Current state and challenges of science in today's TV: a look at the interplay between supply and demand on european media markets

Aquest estudi avalua l'estat actual de la ciència a la televisió i els seus reptes de futur. Les avaluacions es basen substancialment en un parell de media studies empírics comparatius, publicats en l'última dècada, centrats bé en la producció de continguts de ciències a la televisió europea, bé en la recepció d'aquests continguts per part del públic europeu. Aquest treball integra ambdues perspectives en un quadre complet per trobar la clau de la interacció bàsica entre l'oferta i la demanda de la ciència a la televisió. Es diagnostica que l'oferta de programes especialitzats depèn predominantment de canals públics amb finançament fort i convenientment estructurats, essent especialment clau la presència de petits canals públics especialitzats per explicar les diferències considerables en la programació a tota Europa. Es diagnostica, a més, que la demanda d'aquests programes per part del públic europeu en general no és suficient per estimular-ne la producció, particularment en el cas dels espectadors més joves, que mostren una manca rellevant d'interès. Per concloure, s'identifiquen els principals reptes a què s'enfronten els productors de televisió quan es tracta d'arribar a la major audiència possible.This study assesses the current state of science in TV and its future challenges. The assessments are based in substantial parts on a couple of comparative empirical media studies published in the last decade. The focus of these studies was either on the production of science contents in European TV, or on the reception of these contents by European Audiences. This paper integrates both perspectives into a comprehensive picture in order to unlock the basic interplay between supply and demand of Science in TV. It is diagnosed that the supply of specialised programmes is predominantly dependent upon financially strong and conveniently structured public service channels, especially the presence of small public niche channels is key to explain the considerable differences of programme offers across Europe. It is further diagnosed that the demand for these programmes by European audiences in general is not sufficient to stimulate production, of special relevance is the lack of appeal for younger viewers. We conclude by identifying main challenges TV producers face when trying to reach the largest possible audience

Congruency within rural social networks as an indicator of interpersonal influence on risk judgments: the great stir caused by BSE in a village in northern Germany

In the following survey, congruency within a sample of 150 rural social networks ascertained by comparing independently gathered data is used as an indicator of interpersonal influence concerning BSE-related current knowledge and consumption habits. Our findings suggest that friends, relatives and acquaintances mutually orientated each other about what was worth knowing about BSE. Concerning the behavioral dimension of risk judgments, our findings indicate that social networks obtained within the village explored have activated collective resistance against fear. This is explained by the character of the risk source. Positive attitudes towards conventional farming obviously contributed to the social identity of villagers. The devaluation of conventional farming as a source of societal threat by the mass media touched on an integral part of the self-definitions of villagers and activated resistance within their social networks. It is argued that a central point in explaining the role of interpersonal influence in risk judgments is not only the dimension of risk judgments but the character of the risk source. If attitudes concerning a risk source contribute positively to one's identity, the devaluation of the risk source by mass media coverage may enhance the probability of collective resistance against fear

Frequency distribution of journalistic attention for scientific studies and scientific sources: An input–output analysis

Based on the decision-theoretical conditions underlying the selection of events for news coverage in science journalism, this article uses a novel input-output analysis to investigate which of the more than eight million scientific study results published between August 2014 and July 2018 have been selected by global journalism to a relevant degree. We are interested in two different structures in the media coverage of scientific results. Firstly, the structure of sources that journalists use, i.e. scientific journals, and secondly, the congruence of the journalistic selection of single results. Previous research suggests that the selection of sources and results follows a certain heavy-tailed distribution, a power law. Mathematically, this distribution can be described with a function of the form C*x-α. We argue that the exponent of such power law distributions can potentially be an indicator to describe selectivity in journalism on a high aggregation level. In our input-output analysis, we look for such patterns in the coverage of all scientific results published in the database Scopus over four years. To get an estimate of the coverage of these results, we use data from the altmetrics provider Altmetric, more precisely their Mainstream-Media-Score (MSM-Score). Based on exploratory analyses, we define papers with a score of 50 or above as Social Impact Papers (SIPs). Over our study period, we identified 5,833 SIPs published in 1,236 journals. For both the distribution of the source selection and the distribution of the selection of single results, an exponentially truncated power law is a better fit than the power law, mostly because we find a steeper decline in the tail of the distributions

Repercussions of media coverage on science? A critical assessment of a popular thesis

The topic of this paper is the relationship between journalism and science. In order to describe a potentially relevant dynamic in this relationship, the German sociologist of science Peter Weingart proposed the term "medialization." It describes phenomena of change within science, such as the oversimplification or exaggeration of research findings, which are associated with an increased need for public attention within science. This concept focuses on the repercussions of journalism on science. Inscribed in the term is the assumption that journalism potentially has great social significance. At the very least, journalism, or the mass media it dominates, is thought to influence processes of change within science. The paper aims to assess the social impact of science reporting in order to plausibilize the significance of the role played by journalism. This is based on recent, partly unpublished empirical findings by a German-French DFG/ANR project, which relate to the ability of journalism to focus public attention on scientific events and actors. The results are essentially negative, in the sense that journalism hardly, or at best only very sporadically, succeeds in focusing public attention on individual scientific events or actors. Based on the journalism’s very limited performance in this regard, we consider it implausible that journalism could be as significant a factor as the concept of medialization indicates

Attention boost through media coverage? Agenda setting effects from news media coverage on topic selection of scientific journals

The fact that media emphasis of certain topics can increase their importance for the public has already been confirmed many times in agenda setting research. However, we are not aware of any study that examines if attention by news media on certain scientific topics correlates with or even has feedback effects on topic salience in scientific journals. The aim of our analysis is to examine how a scientific topic develops in scientific journals over time, namely before and after a point of conspicuous news media attention. Our analyses reveal a relationship between the amount of attention scientific papers receive through popular media and the amount of attention the respective topics receive from scientific journals. In more than 50 percent of the cases, after a scientific paper received a noticeable amount of news media coverage, more thematically similar articles were published in scientific journals than before. In this sense, here and there journalism can be considered as an agenda setter for the choice of topics in academic journals. Our findings may be interpreted in accordance to a publicity effect, namely that popular media coverage provides a scientific attention boost for scientific studies or topics that they would not have received without news media coverage

Selected by expertise? Scientific experts in German news coverage on Covid-19 compared to other pandemics

At the time of the corona pandemic, the population has a great need for information. (Mass) Media try to provide the concerned citizens with answers to their pressing questions with the help of scientific actors and their expert knowledge. Scientific experts serve as an important source of information for journalists and for society. Therefore, it is of particular relevance to examine, which scientific actors are discussing scientific issues related to the Covid-19 pandemic publicly via media coverage. Of particular interest is a look at the scientific expertise of the so-called experts, because the quality of the available information stands and falls with it. Our study describes the journalistic selection of scientific experts in German news coverage on Covid-19 compared to other pandemics. We analyze, which experts get a chance to speak in media coverage, how diverse the spectrum of selected experts is and how their scientific expertise is to be assessed. Our findings show that the Covid-19 coverage is dominated by actors from the political executive and less than in previous pandemics by scientific experts. Further, the Corona debate is characterised by a greater diversity of expert voices than the previous pandemic debates and therefore less concentrated on a few individual scientists only. Further, the journalistic selection of scientific experts is biased in favour of those who have a high scientific expertise. On average, media coverage on the Covid-19 pandemic makes references to more reputable and acknowledged scientific experts compared to earlier pandemics

Kongruenz der Anlassauswahl als Indikator für die Journalismusforschung: Eine Exploration

Mit einer Inhaltsanalyse untersucht der Beitrag ressortvergleichend: 1. wie häufig dieselben nachrichtlichen Anlässe von mehreren Medientiteln zur Berichterstattung ausgewählt werden und 2. ob diesen (in-)kongruenten Auswahlentscheidungen eine Gesetzmäßigkeit zugrunde liegt. Das Interesse gilt dabei besonders der Kongruenz der Nachrichtenauswahl in Wissenschaftsressorts. Argumentiert wird, dass die Verteilung der Auswahlkongruenz Rückschlüsse auf ressortspezifisch unterschiedliche Bedingungen der Nachrichtengebung erlaubt. Diese wirken sich auf die Leistungsfähigkeit des Journalismus aus, die öffentliche Aufmerksamkeit auf besonders relevante Ereignisse zu lenken. Analysiert wurden gut 4000 Artikel, die 2018 und 2019 in einem Zeitraum von einer bzw. zwei Wochen in fünf deutschsprachigen Zeitungen erschienen sind und 2521 verschiedene Anlässe hatten. Der Anteil der Anlässe, die kongruent von mehreren Zeitungen zugleich ausgewählt wurden, nimmt mit dem Grad der Kongruenz exponentiell ab, was frühere Ergebnisse bestätigt. Im Vergleich der verschiedenen Ressorts ist der Anteil exklusiver Anlässe im Wissenschaftsressort deutlich höher. Wissenschaftsredaktionen wählen wesentlich inkongruenter aus als beispielsweise Politikredaktionen. Diese Ergebnisse wecken Zweifel daran, ob es speziell dem Wissenschaftsjournalismus gelingt, das öffentliche Interesse an einem Kernbestand von wichtigen Ereignissen zu befördern

Correlations between the selection of topics by news media and scientific journals

The aim of this study is to reveal a robust correlation between the amount of attention international journalism devotes to scientific papers and the amount of attention scientific journals devote to the respective topics. Using a Mainstream-Media-Score (MSM) ≥ 100 (which we regard as an indicator for news media attention) from the altmetrics provider Altmetric, we link 983 research articles with 185,166 thematically similar articles from the PubMed database (which we use to operationalize attention from scientific journals). The method we use is to test whether there is a concomitant increase in scientific attention after a research article has received popular media coverage. To do so, we compare the quotient of the number of thematically similar articles published in scientific journals during the period before and after the publication of an MSM ≥ 100 article. Our main result shows that in 59 percent of cases, more thematically similar articles were published in scientific journals after a scientific paper received noteworthy news media coverage than before (p < 0.01). In this context, we neither found significant differences between various types of scientific journal (p = 0.3) nor between scientific papers that were originally published in renowned opinion-leading journals or in less renowned, non-opinion-leading journals (p = 0.1). Our findings indicate a robust correlation between the choice of topics in the mass media and in research. However, our study cannot clarify whether this correlation occurs because researchers and/or scientific journals are oriented towards public relevance (publicity effect) or whether the correlation is due to the parallelism of relevance attributions in quality journalism and research (earmark hypothesis). We infer that topics of social relevance are (more) likely to be picked up by popular media as well as by scientific journals. Altogether, our study contributes new empirical findings to the relationship between topic selection in journalism and in research

An analysis of people-meter data

Beginning with a differentiation of science programmes into five different editorial concepts, this article explores the audience reach of science on television in 10 European countries with a special emphasis on young audiences aged between 14 and 29 years. In relation to the share of this age group in the entire population, science programmes in all countries reach a considerably smaller proportion of younger viewers. Specific preferences for science content on television do not seem to be relevant in explaining aggregated viewing behaviours especially of young audiences. Unlike all other segments, the young science viewer segment is almost intangible as an aggregated group, as a definable segment of a mass audience that can be targeted by science programme makers