

The University of Wisconsin-Madison is committed to improving our future through bioenergy and has created the Wisconsin Bioenergy Initiative (WBI) to facilitate that transformation. The WBI is a university-based coalition that capitalizes and expands the talent to create, commercialize and promote bioenergy solutions. In order to advance these goals, UW-Madison is seeking to hire additional faculty in the bioenergy field within established departments.

Areas that we would like to expand include but are not limited to:
Individual with expertise in community and regional development with an emphasis on the economic and physical infrastructure needed for bioenergy development, and the analysis of social, cultural, and land use impacts of bioenegy production, distribution, and use
Individual with expertise in behavior change, public attitudes, and social marketing, particularly in the energy sector.
Individual with expertise in applied ethics and public policy to support the understanding of the social impacts of new energy technologies
Individual with expertise in ecological modeling which may include time series analysis, spatial statistics, hierarchical models and Bayesian statistics that can be applied to natural resource management including assessment of bioenergy potentials and impacts
The position requires instruction in undergraduate and graduate coursework in both core disciplinary courses as well as a renewable energy curriculum. Interdisciplinary and interdepartmental research will be expected to both develop a nationally and internationally recognized research program to further the WBI mission. The successful candidate is expected to strengthen and capitalize on strong ties with industry, institutions and government agencies, and to become a nationally and internationally recognized individual. The individual will also contribute to UW-Madison's strong commitment to faculty governance and the Wisconsin Idea through department, university, professional, and public service.

The UW-Madison campus is located in the heart of the city of Madison that offers an unsurpassed vibrant living and learning community.

How to apply:

Applications should include a comprehensive curriculum, application letter, teaching statement, and proposed research and funding plan and should be sent to wbi@wbi.wisc.edu.

The University of Wisconsin is committed to increasing the diversity of the college community and curriculum. Candidates who can contribute to these goals are encouraged to identify their strengths and experiences in these areas.

Appointment type: Faculty
Department(s): AG&LSC/WI BIOENERGY INT
Full time salary rate: Minimum $70,000 ACADEMIC (9 months), depending on Qualifications
Appointment percent: 100%
Anticipated begin date: AUGUST 24, 2010
Number of positions: 4

To ensure consideration:

Application must be received by: JANUARY 30, 2010

For more information, see here and here.

The end of the boy scouts? New Pew data on internet use and social networks

2009-11-11T17:29:00.001-06:00

Pew just released a new study on Social Isolation and New Technologies. Among the more interesting punch lines:

"... Americans are not as isolated as has been previously reported. People’s use of the mobile phone and the internet is associated with larger and more diverse discussion networks. And ... internet use in general and use of social networking services such as Facebook in particular are associated with more diverse social networks."

This is good news, given much of the research I have conducted with colleagues at Cornell and Wisconsin that showed positive impacts of having more diverse discussion networks on political knowledge and participation (e.g., here, here, and here).

The downside of the Pew data: Internet use and use of social networking sites also undermined social support in face-to-face settings, such as family support or helping our neighbors. In short: We may be sharing pictures and status updates with a more diverse and geographically dispersed set of friends, but we're not helping the old lady down the hallway bring in her groceries.

German nano news wave fed by pseudoevents

2009-10-22T12:21:00.000-05:00

The news wave following yesterday's consumer warning by Germany's Umweltbundesamt is in full swing. Adding momentum are a series of mediated and pseudo events following the original UBA announcement, including a statement from Annette Schavan, minister for science and education, a rebuttal by industry, and speculations among bloggers that the new swine flu vaccine may contain untested nanoparticles.

Germany's Umweltbundesamt will issue nano consumer warning

2009-10-21T11:51:00.010-05:00

Germany's Umweltbundesamt (UBA) [Federal Environmental Agency] will release a new study today advising consumers to avoid products using nanoparticles, as long as their effects on the environment and human health are largely unknown. The federal agency is also calling for regulations on labeling and reporting products containing nanomaterials. This would affect the more than 800 German companies that use the new technology in their procts.

See here for the full story from news magazine Der Stern, based on an initial report in the Sueddeutsche Zeitung.

The wave of coverage surrounding the UBA report, also drew renewed attention to the August, 2009 story linking deaths among Chinese factory workers to exposure to high dosages of nano particles in a factory.

How much of a say should the public have in the direction of science (and how much should be left to the experts?)

2009-10-18T00:37:00.002-05:00

This is part of a longer answer I wrote to a recent inquiry by scienceandreligiontoday.com on how much of a say the public should have in the direction of science (and how much should be left to the experts):

"... Many of the survey data we collected at the University of Wisconsin and at Arizona State (Scheufele & Corley, 2008) show that the public trusts scientists to do a good job on the science behind emerging technologies. But some applications in the area of nanotechnology, for instance, have also raised ethical concerns about human enhancement or the creation of synthetic life that have more to do with how we use emerging technologies than the science behind them.

The Public:
So who should shape societal debates about the science and its applications? On the one hand we have a chronically underinformed public who shows limited interest in scientific issues (or political issues, for that matter). As a result, they often make decisions or form policy stances about emerging technologies with little information about the science behind them (Scheufele, 2006b). And this is a description, not a criticism. In fact, we all use information shortcuts or heuristics every day when faced with the need to make choices with incomplete information. Should we be worried about the suspicious looking guy lingering outside our apartment? And what toothpaste should we buy, given virtually unlimited choices in the supermarket? Eventually, we find answers to all of these questions without collecting all available information. We trust certain brands, we rely on previous experience, and we make gut decisions.

Why is that? The answer is simple. We are all cognitive misers or satisficers to varying degrees (Fiske & Taylor, 1991). We use as little information as we think we can get away with or only as much as we think we need to make a decent decision. That is just human nature. And we’re all miserly for different reasons and for different issues. Why don’t most scientists follow Miley Cyrus’s personal life? Probably because they don’t care, and because they see no payoff from learning more about B-list celebrities for either their personal or professional lives. Many citizens, of course, feel the same way about science. Why would they spend time learning about emerging technologies, as long as they feel that they can trust regulatory agencies and universities to produce and manage scientific discoveries responsibly?

But this is exactly the problem that science communicators have battled with for a long time. We should not be concerned about the fact that audiences know little about specific technologies, but that they know little about science. One in four (25%) members of the general public understand the concept of a scientific study, and only about two in five can correctly describe a scientific experiment (42%) or the scientific process more broadly (41%) (National Science Board, 2008). And most empirical studies suggest that this won’t change anytime soon. As a result, my colleague Dominique Brossard here at Wisconsin has argued for a long time that a key variable in well-functioning scientific societies is what she calls “deference toward scientific authority” (Brossard & Nisbet, 2007; Brossard, Scheufele, Kim, & Lewenstein, 2009; Lee & Scheufele, 2006), i.e., the ability to negotiate personal value systems and beliefs with a willingness to defer to scientific expertise for factual information about emerging technologies. And this has nothing to do with blindly trusting scientists. In fact, our work at Wisconsin has shown that values are a critical component of how people make decisions about science, and justifiably so (Brossard, et al., 2009; Ho, Brossard, & Scheufele, 2008). Concerns about destroying unborn life as part of embryonic stem cell research, for instance, can’t be addressed with more science. They can only be resolved in a comprehensive societal debate that deals with values and scientific facts at the same time.

Scientists:
This brings us to the second group – scientists – and their role in guiding scientific progress. In short, the input that scientists can provide into societal debates surrounding emerging technologies is critical. In fact, I have argued many times before that scientists have not played as much of a role in participating in societal debates as they should have (Nisbet & Scheufele, 2007, forthcoming; Scheufele, 2006a, 2007; Scheufele et al., 2009), and that science and society are worse off as a result.

And what we need is not just feedback from the most vocal or most opinionated scientists in a given field, but rather a systematic understanding of what the leading experts in a given field think are prudent approaches to scientific development. The problem with that approach is the U.S. media system. U.S. journalists tend to cover scientific issues by showing “both sides.” This misguided understanding of objectivity often creates science journalism that pits a vast majority of scientists against a small number of vocal dissenters. The recent (and ongoing) debate about global warming is a good example of that pattern.

So is there a better approach to determining scientific consensus on an issue? And the answer is “yes.” Elizabeth Corley in the School of Public Policy at Arizona State and I recently published a series of papers from a systematic survey of leading U.S. scientists in the field of nanotechnology (Corley, Scheufele, & Hu, 2009; Scheufele, et al., 2009; Scheufele et al., 2007). We asked these scientists about their views on public-scientist interactions, about their recommendations for regulations, and about their perceptions of the potential risks and benefits surrounding nanotechnology. And the scientists’ insights are invaluable for societal decision making about these new technologies, including their recommendations for regulatory frameworks at the international level and for risk assessments in specific areas (Corley et al., 2009).

But our survey also showed that scientists sometimes rely on information shortcuts and heuristics, just like everyone else. We found that scientists, when they’re being asked for policy recommendations about emerging technologies, do rely on their professional judgments about the risks and benefits connected to nanotechnology. But our data also showed that – after controlling for their professional judgments – scientists’ personal ideologies have a significant impact on their support for regulations.

These findings, of course, say less about scientists and their expertise than they do about the lack of conclusive data about risks related to nanotechnology. Policy makers need to realize that when they ask scientists to give them advice about inconclusive findings, they will get both their professional judgment and their personal views.

References:

Brossard, D., & Nisbet, M. C. (2007). Deference to scientific authority among a low information public: Understanding U.S. opinion on agricultural biotechnology. International Journal of Public Opinion Research, 19(1), 24-52.
Brossard, D., Scheufele, D. A., Kim, E., & Lewenstein, B. V. (2009). Religiosity as a perceptual filter: Examining processes of opinion formation about nanotechnology. Public Understanding of Science, 18(5), 546–558.
Corley, E. A., Scheufele, D. A., & Hu, Q. (2009). Of risks and regulations: How leading U.S. nanoscientists form policy stances about nanotechnology. Journal of Nanoparticle Research, 11(7), 1573-1585.
Fiske, S. T., & Taylor, S. E. (1991). Social cognition (2nd ed.). New York: McGraw-Hill.
Ho, S. S., Brossard, D., & Scheufele, D. A. (2008). Effects of value predispositions, mass media use, and knowledge on public attitudes toward embryonic stem cell research. International Journal of Public Opinion Research, 20(2), 171-192.
Lee, C. J., & Scheufele, D. A. (2006). The influence of knowledge and deference toward scientific authority: A media effects model for public attitudes toward nanotechnology. Journalism & Mass Communication Quarterly, 83(4), 819-834.
National Science Board. (2008). Science and Engineering Indicators 2008 (Chapter 7). National Science Foundation Retrieved January 21, 2008, from http://www.nsf.gov/statistics/seind08/.
Nisbet, M. C., & Scheufele, D. A. (2007). The future of public engagement. The Scientist, 21(10), 38-44.
Nisbet, M. C., & Scheufele, D. A. (forthcoming). What's next for science communication? Promising directions and lingering distractions. American Journal of Botany.
Scheufele, D. A. (2006a). Five lessons in nano outreach. Materials Today, 9(5), 64.
Scheufele, D. A. (2006b). Messages and heuristics: How audiences form attitudes about emerging technologies. In J. Turney (Ed.), Engaging science: Thoughts, deeds, analysis and action (pp. 20-25). London: The Wellcome Trust.
Scheufele, D. A. (2007). Nano does not have a marketing problem … yet. Nano Today, 2(5), 48.
Scheufele, D. A., Brossard, D., Dunwoody, S., Corley, E. A., Guston, D. H., & Peters, H. P. (2009). Are scientists really out of touch? The Scientist. Retrieved from http://www.the-scientist.com/news/display/55875/.
Scheufele, D. A., & Corley, E. A. (2008). The science and ethics of good communication. Next Generation Pharmaceutical, 4(1), 66.
Scheufele, D. A., Corley, E. A., Dunwoody, S., Shih, T.-j., Hillback, E., & Guston, D. H. (2007). Scientists worry about some risks more than the public. Nature Nanotechnology, 2(12), 732-734."

Surveys about science: A primer

2009-10-11T16:31:00.005-05:00

Here are a few excerpts from an entry on "Surveys" I just wrote for Susanna Priest's forthcoming Encyclopedia of Science and Technology Communication.

Population surveys are one of the most important tools for tapping how much citizens know about science and technology, how they perceive potential risks and benefits, and what their attitudes are about emerging technologies or research on particular applications.

Sample surveys are defined as systematic studies of a geographically dispersed population by interviewing a sample of only certain members in an attempt to generalize to their population. Two terms of this definition are particularly important: “systematic” and “generalizable.”

[...]

The idea of systematically studying a population is a first main goal of sample surveys. Surveys therefore typically rely on a standardized questionnaire is in order to gather reliable and valid information from a wide variety of respondents. Reliability, in this context, refers to the idea that the same instrument – applied to comparable samples – will produce consistent results. But reliability is not enough. It is very possible, for example, that a questionnaire consistently measures the wrong construct. Validity therefore adds a second quality criterion, and refers to the idea that questionnaires need to provide not just consistent but also unbiased and accurate measurements of people’s behaviors, attitudes, etc.

Reliability and validity are tied to a number of factors in the survey process. But two aspects are particularly important when constructing a questionnaire: the overall structure of the questionnaire and wording of specific questions.

When structuring a survey questionnaire, the first concern is length. If a survey takes too much time to complete, it will likely result in significant incompletion rates. Unfortunately, the respondents who tend drop out of lengthy surveys are not a random subset of the population. Rather, they tend to be – among other characteristics – younger, more mobile, and employed full-time. As a result, excessively long survey instruments often produce samples that are plagued by systematic non-response among particular groups in the population, and are therefore limited in terms of their generalizability (see below).

A second concern with respect to questionnaire construction is the way questions are ordered on the questionnaire. Well-constructed questionnaires typically ask easy to answer questions first and sensitive or embarrassing questions later in the questionnaire. One of the most common pitfalls in survey instruments are priming effects, i.e., the notion that some questions can make certain considerations (for instance, risk or benefits of a specific technology) more salient in a respondent’s mind and therefore influence how he or she answers subsequent questions (for an overview, see Zaller & Feldman, 1992)

[...]

In addition to questionnaire structure, the wording of specific questions is a critical variable in building a valid instrument. In particular, well-constructed questionnaires use language and terminology that is designed to avoid biases. Such biases may stem from language that is likely to be more accessible to some respondents than others (e.g., terms that are more likely to be understood by certain ethnic groups or education-based cohorts) or that favors respondents who are more interested in or know more about science and technology in the first place. Any wording that feeds into these potential biases introduces systematic measurement error, since it does not produce an equally valid measure across all groups of the population.

[...]

These concerns about systematic measurement error are particular relevant for a researcher’s ability to generalize from a sample to the general population. This is both a statistical and a substantive problem.

From a statistical perspective, surveys are designed to allow researchers to make inferences from observed sampling statistics (e.g., 52 percent of the sample favor more research on a particular technology) to unobservable population parameters (the proportion of people favoring this research in the population). For surveys based on probability sampling (i.e., surveys that give each person in the population the same, known chance of being selected into the sample) the margin of error provides an indicator of how close the statistic observed in a sample is to the population, and how certain researchers can be about this inference (usually calculated with a certainty of 95%). For the example above, a margin of error of +/-3% would therefore indicate that we can be 95% certain that the true level of support for more research in the population falls somewhere between 49% and 55%.

But generalizability of survey results goes beyond just statistical considerations – especially for scientific issues, such as nanotechnology or stem cell research. Given the interplay between societal dynamics, scientific complexities, and a lack of widespread awareness, some have raised concerns about the appropriateness of using large scale surveys to tap public reactions to science and technology. These concerns typically fall into one of two categories that are both extremely important for any type of polling: first, what are we doing with people who are not fully aware or knowledgeable about the issue that we are interested in, and, second, can we capture an issue in all its complexities in a short survey?

The concern about unaware respondents is not unique to polling about science and technology. Political surveys routinely show that large proportions of the U.S. public are unable to accurately place presidential candidates relative to one another, even on simple issues, such as gun control (e.g., Patterson, 2002). And in fact, attitude formation about political and scientific issues – for many citizens – has little to do with awareness of or knowledge about the specifics of a particular issue (Scheufele, 2006).

In order make sure that all respondents have the same minimal baseline understanding of the technology that is being studied, surveys typically provide a short introduction to the issue as part of the question. Ideally, this introduction is comprehensive, but does not influence answers to subsequent questions by priming respondents about particular risks or benefits of the technology.

[...]

The second concern that is often raised related to the substantive generalizability of survey results about science and technology is the issue of how much detail a telephone survey can get into. Some have argued, in fact, that the systematic nature of standardized surveys is directly at odds with the need for an in-depth and contextualized understanding of how citizens interact with emerging technologies.

And of course these critics are right to a certain degree. Phone surveys, for instance, have clear constraints with respect to length and to the number of questions that can be asked about a single topic. Respondents participate on a voluntary basis and they spend a substantial amount of time on the phone with the interviewer. If researchers ask too many questions about a given topic or if the interview is too long, people tend to get bored or even annoyed and hang up. And this is not just a problem of having fewer respondents overall. Rather, as outlined earlier, if an interview is too long or goes into too much detail it usually creates problems with representativeness.

What we end up with, in this case, is a sample of people that is no longer representative of the overall population. And that, of course, hurts the validity of a poll because it no longer does what it is intended to do, i.e., capture the opinions of everybody in a given population, not just people who are more interested in a given issue or who happen to have more time to respond to a pollster's questions.

As a result, it is important to understand surveys for what they are, i.e.., one method of data collection that allows researchers to tap behaviors, levels of knowledge, and public attitudes toward science and technology in a very systematic and generalizable fashion. This comes with trade-offs related to the complexity of data that surveys provide. In particular, large scale population surveys are concerned with social patterns across large groups of respondents, and pay less attention to the potential complexity of a particular respondent’s belief system, for instance, and how it has developed over the course of his or her life.

Surveys can also be limited in how much they allow for causal inferences. This is particularly problematic for cross-sectional surveys, i.e., data collections at one point in time. Cross-sectional surveys may show a statistical correlation between exposure to science news in newspapers and scientific literacy, for instance, but they typically cannot provide conclusive evidence on the direction of this link. In other words, are knowledgeable respondents more likely to read the science section in newspapers, or does exposure to science news promote learning about science? Answers to these questions are typically provided by other research designs, some survey-based and some not.

Among the survey-based approaches that allow researchers to make some inferences about causality are longitudinal survey designs. These fall into three categories. Trend studies use multiple data collections with different samples to track responses to the same question over time. While trend studies can help researchers identify aggregate-level changes, they do not provide insights into how individual respondents change over time. Panel studies address this problem by providing multiple data collections over time for the exact same set of respondents. Cohort studies, finally are concerned with the effects that socialization or other influences have during certain periods of people’s lives. Is there a difference, for example between respondents who went to college during the first moon landing and those who went to college in the 1990s with respect to levels of interest in science and technology and science media use over the course of their life? In order to answer these questions, cohort analyses examine different subgroups (or cohorts), often defined by age, and compare their development as they grow older.

References:

Dillman, D. A. (2007). Mail and Internet surveys: The tailored design method (2nd ed.). New York, NY: Wiley.

Patterson, T. E. (2002). The vanishing voter: Public involvement in an age of uncertainty. New York: Alfred A. Knopf Publishers.

Scheufele, D. A. (2006). Messages and heuristics: How audiences form attitudes about emerging technologies. In J. Turney (Ed.), Engaging science: Thoughts, deeds, analysis and action (pp. 20-25). London: The Wellcome Trust.

Zaller, J., & Feldman, S. (1992). A simple theory of survey response: Answering questions versus revealing preferences. American Journal of Political Science, 36(3), 579-616.

The encyclopedia, including the full chapter on surveys, is scheduled to appear with Sage in July 2010.

Partisan gaps in attitudes toward biofuels in Wisconsin

2009-10-06T20:57:00.009-05:00

Almost two thirds of Wisconsinites support the use (62.5%) and production (60.4%) percent of biofuels. They are less sure, however, about the best ways to promote this new technology. Only a minority of Wisconsin citizens think that federal (47.9%), state (42.7%) or government subsidies (48.7%) should be used to promote biofuels. While almost three in five (59.7%) Wisconsin citizens think that the free market should regulate biofuels, however, a majority (52.7%) also believes that the oil industry will not invest in the new technology without government regulations.

These results are part of a new study of attitudes toward biofuels among Wisconsin citizens, conducted by a research group led by myself and Bret Shaw in Life Sciences Communication at UW-Madison.

The tensions between markets and regulations are to some degree explained by clear ideological rifts within the Wisconsin population. While a majority registered Democrats support the use of government subsidies for biofuels research (60.6%), less than 40% of registered Republicans do (38.9%). Similarly, three out of four (75.6%) Republicans believe that the free market should regulate biofuels -- a view that is shared by only 43.7% of Democrats. A majority of both Democrats (60.0%) and Republicans (51.3%), however, agree s that without government regulations, the oil industry will never invest in the development of biofuels.

Click here for the official UW-Madison press release with more details on the study.

Wisconsin among 20 most cited institutions worldwide

2009-10-02T09:13:00.003-05:00

Wisconsin is once again in good company. Along with Harvard, MIT, Yale, Cambridge, Oxford and other institutions, UW-Madison was just ranked in the top 20 of the most cited institutions worldwide in the last decade. Enough said.

Click here for a PDF copy of the full report.

Science communication - overview of the state of the discipline in American Journal of Botany

2009-09-05T20:19:00.004-05:00

A new article in the American Journal of Botany shows that building a public that is more attuned to science requires more than enhancing scientific literacy. The article, co-authored by American University professor Matthew C. Nisbet and myself, emphasizes that science communication efforts need to be based on a systematic, empirical understanding of the intended audience’s existing values, knowledge, and attitudes, their interpersonal and social contexts, and their preferred media sources and communication channels.
(Click here for the EurekAlert release; the full article is available here.)

Unitizing journalism 2.0: The "nanostory"

2009-08-11T20:23:00.006-05:00

Apparently, the traditional news story is dead, and journalism 2.0 comes with its very own unit of categorizing news: the nanostory -- at least, according to Bill Wasik's new book And then there's this.

"I introduce the idea of the "nanostory," which I see as the basic unit of new-media culture. Basically a nanostory is an intense media narrative about what's happening at the moment. For example, here are some examples of nanostories from last week:
* Bill Clinton's intervention to save two US journalists in North Korea
* The right-wing mobs at Democratic town-hall meetings on health care
* Nancy Pelosi's comment about "swastikas" on protesters' signs
* Sarah Palin's claim that a "death panel" might decide to euthanize Trig
* The Obama Administration's health care logo
* The "Obama as Joker" posters
* Thursday's Twitter outage
* The death of John Hughes"

Journalism 1.0, of course, called this a "news wave," but that was before the millisecond Twitter news cycle.

(More at TMPCafe.)

Is science out of touch? Probably not as much as we thought ...

2009-08-04T10:39:00.007-05:00

The Scientist just published a new column by myself and a number of colleagues from Wisconsin, Arizona State, and Jülich, arguing that the rifts between scientists and lay publics may not be as deep as some recent surveys suggest. Among the differences between a recent AAAS poll and other expert surveys? Question wording and sampling.

"In a recent AAAS/Pew survey, one in five U.S. scientists named the chronic difficulties in communicating with and educating lay audiences as one of the greatest U.S. scientific failures of the past 20 years. The real surprise, however, was that scientists do not seem too eager to find a solution -- at least not according to the AAAS/Pew data. Only about two in five AAAS scientists reported that they often talk to non-scientists about findings from their research, and only 3% often talk to reporters.

But are things really that bad? As part of two independent research teams, we interviewed nationally representative samples of scientific experts in nanotechnology, stem cell research and epidemiology. Data from these surveys suggest much more optimistic views among scientists about interactions with journalists, mass media, and lay audiences. At least two important differences in survey technique may explain these contrasting findings ..."

(The full column can be found here.)

Of Twitter and the problem of collective (ir)rationality

2009-07-17T08:04:00.008-05:00

I am still struggling to understand the worldwide craze over the fairly unspectacular opinions of a 15 year-old Morgan Stanley intern who -- in the best case scenario -- googled his "findings" off an April 2009 ComScore report. But at least this kind of "market research" helps explain why the leading banks were on the brink of bankruptcy just a few month ago.

Almost 20 years ago, Page and Shapiro wrote an excellent book about the paradox of rational decision making by largely uninformed mass publics. This "collective rationality," of course, unfailingly disintegrates every summer when journalists have a hard time finding anything to fill the news hole.

Uncertain science, regulations, and personal ideologies of nano scientists

2009-06-17T14:03:00.009-05:00

Journal of Nanoparticle Research today posted the online-first version of a forthcoming article by Elizabeth Corley, Qian Hu, and myself on how leading U.S. nano-scientists form policy stances about nanotechnology (DOI: 10.1007/s11051-009-9671-5).

The article sheds some interesting light on the role of scientists in the emerging policy debates about nanotechnology. Not surprisingly, our data showed that scientists, when they’re being asked for policy recommendations about emerging technologies, do rely on their professional judgments about the risks and benefits connected to nanotechnology. But what's really interesting is the fact that -- after controlling for their professional judgments -- scientists' personal ideologies have a significant impact on their support for regulations.

These findings, of course, say less about scientists than they do about the lack of conclusive data about risks related to nanotechnology. Policy makers need to realize that when they ask scientists to give them advice about inconclusive findings, they will get both their professional judgment and their personal views.

The JoNR paper is based on the first nationally representative survey of leading U.S. nano scientists. For the full press releases from UW and ASU, click here and here.

Grow Magazine on science communication disconnects

2009-05-28T21:33:00.005-05:00

This is from an interview that I gave to GROW magazine (published by the University of Wisconsin-Madison College of Agricultural and Life Sciences) a while back. I just noticed that the full interview is now online:

While most people in CALS study science, you look at how science is communicated and perceived by the public. Why is it important to study this issue?
It’s probably more important now than it’s ever been. Issues like nanotechnology and stem cell research raise questions about what it means to be human, what kind of applications we want in the market and how quickly.

The tricky part is that, while scientists generally realize how important it is to connect with the public, many people have taken the approach that it will be enough if we just put sound science out there. But unfortunately that’s not really supported by the research. Most recent studies, including some of our own, show clearly that information is only part of the equation. For one thing, if it doesn’t reach certain parts of the audience, we obviously have a problem. But even if we reach everyone, there are still different publics who all use information differently.

Are scientists putting too much faith in information?

Not necessarily. Information is still at the core of the message. But scientists may be too optimistic about the power of information alone, rather than also paying attention to how that information needs to be presented—especially to audiences who traditionally don’t pay that much attention to science. We often think that museums, science sections of newspapers and traditional outreach are enough to inform the public. And they do a great job. But simply putting scientific information out there through traditional channels may in fact favor people who already know more or are more interested in science. In other words, we may end up unintentionally widening knowledge gaps.

The difficult part is not to talk about science to a PBS audience. It’s making PBS content accessible to an MTV audience.

(Click here for the full interview.)

Columbia Journalism Review on hard-to-reach science audiences

2009-05-20T10:37:00.004-05:00

Can we reach traditionally underserved audiences with new modes of science outreach?

“Any pop band is doing the same thing,” Jorn H. Hurum, a scientist at the University of Oslo who acquired the fossil and assembled the team of scientists that studied it, told the Times. “Any athlete is doing the same thing. We have to start thinking the same way in science.”

"Indeed, the effort is “a publicity tsunami relative to traditional science communication practices,” wrote American University communications professor Matthew Nisbet on his Framing Science blog. It is a strategy that Nisbet and co-author Dietram Scheufele call “going broad” in a paper currently under review. The goal, according to an excerpt of the paper, is to move science communications “beyond elite audiences,” where they usually stop. Nisbet and Scheufele cite a number of Pew Research Center reports showing that the nightly television news, as opposed to newspapers, and outlets such as The Discovery Channel, as opposed to science magazines, are the predominant sources of scientific information for most people."

(Click here for the full story.)

UW media buzz ahead of Cornell, Princeton, Yale and Berkeley

2009-04-09T18:06:00.011-05:00

UW-Madison ranks sixth in university media study

April 9, 2009

by John Lucas

The University of Wisconsin-Madison was ranked sixth nationally in a new study examining how often colleges and universities appear in the global print and electronic media, on the Internet, blogosphere and social networking sites.

The Global Language Monitor (GLM) study of the nation's Top 100 colleges and universities was released today (April 9).

Harvard University and Columbia University ranked first and second, with the University of Chicago coming in third, followed by the University of Michigan and Stanford University.

UW-Madison ranked sixth, followed by Cornell, Princeton, Yale and the University of California, Berkeley, rounding out the top 10. The analysis is believed to be one of the first measuring mentions on social media sites.

(Click here for full UW press release.)

Framing nano?

2009-02-28T08:09:00.004-06:00

The Swiss think tank Die Innovationsgesellschaft just released their "Framing Nano" report, that tries to summarize and -- more importantly -- provide some direction for the global policy debates about nano. Efforts like these are particularly relevant as we're beginning to get a better data-driven understanding of the global and cultural dynamics that shape public support for nanotechnology.

From the report:

"The second goal is to shape the debate. The analysis of the information collected permits understanding of how communication and cooperation on these themes takes place, which are the main or the most evident gaps, needs, points of agreement and disagreement, critical factors in the current knowledge and regulation framework of nanotechnology, and what is the position of the interested stakeholders.

The third goal is to foster the debate on regulation and governance of nanotechnology, as the report is intended to be a working document giving a comprehensive picture of the overall situation. Documents on this subject are published on a continuous basis, giving ever new inputs to the debate. With the aim of acting as a funnel for this information, the project plan foresees collecting and integrating it into the report throughout the project lifetime, and to use it in the development of the final Governance Plan."

(Click here for the full report.)

Editorials by Rodgers and Currall in Nature Nanotechology

2009-02-07T15:32:00.007-06:00

The latest issue of Nature Nanotechnology contains a symposium on public perceptions of nanotech, including print versions of some studies first released late last year and highlighted here and here. The thematic focus is also bracketed by two excellent editorials--one by Nature Nanotechnology Chief Editor Peter Rodgers, and one by Steven Currall, Vice Dean of Enterprise at University College London, and professor at the London Business School.

From Rodgers' editorial:

"It is well documented that most members of the public have not heard of nanotechnology ... . This state of affairs could be construed as good news, because it means that nanotechnology continues to avoid the GMO-style backlash that many once considered inevitable. However, low levels of popular recognition in public opinion surveys could also be viewed as bad news because public funding is still very important for basic research in nanoscience and technology, even if companies now invest more in this field than governments3, and because the eventual success of the whole nanoenterprise will depend on people accepting and buying nano-enabled products. "

(Read complete editorial here.)

And from Steven Currall's overview piece:

"Importantly, social scientists also have a further obligation to translate their technical research findings into language that is directly useful to others. Based on a deepening understanding of predictors of public perceptions, scientists, policymakers and businesses will therefore be better positioned to anticipate trends that will dictate how the public reacts to new scientific developments and commercial products based on nanotechnology."

(Read the complete editorial here.)

New PEW report: Approximately 40%-50% of the public accepts a biblical creationist account of the origins of life

2009-02-05T18:01:00.006-06:00

What else is there to say?

On Darwin’s 200th Birthday, Americans Still Divided About Evolution

by Scott Keeter, Director of Survey Research, Pew Research Center, and Juliana Horowitz, Research Associate, Pew Research Center for the People & the Press

February 5, 2009

February 12 will mark the 200th anniversary of the birth of Charles Darwin, the British naturalist who developed the theory of evolution through natural selection. Darwin published his treatise on evolution, On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection, nearly 150 years ago. Darwin's theory was controversial from the outset, and remains so among the public in his home country as well as in the U.S. and elsewhere.

Opinion polls over the past two decades have found the American public deeply divided in its beliefs about the origins and development of life on earth. Surveys are fairly consistent in their estimates of how many Americans believe in evolution or creationism. Approximately 40%-50% of the public accepts a biblical creationist account of the origins of life, while comparable or slightly larger numbers accept the idea that humans evolved over time. The wording of survey questions generally makes little systematic difference in this division of opinion, and there has been little change in the percentage of the public who reject the idea of evolution.

(Full report here.)

Onion on nano bots and terrorism ....

2008-12-30T15:46:00.006-06:00

Wisconsin Week: Q&A on communicating nanotech

2008-12-10T19:49:00.006-06:00

From a Q&A in Wisconsin Week:

[...] Wisconsin Week: Why has nanotechnology, as opposed to other kinds of science, become a moral dilemma for many people as viewed through the prism of religion?

Scheufele: I am not sure if nanotechnology is the only recent example of a scientific area that challenged some people’s religious views. In fact, for genetically engineered organisms we saw similar discussions about “unnatural science” and about scientists “interfering with nature” or “playing God.” But two things are different for nanotechnology. It has a potential impact on virtually all areas of life, ranging from medicine to materials and the environment. And as a result, the potential conflict between religiosity and science will likely be much more salient for nanotechnology, in particular with respect to nano-bio-info-cogno (NBIC) technologies that may, in the future, enable us to create synthetic life and intelligence without divine intervention.

WW: How do the views of Americans differ from those of people in countries where religion is less a part of everyday life?

DS: It depends on which countries we compare the United States to. Our analyses showed that the United States is in many ways very similar to countries like Italy, Ireland and Austria, who have deeply rooted religious traditions. But the United States differs significantly from more secular European countries like France, Germany or Denmark,with a less religious citizenry and fewer moral qualms about nanotechnology.

[...]

WW: How do we explain the paradox of such a dynamic and pervasive field of technology coming under a cloud of moral scrutiny in a country that thrives on technology?

DS: I am not sure if it is really such a paradox. Science and religion are not incompatible. And many of the questions that modern science raises do not have scientific answers. Is it moral or not to create new life, for example, if that will ever be possible? And what are the social effects of virtually invisible surveillance devices that can trace our every movement? The answers to these questions depend on our values, ethics, beliefs and morals. And society will only find answers if all of these considerations are taken into account and help us understand the implications of what science has made or will make possible.

[...]

WW: Do we need to rethink the way we talk about science and its implications in America?

DS: Absolutely. Effective communication with wide cross sections of society is probably more important now than it’s ever been. Issues like nanotechnology and stem cell research raise questions about what it means to be human, what kind of applications we want in the market and how quickly. The tricky part is that, while scientists generally realize how important it is to connect with the public, many people have taken the approach that it will be enough if we just put sound science out there. But unfortunately that’s not really supported by our research.

Rather, we need to realize that different publics have different informational needs, react very differently to information, and — most importantly — are looking for answers to questions that often have very little to do with the scientific issues surrounding emerging technologies. As some of our recent research here at Wisconsin shows, trying to make sense of the moral implications of nano breakthroughs based on their own belief or value systems is much more important for some groups in society at the moment than understanding the science behind it.

(Click here for the full interview.)

It's not just science - nanotechnology and values around the globe

2008-12-07T12:00:00.006-06:00

The past few weeks have seen a flurry of events, editorials, and grant announcements related to synthetic biology and the notion of creating artificial life forms. Nanowerk, for instance, just reported on a $3 million grant awarded by the European Research Council (ERC) for a nanoscience program entitled "Soft-Matter Nanotechnology to Create Artificial Life Forms."

Our most recent study, released today in the journal Nature Nanotechnology (abstract; press release; supplementary tables and information), suggests that these new technologies may get a very different welcome in different parts of the globe.

Here's a short excerpt from the UW-Madison press release:

... [s]urvey results from the United States and Europe reveal a sharp contrast in the perception that nanotechnology is morally acceptable. Those views, according to the report, correlate directly with aggregate levels of religious views in each country surveyed.

In the United States and a few European countries where religion plays a larger role in everyday life, notably Italy, Austria and Ireland, nanotechnology and its potential to alter living organisms or even inspire synthetic life is perceived as less morally acceptable. In more secular European societies, such as those in France and Germany, individuals are much less likely to view nanotechnology through the prism of religion and find it ethically suspect.

"The level of ‘religiosity’ in a particular country is one of the strongest predictors of whether or not people see nanotechnology as morally acceptable," says Dietram Scheufele, a University of Wisconsin-Madison professor of Life Sciences Communication and the lead author of the new study. "Religion was the strongest influence over everything."

Religious Climates and Attitudes Toward
Moral Acceptability of Nanotechnology

Scheufele, D. A., Corley, E. A., Shih, T.-j., Dalrymple, K. E., & Ho, S. S. (forthcoming). Religious beliefs and public attitudes to nanotechnology in Europe and the US. Nature Nanotechnology (first published online on December 7, 2008 as doi:10.1038/NNANO.2008.361).

What was particularly interesting is the fact that religious climates in different countries did not just influence views about the moral acceptability of nanotechnology, but also of how useful nanotechnology is for society.

All of this, of course, has tremendous implications for science communication and science policy. The emerging differences we found in attitudes and concerns across countries are certainly consistent with calls for an international effort to draft nano regulations or roadmaps sooner rather than later.

But our study also highlights the importance of values, beliefs, and confirms findings from a number of recent studies (Brossard, Scheufele, Kim, & Lewenstein, forthcoming; Ho, Brossard, & Scheufele, 2008; Kahan, 2008; Nisbet, 2005) that all examine how values shape the interpretation of scientific information. This research shows that the exact same information can translate into very different attitudinal conclusions for highly religious respondents than for non-religious ones. In other words, we may be wasting valuable time and resources by focusing our efforts on putting more and more information in front of an unaware public, without first developing a better understanding of how different groups will filter or reinterpret this information when it reaches them, given their personal value systems and beliefs.

So what's the moral question behind nano? One answer comes from QuinnNorton on the O'Reilly Radar:

"The question is not so much whether synthetic biology will remake society, but who will be in control when it does. "

Many scientists, meanwhile, still don't see the connection between the scientific aspects of their work and its social or moral implications. In a recent interview with a Medill graduate student, Stanford assistant professor Drew Endy described the difference to a god-like creator as mostly skill related:

Q. What do you say to the argument that only God should do the type of reconstructing that you’re researching?

A. I think it’s a different question if the concerns have to do with making something new. I don’t view making something new, whether it’s reprogramming the bouquet of a bacteria or a more serious project. I don’t view those projects as creating life, but rather construction projects. For me as an engineer, there’s a big difference between the words creation and construction. Creation implies I have unlimited power, perfect understanding of the universe, and the ability to manipulate matter at a godlike level. That’s not what I have. I have an imperfect understanding, a budget, limited resources, and I can only manipulate things quite crudely. In that context, with those constraints, I’m a more humble constructor.

(Click here for the full interview.)

For more information on the work in nanotechnology and society at UW, see Nano&Society@UW, the Department of Life Sciences Communication in the College of Agricultural & Life Sciences at UW, and an overview of other relevant publications from my research group here.

Update: Also see articles by Dan Kahan and colleagues (here) and Nick Pidgeon and colleagues (here) in the same issue of Nature Nanotechnology.

NYT on Nanophobia

2008-12-04T10:08:00.004-06:00

By 9am this morning I had ten email forwards with this story in my inbox. So I am guessing that the title of Natasha Singer's piece in today's New York Times is pretty self-explanatory:

New Products Bring Side Effect: Nanophobia
By NATASHA SINGER

IT sounds like a plot straight out of a science-fiction novel by Michael Crichton. Toiletry companies formulate new cutting-edge creams and lotions that contain tiny components designed to work more effectively. But those minuscule building blocks have an unexpected drawback: the ability to penetrate the skin, swarm through the body and overwhelm organs like the liver.

(Click here for the full NYT story.)