Understanding citizen perceptions of science controversy: bridging the ethnographic—survey research divide

Abstract

Using the contemporary debate in the United States over embryonic stem cell research as a test case, we outline a theoretical framework that points to the central impact of value predispositions, schema, political knowledge, and forms of mass media use in shaping public perceptions of science. In the process, by proposing an alternative approach to the dominant science literacy model, we address the existing divide between survey-based and ethnographic studies. Analyzing nationally representative survey data collected in the US in the fall of 2003, our findings suggest that value predispositions related to Christian conservatism and social ideology, along with schema related to abortion and reservations about science, serve as primary influences on citizen evaluations of embryonic stem cell research and therapeutic cloning, while our measure of issue-specific political knowledge had no statistically significant impact. In addition, after all controls, attention to newspaper coverage along with various forms of genre-specific entertainment television use have unique influences on citizen evaluations, suggesting that the mass media provide an important part of the social context by which citizens judge controversial science. Other survey results since our data collection in 2003 lend support to our findings. Religious and ideological values appear to filter the influence of information disseminated by scientific institutions. We conclude by discussing future research that connects findings from ethnographic studies with surveybased approaches.

GM Crops in Hungary: Comparing Mass Media Framing and Public Understanding of Technoscientific Controversy

“…Numerous previous studies have found some extent of empirical co-occurrence of media content/media use and public understanding of GM crops or other kinds of biotechnologies (Bauer, 2002(Bauer, , 2005aBesley & Shanahan, 2005;Ho et al, 2008;Hornig Priest, 1994;Hughes et al, 2008;Liu & Priest, 2009;Nisbet & Goidel, 2007;Stewart et al, 2009;Vilella-Vila & Costa-Font, 2008;Wagner & Kronberger, 2001;Wagner et al, 2002). The present paper intended to contribute to this body of literature among others by providing a case study from a country where the issue of GM crops was of lower salience in the media and lower on the public agenda than in the societies on which the earlier studies had focused.…”

“…A number of researchers from other countries have reported some kind of empirical relationship between media use and public understanding of biotechnologies -including GM as well as the red-green biotechnology distinction -even if not necessarily all media variables were significant, and even if differences were found between countries (Bauer, 2002(Bauer, , 2005aBesley & Shanahan, 2005;Ho, Brossard, & Scheufele, 2008;Hornig Priest, 1994;Hughes et al, 2008;Liu & Priest, 2009;Nisbet & Goidel, 2007;Stewart, Dickerson, & Hotchkiss, 2009;Vilella-Vila & Costa-Font, 2008;Wagner & Kronberger, 2001;Wagner, Kronberger, & Seifert, 2002). Many of these previous studies have concentrated on societies where there has been heated public debate on the GM controversy (Hughes, Kitzinger, & Murdock, 2008).…”

Religious beliefs, knowledge about science and attitudes towards medical genetics

“…Sometimes education is used as a proxy for science knowledge, other times in combination with direct measures. Attitudes to stem cell research, for example, are positively associated with level of education (Nisbet & Goidel, 2007), issue-specific awareness (Nisbet, 2005) and attention to media reports of scientific issues (Ho et al, 2008 ;Nisbet & Goidel, 2007). Education has also demonstrated a significant positive association with openness to prenatal genetic testing (Singer et al, 1999) and pessimism about biotechnology (Simon, 2010 (Brossard & Nisbet, 2007 ;Popkin, 1991) and motivated reasoning (Kahan et al, 2008).…”

Sustainable Management of Plant Quarantine Pests: The Case of Olive Quick Decline Syndrome

“…Deficit model thinking assumes that facts speak for themselves and have to be interpreted by all citizens in similar ways, otherwise irrational public beliefs are invoked [116]. In the case of the CVC strain in the US, as well as many other plant pathogens worldwide, interpretation of "facts" by citizens-or, more appropriately, biological observation-were similar, generally accepting scientists' findings or international guidelines about plant protection.…”