Digital media, while opening a vast array of avenues for lay people to effectively engage with news, information and debates about important science and health issues, have become a fertile land for various stakeholders to spread misinformation and disinformation, stimulate uncivil discussions and engender ill-informed, dangerous public decisions. Recent developments of the Covid-19 infodemic might just be the tipping point of a process that has been long simmering in controversial areas of health and science (e.g., climate-change denial, anti-vaccination, anti-5G, Flat Earth doctrines). We bring together a wide range of fresh data and perspectives from four continents to help media scholars, journalists, science communicators, scientists, health professionals and policy-makers to better undersand these developments and what can be done to mitigate their impacts on public engagement with health and science controversies.

The amplification of Coronavirus risk on social media sees Vietnam falling volatile to a chaotic sphere of mis/disinformation and incivility, which instigates a movement to counter its effects on public anxiety and fear. Benign or malign, these civil forces generate a huge public pressure to keep the one-party system on toes, forcing it to be unusually transparent in responding to public concerns.

This paper discusses journalists’ vast misunderstanding, underestimation and ignorance of the nature of statistics and their role in shaping the public’s daily work and life. In countering what the authors see as the most common myths about numbers and the news, it aims to set the scene for the key issues and debates that this special issue covers. At the centre of this discussion are three key points: (a) statistics are not distant from the news: they are at the heart of journalism; (b) statistics are not mathematics: they are about the application of the same kind of logical and valid reasoning needed for other types of news material; and (c) statistics are neither cold nor boring: they are an endless source of inspiration for much excellent journalism in the past, present and, undoubtedly, future.

Based on focus groups with young people in England and Scotland and in-depth interviews with journalists, communication professionals and campaigners, this article examines how UK youths perceive climate change issues and how they receive climate messages from the news media and other communication forms. We found a strong sense of pessimism and disempowerment among our participants and identified a set of ‘triple-R reasons’ for their disengagement and inaction – namely the lack of relevance, resources and rituals. In that context, the media and other major communication forms have tended to hinder rather than help our young participants to be more actively involved and engaged – due mainly to the lack of positive and relevant messages and the focus on the extreme and the controversial.

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Using data from a national survey, this article explores the relationship between nine common socio-technical advantages of online news and how it is used and alters existing news use habits. The article finds that apart from the ability to ‘have my say to the news media’, all the other attributes — no cost, multitasking, more news choices, in-depth and background information, 24/7 updates, customization, ability to discuss news with peers, and the existence of different viewpoints — have a more or less marked effect on the way people adopt, use and integrate online news into daily life. Most remarkably, online news users seem to expect immediacy at the same time as depth and diversity of news and views. Ironically, however, each of these attributes contributes, at various levels, to the displacement effect of online news on each of the four traditional news media. The many implications of these findings for journalism are placed in the context of recent developments in the online news industry.

Using data from a national survey of 4270 Australians conducted in late 2003, this article merges the structural approach to media audience formation with innovation diffusion theory to explore major socio-structural factors influencing the adoption of online news and information. It finds that more internet accessibility, traditional news and information usage, and privileged socio-economic profiles are strong predictors of online news and information adoption.

Based primarily on a systematic review of the relevant literature between 2000 and 2017, this article reflects on the state of journalism about science in developing countries, with a focus on its issues, challenges and implications for their developmental processes and causes. Five major themes emerge from our analysis: (a) heavy dependence on foreign sources, especially the media of the Global North; (b) the low status of domestic science news in newsrooms; (c) uncritical science reporting that easily lends itself to influences of non-science vested interests; (d) tight grip of politics on science journalism; and (e) ineffective relationships between science and journalism. We will demonstrate that, while some of these problems exist in the North, they can have far more severe consequences on the progress of the South, where news plays an almost exclusive role in informing and engaging laypeople with science and its socio-cultural, economic and political implications.