The Celebrity Scientists

This collective case study examines how four contemporary British scientists and popular science writers, Stephen Hawking, Richard Dawkins, Susan Greenfield and James Lovelock, are portrayed in mass media as celebrities. It finds that the scientists’ private and public lives merge in their representations, their images commodified and marketed by the cultural industries, their mediated personae embodying abstract ideas of truth and reason. The celebrity scientists base their authority on their scientific credentials, achieve public appeal through popularisation, particularly publishing popular science books, and speak in general culture on behalf of science. The subjects, to varying degrees, embody scientism as the supreme epistemology, but their public intellectual work is marked by a weak engagement with philosophical, cultural and sociological discourses. They engage with the cultural industries in the construction of their celebrity personae, and are criticised by their peers because their popular renown is considered to have eclipsed their internal scientific status. Using approaches from celebrity studies, science studies, biography, intellectual history and historiography of science, the study contextualises the celebrity scientists in late modern Britain, shaped by Thatcherism, Blairism, commercialism, globalisation, mediatisation, public science, and conceptions of the public intellectual. The subjects share characteristics with iconic historical scientists, including Isaac Newton, Charles Darwin, Albert Einstein, Fred Hoyle, Robert Oppenheimer, Rachel Carson, Carl Sagan and Stephen Jay Gould. The representations of the contemporary celebrity scientists feature associations with these famous historical figures, associations that provide cultural continuity to science and serve as a means of marketing modern scientist-authors. The four subjects each have a distinctive celebrity persona. Dawkins is the positivist atheist. Hawking is the disembodied genius. Lovelock is the environmentalist guru. Greenfield is the glamorous female scientist. The subjects are extreme examples of mediatisation in post-academic science, are protagonists in an increasingly commercialised era of public science, and have contributed to a richer general scientific culture

Caricatures and omissions: representations of the news media in 'Don't look up'

‘Don't look up’ represents the news media as harmful to the public understanding of science. The news media turns honest scientists into corrupted and compromised media personalities. Its dynamics and demands make it unable to inform the public that a planet-killing comet, the film's allegory for climate change, is an existential threat. This commentary argues that these representations devalue the power of celebrity scientists to communicate science, ignore how journalists have placed climate change and ideas of climate catastrophe on the public agenda, and imply there is an idealised type of science communication — the deficit model — that journalists have corroded

The laureate as public intellectual: Paul Crutzen and the politics of the environment

This article argues that Nobel Prize-winning chemist Paul Crutzen (1933 – 2021) spoke in the name of science over several decades as a public intellectual who shaped research fields, environmental policy, and public understanding of the environment. It analyses the atmospheric chemist as a case study to explain the formation and influence of the scientist as a public intellectual, tracing the trajectory of his public career, focusing on his critical contributions to four significant episodes in modern environmental politics: His warnings in the 1970s of damage to the ozone layer, his catalysing impact on the nuclear winter debates of the 1980s, his turn-of-the-century conceptualisation of the Anthropocene, and his late-career advocacy of solar geoengineering. It undertakes a textual analysis of four agenda-setting articles to demonstrate how Crutzen performed the public intellectual functions of testing the assumptions of scientific and policy elites, and framing new ways of understanding environmental problems. It argues that he was a technocratic public intellectual who viewed scientists as guides for society to understand and respond to human-caused environmental threats. As climate change becomes a defining issue of the twenty-second century, Crutzen’s career illuminates the potential and limitations of the technocratic public intellectual to shape global environmental politics

The chemist as anti-hero: Walter White and Sherlock Holmes as case studies

Compared to chemists in film, chemists in modern television drama are underexamined by scholars, even though the genre is a powerful processor of images and ideas about culture and society. This critical essay draws on ideas from science communication, media studies and literary studies to examine the representation of chemists and chemistry in the acclaimed television dramas “Breaking Bad” and “Sherlock.” A textual analysis of these shows, chosen as critical case studies, demonstrates that they both portray their chemist protagonists as anti-heroes, who are morally ambivalent characters. The essay argues that both shows portray chemistry as uncommon knowledge, which is conducted largely in isolation or in secret. Although the shows represent chemistry as an empirical and experimental science, they demonstrate that the craft of chemistry is not ethically neutral. In “Breaking Bad,” Walter White chooses to stop using his chemistry skills to teach, and subsequently slides into an immoral world of death, destruction and destabilization. In “Sherlock,” Sherlock Holmes is an amoral, but benign, figure who uses his forensic knowledge to save lives and confront crime. These representations demonstrate that ethical choices are entwined with the practice of chemistry and these choices,in turn, have social consequences

From Boom to Bust: a Post-Celtic Tiger Analysis of the Norms, Values and Roles of Irish Financial Journalists

The collapse of Ireland\u27s economy into its worst recession in modern history has prompted some professional reflection about the roles and responsibilities of the country’s financial journalists. Conor Brady, a former editor of the Irish Times, asked in a commentary article published in his former paper: ‘Was the forming of this crisis reportable earlier? Were emerging trends apparent? Did they [the news media] do as good a job as they might have in flagging the approaching storm?’ Brady, editor of the paper between 1986 and 2002, the period corresponding to the rise of the Celtic Tiger economy, concluded that criticisms of the systemic problems in the financial system were articulated by some figures in key positions in Irish society, but were not reported in the news media ‘in a form that was sufficiently sustained, coherent and authoritative’

From Boom to Bust: a Post-Celtic Tiger analysis of the Norms, Values and Roles of Irish Financial Journalists

The collapse of Ireland\u27s economy into its worst recession in modern history has prompted some professional reflection about the roles and responsibilities of the country’s financial journalists. Conor Brady, a former editor of the Irish Times, asked in a commentary article published in his former paper: ‘Was the forming of this crisis reportable earlier? Were emerging trends apparent? Did they [the news media] do as good a job as they might have in flagging the approaching storm?’ Brady, editor of the paper between 1986 and 2002, the period corresponding to the rise of the Celtic Tiger economy, concluded that criticisms of the systemic problems in the financial system were articulated by some figures in key positions in Irish society, but were not reported in the news media ‘in a form that was sufficiently sustained, coherent and authoritative’

The ecomodernists: journalists reimagining a sustainable future

This chapter defines and explains ecomodernist journalism, a way of reporting on the environment underpinned by the philosophy of ecomodernism, which argues that government-driven technological innovation, entrepreneurship, and ingenuity are the principle means by which societies can hope to achieve sustainable development. The chapter is based on an analysis of the work of high-profile journalists writing on the environment and climate change who draw on and apply principles of ecomodernism to offer a distinct framing of sustainable development. It demonstrates how the philosophy informs the work of these writers and thinkers, and the particular approaches they take in assessing expert knowledge, evaluating policy proposals and technological options, and in brokering cross-cutting dialogue. The analysis of these prominent writers and thinkers demonstrates that ecomodernist journalism has successfully gained global audiences, been assimilated into mainstream reporting, and has the potential to be the animating worldview that distinguishes the coverage of individual journalists and news organisations as they report on sustainability. The chapter argues that journalism informed by ecomodernist ideas fulfils a vital need in public and political debates over sustainable development

From AAA to Junk: Credit rating agencies as news sources in the Irish print-media during the economic crisis, 2008–2013

From AAA to Junk: Credit rating agencies as news sources in the Irish print-media during the economic crisis, 2008–201

The Irish punditocracy as contrarian voice: opinion coverage of the workplace smoking ban.

The journalism of commentators and columnists has remained a lacuna in media studies. Their work has received so little sustained critical attention that it has become something of a ‘black box’, even as the space devoted to opinion coverage in newspapers has expanded significantly over the past three decades. The section of the newspaper devoted to opinion journalism has traditionally been the op-ed page, so-called because of its usual placement opposite the section containing editorials. Viewed as a forum for the articulation of diverse viewpoints about current social issues, the page aims to provide a space in the ‘marketplace of ideas’ for the expression of opinions not found in news and editorial sections of newspapers…. This paper presents an analysis of the opinion coverage of another contentious and multifaceted Irish policy issue, the workplace smoking ban, implemented on 31 March 2004. The decision to make Ireland the first European Union country to implement a law of this kind, the first national ban of its type in the world, was addressed in thousands of Irish newspaper articles from its first announcement by the then Minister for Health, Micheál Martin, in January 2004. Its enactment marked the culmination of decades of anti-tobacco campaigning and legislation. This paper aims to: 1. identify the dimensions of the ban that were explored by commentators; 2. determine whether the areas of interest for opinion writers were the same as the areas explored intensively by news reporters and editorial writers; 3. test whether a diverse range of viewpoints was expressed in commentary on the tobacco ban; 4. examine whether the preactionary discourse identified by Titley (2008) in opinion writing on immigration emerged in the commentary of selected writers on a different policy issue; 5. examine if Irish columnists had an influence on the enactment of the smoking ban legislation