This timely and accessible text shows how portrayals of science in popular media—including television, movies, and social media—influence public attitudes around messages from the scientific community, affect the kinds of research that receive support, and inform perceptions of who can become a scientist. The book builds on theories of cultivation, priming, framing, and media models while drawing on years of content analyses, national surveys, and experiments. A wide variety of media genres—from Hollywood blockbusters and prime-time television shows to cable news channels and satirical comedy programs, science documentaries and children’s cartoons to Facebook posts and YouTube videos—are explored with rigorous social science research and an engaging, accessible style. Case studies on climate change, vaccines, genetically modified foods, evolution, space exploration, and forensic DNA testing are presented alongside reflections on media stereotypes and disparities in terms of gender, race, and other social identities. Science in the Media illuminates how scientists and media producers can bridge gaps between the scientific community and the public, foster engagement with science, and promote an inclusive vision of science, while also highlighting how readers themselves can become more active and critical consumers of media messages about science. Science in the Media serves as a supplemental text for courses in science communication and media studies, and will be of interest to anyone concerned with publicly engaged science.

This book provides a theoretical framework which allows us to understand why and how scientists address the general public. Bucchi's theories on scientific communication in the media make a valuable contribution to the current debate.

The proposal to vaccinate adolescent girls against the human papilloma virus ignited political controversy, as did the advent of fracking and a host of other emerging technologies. These disputes attest to the persistent gap between expert and public perceptions. Complicating the communication of sound science and the debates that surround the societal applications of that science is a changing media environment in which misinformation can elicit belief without corrective context and likeminded individuals are prone to seek ideologically comforting information within their own self-constructed media enclaves. Drawing on the expertise of leading science communication scholars from six countries, The Oxford Handbook of the Science of Science Communication not only charts the media landscape - from news and entertainment to blogs and films - but also examines the powers and perils of human biases - from the disposition to seek confirming evidence to the inclination to overweight endpoints in a trend line. In the process, it draws together the best available social science on ways to communicate science while also minimizing the pernicious effects of human bias. The Handbook adds case studies exploring instances in which communication undercut or facilitated the access to scientific evidence. The range of topics addressed is wide, from genetically engineered organisms and nanotechnology to vaccination controversies and climate change. Also unique to this book is a focus on the complexities of involving the public in decision making about the uses of science, the regulations that should govern its application, and the ethical boundaries within which science should operate. The Handbook is an invaluable resource for researchers in the communication fields, particularly in science and health communication, as well as to scholars involved in research on scientific topics susceptible to distortion in partisan debate.

How science and technology are covered by the media is a central factor in scientific illiteracy. Journalists value timeliness, speed, simplicity, and clarity. Yet stories about science and technology may be long-building, complex, and without dramatic, time-pegged events. The need to grab and hold attention, to write tight stories or produce short segments, can come at the cost of context and nuance. One observer, noting journalism's preference for attention-grabbing, conflict-driven events, has joked that reporters two thousand years ago would have covered the heck out of the crucifixion - and missed Christianity. As the world grows more complex, there is an increasing need for citizens to understand the scientific and technological dimensions of daily news events. Journalists play a critical role in helping readers, listeners, and viewers appreciate the science underlying major policy choices. And scientists, in turn, must effectively communicate to the public, especially through the media. We hope that the essays gathered in this volume will generate a broader understanding of the intertwined roles of the media and the scientific and technical community in helping to ensure a well-informed public.

Policy makers, as well as the general public, are often unaware of social science research until a story about it appears in the national media. Even in official Washington, a staffer's report on social research may go unnoticed while a report in the Washington Post receives immediate attention. This study takes a systematic and revealing look at social science reporting. How do journalists hear about social science, and why do they select certain stories to cover and not others? How do journalistic standards for selection compare with social scientists' own judgments of merit? How do reporters attempt to ensure accuracy, and how freely do they introduce their own interpretations of social science findings? How satisfied are social scientists with the selection and accuracy of social science news? In Part I, Carol H. Weiss addresses these questions on the basis of personal interviews with social scientists and the journalists who wrote about their work. Part II, by Eleanor Singer, is based on an analysis of media content itself, and compares social science reporting over time (between 1970 and 1982) and across media (newspapers, newsmagazines, television). These two complementary perspectives combine to produce a thorough, realistic assessment of the way social science moves out of the academy and into the world of news.

"These 40 simple science activities will have young kids searching the house for everyday items to learn about temperature, pressure, water, air, heat, and plants! Each easy and fun activity includes how-to photos, simple instructions, short explanations, and introduces beginning math principles. With tips and extra information to extend the scientific experience, this book will get kids thinking like scientists in no time at all! Book includes: supply & tool lists, visual and text-based explanations, step-by-step instructions and photos, and safety information."--

Written by literary scholars, historians of science, and cultural historians, the twenty-two original essays in this collection explore the intriguing and multifaceted interrelationships between science and culture through the periodical press in nineteenth-century Britain. Ranging across the spectrum of periodical titles, the six sections comprise: 'Women, Children, and Gender', 'Religious Audiences', 'Naturalizing the Supernatural', 'Contesting New Technologies', 'Professionalization and Journalism', and 'Evolution, Psychology, and Culture'. The essays offer some of the first 'samplings and soundings' from the emergent and richly interdisciplinary field of scholarship on the relations between science and the nineteenth-century media.