A Media Effects Model for Public Perceptions of Science and Technology

This study introduces a media effects model specific to public perceptions of science and technology. Analysis of the National Science Board’s Science and Engineering Indicators Survey provides evidence that different media— newspapers, general television, science television, and science magazines—do affect perceptions differently. These media effects are direct but also indirect, as mediated through effects on science knowledge. Although newspaper reading, science television viewing, and science magazine reading all promote positive perceptions of science, given the relative size of its audience, the impact of general television viewing remains the most compelling finding. The negative images of science on television appear to cultivate scientific reservations, whereas television’s portrayal of science as sometimes omnipotent, and offering hope for the future, appears to also promote a competing schema related to the promise of science. Television’s direct effect on reservations is reinforced through the medium’s negative relationship with science knowledge. The popular television series The X-Files features a Holmes and Watson duo of FBI detectives. Fox Mulder is a credulous Oxford-trained parapsychologist, and Dana Scullyis a skeptical medical doctor with a background in physics. Mulder and Scully’s cases, derived from a filing cabinet collection of leads designated “X” for “unexplained,” takes them to the border of reality. From psychic phenomena to genetic mutation to alien abduction, examples

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