Translating Science into News
Brian G. Southwell, University of Minnesota

Scientific research often appears in the news, but its appearance is sporadic, inconsistent, and sometimes inaccurate. No wonder, given the tight deadlines in TV news, its emphasis on timeliness and controversy, and the sheer difficulty of presenting scientific information in ways easily understood by non-expert audiences. So is it worthwhile to try to improve television news coverage of science? Do regular television news viewers want such stories? Can exposure to science news stories have an effect on viewer perceptions about science and scientists?

The answer to all of these questions is yes, according to a recent body of research conducted by my team at the University of Minnesota in conjunction with the American Institute of Physics.

All of this work has focused on viewer engagement with stories from the Discoveries and Breakthroughs Inside Science project, which receives support from the National Science Foundation. Discoveries and Breakthroughs Inside Science (DBIS) is a syndicated science news service available to local television stations in many markets around the United States. The service regularly offers a broad spectrum of research news by working with a coalition of science, technology, engineering, and mathematics organizations, including universities and research institutions. Typical stories produced by DBIS fall into three major areas – earth and atmospheric sciences, medical advances, and physical sciences and engineering.

So what has evaluation evidence suggested thus far? Research conducted in three cities around the U.S. (in small, medium, and large markets) offers some insight about what viewers want with regards to science news. Many participants – all of whom reportedly watched local television news at least twice a week in recent months – actively expressed a desire to see stories about science that were relatively substantive and in-depth. Many seemed to want to learn something in return for spending time watching a segment. These participants, who tune in to check the weather or get other practical information, appeared to use the news for information-seeking more than for simple time-passing or entertainment and seemed to have high expectations for each segment. This notion stands in contrast to the picture of an uninterested populace often inferred by skeptics and yet also resonates with some recent industry analyses: In this era of newsroom cost-cutting, those news programs that opt for substance appear to be more likely to maintain audiences.

What about the actual impact of stories such as those developed by DBIS? Results from a large-scale experiment conducted in 2005 with randomly sampled regular local television news viewers in a mid-size market (on the east coast of the U.S.) suggests that watching DBIS stories has at least two intriguing impacts. Such exposure apparently encourages viewers to think that science is accessible and encourages them to see the connections between scientific pursuits and societal well-being.

Specifically, those randomly assigned to view a series of representative DBIS stories (embedded in a week’s worth of broadcasts from a recent out-of-market news program) were more likely than participants who did not see DBIS stories to subsequently report that “science and math are topics that people like me can understand.” Moreover, those who saw DBIS stories also were more likely than their peers in a control group to later disagree that modern science does more harm than good.

So why do DBIS stories have such an impact? The unique structure of the DBIS project might offer a partial explanation. The American Institute of Physics (AIP) administers the project and, along with subcontractors, produces the segments. In order to balance the needs of the television news industry with requirements for scientific accuracy, AIP not only consults a national advisory board consisting of scientists and television news professionals, but also ensures that each story is peer-reviewed by a team of academic scientists. Organizations in the DBIS coalition actively participate in the production of the television news reports, offering an outside review standard not typically available in most newsrooms. While resource-demanding, the result seems to be quite promising both for those who care about attracting audiences and those who care about affecting perceptions about science and scientists.

Research associated with the project continues but we've already learned that many regular television news viewers want more substantive television news stories than currently available fare offers and science, technology, engineering and mathematics represent areas that make sense to cover in that light. Viewers also might learn something along the way about how the universe apparently works, which might make science news a better – and more appreciated – use of the airwaves than Hollywood celebrity reports.

AUTHOR INFORMATION

Brian Southwell (PhD, University of Pennsylvania) is an Assistant Professor at the University of Minnesota, in Minneapolis, MN, USA, where he studies media effects, including memory and belief change, with particular emphasis on issues related to health and science. For more information about the research discussed or about his work in general, you can reach him at south026@umn.edu.

PROJECT INFORMATION

The American Institute of Physics (AIP) in College Park, MD, administers the Discoveries and Breakthroughs Inside Science program. Alicia Torres, Ph.D., and James Stith, D.Ed., are Co-PIs of the NSF grant awarded to AIP for the project.