This Article Full Text (PDF) All Versions of this Article: 0963662507080551v1 18/3/325    most recent References Alert me when this article is cited Alert me if a correction is posted Citation Map Services Email this article to a friend Similar articles in this journal Alert me to new issues of the journal Add to Saved Citations Download to citation manager Request Permissions Request Reprints Add to My Marked Citations Citing Articles Citing Articles via Google Scholar Citing Articles via Scopus Google Scholar Articles by Landau, J. Articles by Condit, C. M. Search for Related Content Social Bookmarking                         What's this?

Visualizing nanotechnology: the impact of visual images on lay American audience associations with nanotechnology

CDC and National Institutes of Health (NIH), Department of Speech Communication, University of Georgia, 110 Terrell Hall, Athens, GA 30602, USA, jlandau{at}uga.edu

Christopher R. Groscurth

center for Research on Learning and Teaching (CRLT) at the University of Michigan, USA

Lanelle Wright

NIH, Institute for Behavioral Research, University of Georgia, USA, Department of Speech Communication at the University of Georgia, USA

Celeste M. Condit

Department of Speech Communication at the University of Georgia, USA

Developments in nanotechnology are attracting the attention of scholars of science communication who can play a strategic role in understanding technology adoption by the public. This paper begins to address a critical gap in that research by studying the impact of visual images on lay American audience associations with nanotechnology. An inductive qualitative analysis of semi-structured interviews about participants' general knowledge of nanotechnology and their reactions to two different visual images of nanotechnology revealed 10 themes, which were sometimes valenced positively or negatively: science, (medicinal) machines, technology, very small, sky, motion, (childhood) toys, bodily blood, injecting (disease), and foreign (insect). We argue that these findings illustrate a specific "visual" domain of "science" images, that this domain is organized to contain polarities, and that this leads to volatility in public attitudes but also flexibility in responses to a range of visual images of new sciences such as nanotechnology.

This version was published on May 1, 2009

Public Understanding of Science, Vol. 18, No. 3, 325-337 (2009)
DOI: 10.1177/0963662507080551


CiteULike    Complore    Connotea    Del.icio.us    Digg    Reddit    Technorati    Twitter    What's this?