Public opinion research on nanotechnology has primarily focused on judgments of abstract risks and benefits, rather than attitudes toward specific applications. This approach will be less useful as nanotechnology morphs from a scientific breakthrough into an enabling technology whose impacts on people’s lives come in the form of concrete applications in specific areas. This study examines the mental connections or associations US citizens have with nanotechnology (e.g. the extent to which people associate nanotechnology with the medical field, the military, consumer products, etc.), and how these associations moderate the influences of risk and benefit perceptions on attitudes toward nanotechnology. Our results suggest that the assumption that risk perceptions shape overall attitudes toward emerging technologies is simplistic. Rather, individuals who associate nanotech with particular areas of application, such as the medical field, take risk perceptions much more into account when forming attitudes than respondents who do not make these mental connections.

This paper argues that it is time for public understanding of science to develop a critical inventory of the forms, formats and methods of public participation and their respective implications and ambiguities. It highlights the need for analysing not only the limitations and deficiencies of participatory arrangements but also their constructive dimension, in particular the construction of the subject of participation. Looking into participatory governance arrangements in the issue area of genetic testing in Germany and the UK the paper presents a typology of formats according to the way the respective public is constructed and identifies four major constructions of publics: the general public, the pure public, the affected public and the partisan public. Each of these enables certain speaking positions while foreclosing others. The study shows that the main purposes of participatory arrangements in this issue area are knowledge production and education rather than political deliberation and decision-making.

This paper contributes to ongoing discussions on democratic engagement through an exploration of citizen participation in two citizen consensus conferences on nanotechnology, one held in 2005 and the second in 2008. We analyze the factors that motivate citizens to participate formally in debates about emerging "high technologies" and consider demographic and related characteristics of the participants in these two consensus conferences and the reasons they provided for participating. We suggest that in an era in which the barriers to civic engagement—most especially time—are large for many citizens, significant incentives are likely to affect participation. These incentives may be internal (e.g. a personal interest in a topic or an investment in a policy outcome) or external (e.g. money). In this context, we critique the aim of recruiting "blank slate" participants for consensus conferences and other deliberative democratic forums.

Consensus conferences have functioned well in small, relatively homogeneous countries such as Denmark. In the geographically sprawling and socially diverse United States, however, meaningful citizen deliberation and decisionmaking on science and technology depends upon the ability to bring more participants "into the room." The National Citizens’ Technology Forum, held in March 2008, responded to this need by integrating panels of citizens from multiple US cities in structured face-to-face and online deliberation. We analyze the success of this experiment by focusing on the experience of participants during the online deliberation component. We conclude with recommendations for future organizers of online deliberation, focusing on the benefits of combining synchronous and asynchronous engagement and improving facilitation practice and software capabilities.

This research examines the influence of commercialization on support for scientific research. It compares the effects of the funding source with the type of organization on public support for stem cell research. Using a national Australian telephone survey (n = 1000), the results reveal that support drops significantly when scientific research is funded by private rather than public interests, and even more so when it is conducted in a private company rather than a public university. Respondents’ preference for university research was enhanced if they trusted universities, distrusted major companies and believed that the research would be beneficial. A preference for public funding was also associated with lower trust in companies and a belief that the research would benefit people. Implications of these results are discussed in relation to the challenge of maintaining public support in an increasingly commercialized research environment.

There is scant research-based evidence regarding what the public is interested in knowing about science, and more knowledge is needed to tailor relevant and engaging formal and free-choice science environments for different publics. This methodological paper describes the potential and limitations of three existing web-based tools – Google Trends, Google Zeitgeist, and Google Insights for Search – for PUS research. It shows how these tools can be used to (1) identify interests in science and pseudoscience, (2) conduct a cross-national comparison of popular science and pseudoscience-related searches and (3) discover possible motivations when searching for specific terms. Trends identified using analyses of online queries are discussed. These provide a bottom-up assessment of PUS, and may add another argument to the controversy regarding quantitative measures and the deficit model.

How are industry and environmentalist discourses of climate risk related to dominant scientific and political discourses? This study operationalizes Bourdieu’s concept of symbolic capital in order to map dimensions of risk description and prescription onto a journalistic field of industry, environmentalist, scientific, and political media. Results show that conventional definitions of risk mirror an opposition between scientific and political discourses. Prescriptions for action on risk are partly autonomous from definitions however. Environmentalist and scientific media feature more proactive discourse, and industry and political media feature more reactive discourse. Implications for future research on climate risk and relational studies of media discourse are discussed.

Research into the public understanding of science has revealed that the effect of scientific knowledge on attitudes toward science is contextualized by gender; however there has not yet been an account of how gender contextualizes knowledge. This paper investigates how gender identification affects attitudes toward science, and tempers the effects of scientific knowledge on attitudes toward science. Utilizing data from the Eurobarometer 52.1, it is predicted that when males perceive a threat to their masculinity (as measured by a perceived threat to their financial security) they will become more likely to be aversive to biotechnology, and that increased levels of perceived threat will reduce the effects of knowledge on attitudes toward biotechnology. Moreover, it is predicted that these effects will be smaller than their female counterparts. All predictions are affirmed.

The framing of issues in the mass media plays a crucial role in the public understanding of science and technology. This article contributes to research concerned with the analysis of media frames over time by making an analytical distinction between implicit and explicit media frames, and by introducing an automated method for the analysis of implicit frames. In particular, we apply a semantic maps method to a case study on the newspaper debate about artificial sweeteners, published in the New York Times between 1980 and 2006. Our results show that the analysis of semantic changes enables us to filter out the dynamics of implicit frames, and to detect emerging metaphors in public debates. Theoretically, we discuss the relation between implicit frames in public debates and the codification of meaning and information in scientific discourses, and suggest further avenues for research interested in the automated analysis of frame changes and trends in public debates.

New applications of genomics techniques in soil ecology may provide people with fresh insights into the richness of microbial life forms and natural methods to build on the "self-cleaning capacity" of soils. Because genetic modification might also be involved, this paper examines people’s judgments about some applications, using a theory on the promotion- or prevention-orientations that they may associate with interventions in the natural world. A prevention oriented way of thinking was hypothesized to correspond with a preference for more restrictions on a GM application, unless the person appreciates the application’s benefits for nature restoration. Survey data agreed with the hypotheses and clarified the way in which people may talk about "nature knows best" or "nature needs a little help."

Over recent decades, public participation initiatives have been employed across Europe often with a focus on science and technology issues. In the area of new food technologies most participation initiatives have centered on genetically modified foods. By contrast, in the area of functional foods— where significant EU legislation was recently passed—we have seen no initiatives towards public inclusion. This applies also for Denmark, the country which is the focus of this article. Based on an interview study with members of the Danish parliament the article examines why such considerable differences exist between initiatives to involve the public, and it challenges the role that public participation plays in Danish politics. The main claim made in the article is that although politicians argue for the value and relevance of public participation their willingness to initiate participatory processes is overruled by their concern with playing by the rules of the political game.

Tensions have been identified in the shift to dialogue whereby researchers produce and communicate research-based knowledge in interaction with different social actors. This paper draws on three perspectives on those tensions—science and technology studies analyses of public engagement, action research and dialogic communication theory—in order to explore how the tensions are articulated in the communication processes that are integral to the coproduction of knowledge in a case study of collaborative research about virtual worlds. The data analysed are based on the workshops where the collaborating actors (university researchers and practitioners) co-produce knowledge through communication processes in which different expert-identities and knowledge forms are negotiated. The analysis explores the balancing-act between imposing control on the research process and opening up for a plurality of voices. The paper concludes with a discussion of the value of a reflexive approach for the analysis and design of dialogic research communication.

Quantitative and qualitative studies among 469 high school students of average age 17 years were conducted. The students’ attitudes to four practical applications of biotechnology were examined: genetically modified plants (Bt corn), genetically modified animals (salmon), and hemophilia germ line and somatic gene therapy. Each of the four applications was examined from three different viewpoints: usefulness, moral acceptability and risk perception. Bt corn production proved to be the most acceptable in terms of both usefulness and risk perception. Values for genetically modified salmon and germ line gene therapy were comparable, but much lower than those for the other two applications; this was true for both usefulness and moral acceptability. In addition, students found genetically modified salmon to be ethically much less acceptable than Bt corn. Significant gender differences were observed in the case of germ line gene therapy and genetically modified salmon.

Two cases of missing children in Portugal (Joana and Maddie) have recently highlighted the dilemmas and contingencies associated with the technology of "genetic fingerprinting" for forensic purposes in the context of criminal investigations. The purpose of this article is to analyze the popular press’s discourses and representations around forensic genetics in the context of those two highly mediatized criminal investigation cases. The symbolical construction and representation of forensic genetics by the media presents a form of public exposure to beliefs on forensic genetics’ characteristics and potential. These are blended with popular cultural contexts that are constructed with reference to images of a super-science which may carry consequences in the public understanding of forensic science. The media coverage of both cases and their actual disclosure resembles the patterns of a CSI effect, insofar as real science’s capabilities and limitations are placed against fictionalized representations of forensic science.

The conceptualization of risk as objective, subjective, real or perceived has huge implications for its management as regards policy and governance. The sociological literature concerned with the science, technology and risks associated with electromagnetic fields (EMF) can be broadly divided into two main bodies of literature. The Social Amplification of Risk Framework (SARF) which sees risk as both an objective yet subjective phenomenon and the anthropological branch of Science and Technology Studies (STS) which stems from a more constructivist premise. These distinct bodies of knowledge frame the separate components of the EMF issue differently. Distinct attitudes to uncertainty and ignorance have huge implications for the subsequent governance of risk. How these two distinct bodies of knowledge consequently elaborate strategies of risk communication, public education and public participation gives us insight into the projected relationship between science and society, experts and laypeople, and technocrats and citizens.

This paper considers how consumers make sense of food labeling, drawing on a qualitative, empirical study in England. I look in detail at two examples of labeling: 1) food certified as produced by organic methods and 2) functional food claimed to be beneficial for human health, especially probiotic and cholesterol-lowering products. I use the concept of "boundary objects" to demonstrate how such labels are intended to work between the worlds of food producers and food consumers and to show how information is not merely transferred as a "knowledge fix" to consumer ignorance. Rather, consumers drew on a binary of "raw" and "processed" food and familiarity with marketing in today’s consumer culture to make sense of such labeling.

Is scientific knowledge the domain of the intellectual elite or is it everyman’s concern, thus making the popularization of science a democratic activity integrally required of science itself? This is a question whose history extends back even longer than the enlightenment period. As technology starts to permeate every inch of daily life, the issues involved for our future development become more pressing and a matter of socio-political development. Dostoyevsky brought this to the point in a fictional dispute between a Great Inquisitor and Christ. This was also the subject of fierce scientific debates, the most prominent of which was probably the debate between Ernst Mach and Max Planck at the turn of the century, before the first world war, when the new Physics (quantum theory and relativity) was discovered and its relevance for our view of the world and our place in it was hotly discussed. For Mach, the job of popularization should rest with science - an informed public cannot be manipulated as easily by ‘pop science’. This article focuses on the mostly neglected political epistemological level of the debate, its sporadic later flare-ups in different places with different protagonists (Wagenschein, Wittenberg), and its relevance for the popularization of science today.

Considering informal education and field trips as important didactical elements that promote science and scientific literacy (to know, to understand, to apply science), this article presents the work carried out in the gold mines of Castromil (city of Paredes, Portugal), a region with an unquestionable richness in terms of geological heritage. The field trip involved 166 students, ranging from 10 to 21 years of age, and was organized according to Orion’s model. The evaluation of the field trip was observed in three aspects: i) the construction of scientific knowledge; ii) the quality of the activities performed; and iii) the promotion of environmental education. The results were obtained through a questionnaire applied to the participants, and interviews of the two monitors responsible for the field trip. The results allow us to conclude that Orion’s model was successfully applied in an informal field trip activity promoting scientific literacy.

The purpose of this work was to determine if public communication of science and technology (PCST) has any influence on people’s decision to become dedicated to scientific research. For this reason, a national survey involving 852 researchers from all disciplines was conducted in Argentina. The results showed that the factors affecting scientific vocation are many, and that, regardless of differences in gender, age or discipline, the greatest influence on the decision to go into scientific research is exerted by teachers. The analysis also demonstrated that different manifestations of PCST (science books, press articles, audiovisual material, and activities such as visits to science museums) play a significant role in awakening the vocation for science. From these results it may be stated that PCST—in addition to its function of informing and forming citizens—exerts a significant influence in fostering scientific vocation.

Over the last few years, several popular techno-scientific magazines have been published which provide a number of visions with regards to technology. This paper aims to analyze the manner in which some of these popular Italian scientific magazines represent technology. The methodology utilized in this analysis is based on a frame analysis of a sampling of five Italian popular scientific magazines (Focus, Quark, T3, Jack, Explora), covering a period extending from July 2004 to January 2006. Results of this analysis show that two of the most frequent frames are the "vaporware" frame, relating to technologies not yet ready for the market, however presented as though they were, and the "relationships between technologies" frame, which emphasizes the relationship certain technologies have with other technologies. Technology is represented in negative as well as positive terms, often on the same topic and in the same magazine. This paper refers to this type of representation as "technological Orientalism," quoting Said, meaning that technology is always seen as something which can be both terrifying and dangerous as well as wondrous and fabulous.

The Canadian Act Respecting Assisted Human Reproduction and Related Research (AHR Act), which came into effect in 2004, was the culmination of fifteen years of policy development in this often controversial field. Drawing from a series of semi-structured elite interviews and extensive documentary research, we examine the path to policy for the AHR Act. We identified several influences on the Act’s development, including: 1) feminist-informed activism which found a balance between rejecting the medical model of reproduction and instituting protections against the commodifying potential of reproductive technologies; 2) Canada’s proximity to the United States (and its contrasting structures and stances); 3) the role of professional elites in supporting or resisting the proposed regulations; and 4) the tensions between federal and provincial jurisdiction in the Canadian federalist state. The path to this outcome provides an illuminating study of the tensions between internal and external pressures in the policy process.

We examine the crafting of publics in the global Barcoding of Life Initiative (BOLI)—seen as crucial for re-invigorating, and democratizing, early-twenty-first-century taxonomic sciences and hence for actually achieving biodiversity protection. Our approach to the issue of publics differs from that of conventional public understanding of or engagement with science work. Combining science and technology studies with critical political theory allows us to examine the discursive and material formation of publics occurring within the science of DNA barcoding. Co-productionist theory suggests BOLI to be actively crafting its prospective publics imaginatively, as an integral part of its self-composition as public science. Drawing on the work of Laclau’s On Populist Reason, we examine how such normatively weighted abstract publics are necessarily chronically incomplete, with an unavoidable tension between the universal and the particular.

The establishment of science centres in New Zealand coincided with reforms of the way scientific research was conducted and funded and a low-point in career prospects for scientists. For political and financial reasons, most New Zealand science centres sacrificed their independence and became associated with museums and now receive much of their funding through local authorities. This could have assisted in their promotion of the public understanding of science; but the availability of educational funding through a "Learning Experiences Outside the Classroom" scheme motivated the development of educationally oriented programmes targeted to school-children. Despite this emphasis, there is no firm evidence that the centres have had any influence in increasing the popularity of science within education. Moreover, the centres have become perceived predominantly as places for children. International trends suggest that regaining the adult audience might be possible through greater emphasis on scientific research outcomes and their social and economic implications, rather than interactive exhibits portraying scientific principles through idealized and simplified laboratory experiments. In New Zealand, the popularity of science festivals – initiated a few years ago – and the recent growth of café scientifiques, offer promise in this direction. Additional funding for these and research-based exhibitions might yet come from a component of research grants being required to be spent on the promotion of research to the public.

Genomics-related "deliberative" public consultations are all the rage. Drawing from theories of deliberative democracy, run by social scientists, governments and non-profit organizations globally, these events can produce valuable insights and governance solutions. There is a danger, however, of "deliberation" being viewed by its new practitioners as a homogenous "tool" due to a marked lack of analysis of the discursive processes at play. This paper addresses this gap, employing the discourse theory of Laclau to analyze small and large group deliberation at a public consultation on biobanking in British Columbia (BC), Canada, during 2007. Ethnographic and transcript analysis reveals small group deliberation to be a two-stage process, operating according to two different discursive logics. The paper concludes with five lessons for theorists and practitioners of deliberative public engagement with science.

Recent years have witnessed a ‘democratic turn’ towards active citizen participation in science and technology. The emerging participatory approach has been framed as a critique of a reductionist, outdated ‘deficit model’ of citizen competence, literacy or understanding. Participatory modes of citizen involvement with science are presented as competing rather than complementary in offering a strategy for making science and technology accountable and open to society. We use latent class models to develop cross-national measures of competence and participation, and explore the relation between the two. We argue that the question of how to analyze and assess the role of citizens in knowledge societies should not be an either/or – participation or competence – but a matter of understanding the balance and interconnected-ness of both. We suggest that the idea of a ‘scientific citizenship’ could be a useful integrative notion to bridge the divide between concerns about public participation and public competence.

Substantial investments were made in population based biobanks over the past decade. Ethnocultural community members are both sponsors and beneficiaries of biobanks. In addition, the success of biobank projects depends on community support and participation. Yet there are few empirical data on views, perceptions and interests of ethnocultural communities on biobanks. This silent gap in genomics, ethics and policy literatures has to be addressed. We conducted a qualitative research study with in-depth interviews of ethnocultural community leaders (e.g., members of the Canadian Parliament, school commissioners) on their perspectives concerning population specific genomics research and biobanks. An equal partnership model where public is not only informed, but also involved in decision-making processes was perceived as an essential democratic requisite. These empirical data on ethnocultural community leaders’ views, interests and perceptions identify several key socio-cultural and ethical factors that can be decisive for effective and sustainable community involvement in biobanks.

The relationship between gender, knowledge of biotechnology, attitudes toward biotechnology, and various socio-demographic variables was investigated using the Eurobarometer 52.1. It was found that neither socio-demographics, nor differing levels of scientific knowledge could explain females' greater probability of being pessimistic toward biotechnology. After running separate models for males and females, it was discovered that, for males, more knowledge of biotechnology decreased their probability of being pessimistic about science, but for females more knowledge of biotechnology actually lead to a greater probability of being pessimistic. Further, a gender–education interaction was discovered that revealed that, for males, education and knowledge of biotechnology have independent effects on attitudes, but for females education has no effect on attitudes towards biotechnology when knowledge is controlled. The results for females complicate the deficit model of social support for science, which posits that more knowledge of science always leads to more positive attitudes.

This article discusses results of a questionnaire survey of 156 university students in Israel and Austria examining reactions towards the Belated Twins scenario, which entails the artificial twinning of embryos of which one is immediately carried to term while the other one is born later. The scenario resembles a case of human reproductive cloning in terms of result (the creation of genetically identical individuals in a time-delayed manner) but it involves gamete fusion like "natural" reproduction. By means of qualitative text analysis we discuss the core themes mobilized both in support and opposition to the scenario. While Israeli and Austrian respondents held similar general attitudes (about half were in favour of legalizing Belated Twins, while about a third opposed it), they drew partly on different arguments to arrive at their conclusions. In both groups, uncertainty stemming from "novel" elements in the scenario was regularly interpreted as negatively exacerbating existing issues.

This research aimed to better understand the gap between journalists and scientists in the context of the media coverage of an environmental issue in Québec (Canada). Through in-depth interviews with journalists and scientists, we were able to identify different sources of frustration felt by both protagonists, notably the question of the scientists' revision of the journalists' text, the journalists' lack of accuracy, and the problem of different time frames in the media and the scientific worlds. This study also offered insights for bridging the gaps.

The cartography of controversies is a set of techniques to explore and visualize issues. It was developed by Bruno Latour as a didactic version of Actor-Network Theory to train college students in the investigation of contemporary socio-technical debate. The scope and interest of such cartography, however, exceed its didactic origin. Adopted and developed in several universities in Europe and the US, the cartography of controversies is today a full research method, though, unfortunately, not a much documented one. To fill this lack of documentation, we draw on our experience as Latour's teaching assistant, to introduce some of the main techniques of the social cartographer toolkit. In particular, in these pages we will focus on exploration, leaving the discussion of visualization tools to a further paper.

Providing technical and experiential information without overwhelming participants' perspectives presents a major challenge to public involvement in policy decisions. This article reports the design and analysis of a case study on incorporating expert and stakeholder knowledge without including them as deliberators, while supporting deliberative participants' ability to introduce and critically assess different perspectives. Analysis of audio-recorded deliberations illustrates how expert and stakeholder knowledge was cited, criticized and incorporated into deliberations. In conclusion, separating experts and stakeholders from deliberations may be an important prima facie principle when the goal is to enhance citizen representation on technical issues and related policy.

Research into human genetics has been expanding rapidly and most people learn about that research from mass media. Because prior research finds gender bias in aspects of both science and the media, we investigate the messages presented to the public concerning the relationship between biology and gender, taking as a case research on the genetic development of sexual difference before birth. We examine both the science that is getting media attention and the form that coverage takes. We find that gendered assumptions direct the science but also that scholarly discourse makes gender biases in method and interpretation accessible to scientific critique. On the other hand, mass media reporting ignores feminist critiques, marginalizes women and dramatically reinscribes gendered beliefs about the inherent superiority of men and the biological basis for gender differences in personality and behavior.

One trend in public engagement concerns involving the public in research priority setting. In this study members of the public were asked to select which of four potential projects (about food-related topics, presented by scientists) ought to be funded. The aim of the study was twofold: to trial and evaluate a method of engaging with the public about science, and to study the factors used by the public in making funding allocation decisions. Results suggest that, while participants enjoyed the process and appeared to learn from it, they were not particularly "representative"—a common problem with engagement approaches of this type. Results also suggest that participants' funding decisions were largely based on factors such as "benefit to society" and "personal relevance," though aspects such as the "likeability" and "trustworthiness" of the speaker may have played a role. Implications for involving the public in funding policy decisions are discussed.

We use a constructivist analysis to describe how citizens learn and integrate highly technical scientific information about a new technology (bioremediation) within the context of a risk-based relationship with a federal agency in their own backyards. We engaged members of the general public in a workshop process where they produced a consensus report that describes how bioremediation works, characterizes the scientific issues not yet addressed, and sets the problem within the context of institutional arrangements for the production of knowledge. On the basis of their social roles in their communities, they applied new knowledge to their own experiences and worked at ways to translate their understanding of the technology into information that could be used in their multiple roles as learners in the workshop, as well as citizens and family members outside the workshop.

This article uses notions of "public talk" and "regulation as facilitation" to develop an account of public bioethics in the UK as a form of scientific governance, drawing on document analysis and expert interviews. First, this article will show the "ethical" problematization of scientific governance in the UK through the emergence of the Human Genetics Commission (HGC), Nuffield Council on Bioethics (NCB), and Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority (HFEA). Second, it will argue that an "ethical" model has emerged alongside and partially displaced a "technical" model of expertise in scientific governance. The article will introduce the notion of "proper talk," a set of techniques for facilitating ethical debate, characterized by the active elicitation of public engagement and the inclusion of emotions and subjectivity. The article then questions whether the authority to categorize publics and identify "proper" ethical positions reintroduces problems of expertise in a new form.

While the media are a significant source of information for the public on science and technology, journalists are often accused of providing only a partial picture by neglecting the points of view of vulnerable stakeholders. This paper analyzes the press coverage of four controversial health interventions in order to uncover what voices are treated marginally in the media and what the relative contributions of these voices are to the stories being told. Our empirical study shows that: 1) patterns of source utilization vary depending on the health intervention and less dominant stakeholders are in fact represented; and 2) the use of marginal voices fills certain information gaps but the overall contribution of such voices to the controversies remains limited. In order to strengthen the media coverage of science and technology issues, we suggest that further research on journalistic practices: 1) move beyond the dichotomy between journalists and scientists, and 2) explore how different categories of readers appraise the meaning and relevance of media content.

This paper analyses a corpus of articles on GM crops and food which appeared in six UK newspapers in the first three months of 2004, the year following the GM Nation? debate (2003). Using the methods of critical discourse analysis we focus on how specific and pervasive representations of the major stakeholders in the national debate on GM—the British public, the British government, the science of GM, and biotechnology companies—served significant rhetorical functions in the controversy. Of particular significance was the pervasive representation of the British public as uniformly opposed to GM crops and food which served rhetorically to position the British government as undemocratic and as being beholden to powerful political and economic interests. Of significance also in our analysis, is how the science of GM farming itself became a highly contested arena. In short, our analysis demonstrates how the GM debate was represented in the newsprint media as a "battleground" of competing interests. We conclude by considering the possible implications of this representation given the increasing emphasis placed on the importance of deliberative and inclusive forms of science policy decision-making.

Using discourse analysis, this study examines the representation of prescription medicines in the UK newsprint media and, specifically, how the meaning and function of medicines are constructed. At the same time, it examines the extent to which the newsprint media represents a resource for health information, and considers how it may encourage or challenge faith in modern medicine and medical authority.As such, it extends analysis around concepts such as the informed patient and examines the representation of patients and doctors and the extent to which patient–doctor identities promoted in the newsprint media reflect a shift away from paternalism to negotiated encounters. Findings show the media constructs a discrete, contradictory, and frequently oversimplified set of characterizations about medicine. Moreover, it discursively constructs realities that justify and sustain medial dominance. Ideological paradigms in discourse assign patients as passive and disempowered while simultaneously privileging "expert" knowledge. This constructs a reality that marginalizes patients' participation in decision-making.

We use an experimental panel study design to investigate the effect of providing "value-neutral" information about genomic science in the form of a short film to a random sample of the British public. We find little evidence of attitude change as a function of information provision. However, our results show that information provision significantly increased dropout from the study amongst less educated respondents. Our findings have implications both for our understanding of the knowledge–attitude relationship in public opinion toward genomic science and for science communication more generally.

This article presents the results of a content study of how nanotechnology has been framed in Danish national newspapers by taking a random sample of 250 articles published between 1996 and 2006 from a population of 1,062 articles. The articles were analyzed for "dominant frame" and "dominant tone" with respect to risks and benefits of nanotechnology. The findings demonstrate a remarkable positive tone in the articles with a ratio of ten to one in favor of "benefits outweigh risks" versus "risks outweigh benefits." Using data from this content study the author analyzes patterns of newspaper attention and framing. The data are used in a comparative study to challenge simplistic narratives of general similarities and differences between European and US contexts, making a claim for paying more attention to local cultural and national contexts in studies of media coverage of emerging technologies.

Natural scientists often appear in the news media as key actors in the management of risk. This paper examines the way in which a small group of astronomers and planetary scientists have constructed asteroids as risky objects and have attempted to control the media representation of the issue. It shows how scientists negotiate the uncertainties inherent in claims about distant objects and future events by drawing on quantitative risk assessments even when these are inapplicable or misleading. Although the asteroid scientists worry that media coverage undermines their authority, journalists typically accept the scientists' framing of the issue. The asteroid impact threat reveals the implicit assumptions which can shape natural scientists' public discourse and the tensions which arise when scientists' quantitative uncertainty claims are re-presented in the news media.

Public perception of global climate change is strongly influenced by media constructions of scientific knowledge. This paper explores recent scientific findings and the press coverage thereof and is based on a content analysis of two years of global reporting on climate related positive feedback mechanisms (climate system responses to global warming which lead to further warming). Results indicate that non-US news organizations, especially in the UK, are at the forefront of the discourse on climate feedback loops. Poor US press coverage on such climate thresholds might be understood not only as self-censorship, but as a "false negative" error.

This paper presents the results of the first two surveys conducted using the innovative NERD (Norms Evolving in Response to Dilemmas) platform. The structure, results, and analysis of the first two NERD surveys on genomics and human health and salmon genomics are compared. This comparison demonstrates that NERD is a cost-effective and efficient public consultation and experimental tool that has provided insight on public acceptance of new technologies such as genomics.

This paper tests how the biotechnology issue, as an example of a major contemporary scientific debate, was framed and reframed by opinion-leading newspapers in Germany, Britain and the United States during the years 2000–2. The research design suggests a theoretical foundation of structure frame categories on the article level, combined with frames on the argument level. Argument framing is analyzed in actors' statements and journalists' own comments. Article framing is analyzed as structures and interpretative patterns in the whole news item. Comparative and cluster analysis of structure frames on the article level, argument frames, and single attributes of the text, shows that certain reframing takes place when media attention increases, in the form of a stronger ethical discourse in Germany and a more prominent public discourse in Britain. In the US opinion-leading press, the scientific-economic discourse is consequent.