Scientific Uncertainty in Media Content: Some Reflections on This Special Issue

It was an honor to be called upon to be the anchor reviewer for this special issue of Public Understanding of Science devoted to new perspectives on media presentations of scientific uncertainty. But more than that, it was for me a pleasure and an education. It is always rewarding when, as one of the reviewers of submitted manuscripts, you get so engaged by the content and quality of the research in the articles before you that you have to remind yourself that your task is that of the critic. That happened repeatedly with all of the research articles in this issue. Rather than summarize each of the articles, which Peters and Dunwoody (2016) have done so well in their introduction, and rather than repeat all the valuable roadmaps for further research already contained in the articles, please allow me to share a handful of sometimes oblique observations inspired, directly or indirectly, by all of the articles in this special issue. The following reflections may refer to some articles more than others, but that should not signal any differences in the high-quality and valuable contributions of each

Ecology and Environment: They\u27ve Been Integrated into J-Education Thinking

The article focuses on the impact of ecology and the environment on journalism education. Environmental concerns have measurably affected curricula, internships, public service programs and professional liaisons in journalism education. Environmentally-related breadth courses are required or primarily, optional in 28 percent of the programs, with about 68 percent of those programs requiring or recommending traditional, natural science-oriented environmental courses, and 45 percent including those with social science orientation, perhaps reflecting the social overtones of environmental problems made salient by the environmental era

Chair Support, Faculty Entrepreneurship, and the Teaching of Statistical Reasoning to Journalism Undergraduates in the United States

Statistical reasoning is not the same as doing calculations. Instead, it involves cognitive skills such as the ability to think critically and systematically with data, skills important for everyday news work and essential for the era of data journalism. Twin surveys of the chairs of undergraduate journalism programs in the United States, conducted 11 years apart, revealed that those who perceived benefits from statistical reasoning instruction were more likely to reward entrepreneurship (faculty attempts to integrate this instruction into their classes), but with slow gains over time in the fairly small number of such faculty. Being consistent with university goals in statistical reasoning instruction appeared to motivate chairs’ reward decisions in both waves. Increasingly, they took into account what they saw as the general value of statistical reasoning for their students and the competitive edge it could give them in the journalism job market. Perceived constraints to teaching this content had no apparent overall impact on reward decisions

Priming Past the Primary: Mass Media, Issue Salience and Candidate Evaluation in a Race Governor

Past research indicates that voters have begun to rely less on party affiliations and more on candidates\u27 images and positions on issues in making voting decisions. Through using the mass media, voters can learn about issues and candidates, and form images of the candidates. Our study concerns the effects of mass mediated election news, and of political advertising, on voters\u27 choice of candidates. In particular, we examined the roles of media agenda-setting and priming, and of negative political advertising, in the development of voter’s evaluations of candidates. An important trend in agenda-setting research is to look beyond issue saliences as dependent variables to determine what relationships issue saliences have with other phenomena, such as public opinion and voting choice. Research into priming indicates that the issues and other aspects of political life (e.g., a candidate\u27s character) that become salient in an election are used by voters to evaluate candidates for public office, and therefore indirectly affect voting behavior. An analysis of a sample survey of eligible voters in the 1990 race for Wisconsin governor found that attention to news accounts of the election is associated with higher levels of salience given some issues in that election. In line with the priming model, issue salience had some, although modest, relationship to evaluation of the candidates. Political commercials, including negative ads, appeared to affect candidate evaluations more directly, while news media appeared to work through issue salience to affect evaluations of candidates. Some evidence was found of a \u27\u27boomerang effect of negative advertising in this campaign. Identification with political parties had only a small direct relationship to voting intention. Instead, this identification appears to work along with the direct and indirect effects of communication variables to influence candidate evaluation, which then appears to affect voting choice

Constructing a Social Problem: The Press and the Environment

The U. S. daily press might seem to be in a strategic position to function as a claims-maker in the early construction of a social problem. But in the case of the manufacture of environmentalism as a social reality in the 1960\u27s and 70\u27s, the press was fairly slow to adopt a holistic environmental lexicon. Its reporting of environmental news even now only partially reflects concepts promoted by positive environmental claims-makers, such as planet-wide interdependence, and the threats to it by destructive technologies. The movement of environmental claims seems to have started with interest-group entrepreneurship using interpersonal communication and independent publication, gone on to attention in government, then finally--and incompletely--been put on the agenda of the daily press. Once on the press agenda, coverage of environmental issues may have improved. But there are some constraints, possibly inherent in the press as an institution, that limit its role in the incipient construction of some social problems