Part of the Kuzma article was about how the science community and public was perceiving the advancements in nanotechnology and part of the Thomas article was about framing. I was interested in combining these two thoughts and learning more on how the scientific community was framing information about nanotechnology and obtaining public opinion.
Simply searching “framing nanotechnology” actually produced a fair amount of credible sources and I stumbled upon Dr. Dietram A. Scheufele’s blog titled Nanopublic [http://www.nanopublic.com/]. Scheufele wrote a specific piece for an upcoming book and this excerpt is called “Public attitudes toward nanotechnology”. The first section is subtitled “Attitudes without knowledge?” and addresses whether the public, and scientific community as well, are actually well informed on this topic. Scheufele references many surveys that supposedly obtained information on the public standing on nanotechnology but also points out that a general level of understanding was not obtained. Quiz based surveys would have been more useful to obtain a gauge of how well the public understood the actual topic before surveying for their attitudes towards the subject of nanotechnology.
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| Dr. Dietram A. Scheufele |
There is a difference between perceived knowledge versus measured knowledge and this difference is not often taken into account during public surveys. In the United States, the gap between the highly educated and less educated public is increasing. Even the scientific community is not all on the same page when it comes to nanotechnology. So how can you have truly meaningful discussions, or survey results for that matter, when the audience lacks understanding of the subject? The deficit model describes this dilemma; the difficulty of trying to communicate across the scientific and public interface is due to the fact that one party finds the other to be lacking in some understanding. This can be viewed from either side of the interface: the public could be lacking technical knowledge or the scientific community could be lacking in knowledge on the intrinsic value the public places on some issue.
To have the most meaningful discussions across this interface both parties need to work to meet each other in the middle. Bidirectional communication is a good way to sum this up. The scientific community needs to come up with practical ways to inform the public without alienating a large portion of their audience and the public needs to exert effort to do their own research to understand more technically-dense material. The scientific community is well aware of the public’s need of readily accessible and easy to understand material.
“Science … has a marketing problem, and if we like it or not, it needs to be fixed” (Scheufele 2011). After reading this quote in Scheufele’s blog I decided to find an actual example of media coverage on the topic of general nanotechnology. Searching “nanotechnology” on youtube.com I found a video titled “Dr. Michio Kaku discussing Nanotechnology” which was featured on BBCFour – the guide to intelligent television [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RdISRJHFpLI].
This video opens up with a shot of a beautiful Rhode Island estuary and Dr. Kaku sitting out in the field introducing nanotechnology as a form of science that is already present in nature. Throughout the video there are calming hues of blue and green with a few more shots of natural landscapes, colorful flowers, and birds soaring in the sky. This subliminally redirects the audience’s first impressions from something manipulated, man-made, and possibly dangerous to something natural and highly beneficial. This framing sends very specific and intentional messages to the audience. Many positive applications are detailed throughout the ten minute video and only at the nine minute mark are any negative comments made.
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| Dr. Michio Kaku |
Dr. Michio Kaku is a theoretical physicist who is known for popularizing scientific subjects in the media. Based on the speaker and the television channel, you can already tell that the directors of this clip are using the credit of authority in support of their information. “I almost feel omnipotent, like a god, controlling thousands and thousands of bacteria” was an interesting sound byte from Dr. Kaku as he was controlling a colony of engineered bacteria that responded to magnetic fields. I thought it strange of him to bring up such a touchy subject such as religion in this technical based video and as I was watching this video I noticed “Dr. Michio Kaku on God”, another video of his.
In class we spoke about science being a social enterprise as in multiple parties have say and influence in individual findings and studies. This course concept seemed very applicable in this situation; all of Dr. Kaku’s works will continually affect his current studies. For example, if he were to say something on the topic of religion that his supporters didn’t agree with, whether it was at all related to the current research or not, they could take away financial or political backing in a heartbeat solely based on how he conducts himself within the social realm of science.
Initially, I set out to look for specific ways the scientific community was framing nanotechnology and then obtaining public feedback. In the end, I found myself with a link to a professor’s blog and a short documentary aired on BBC. Scheufele wrote on current methods used to obtain public feedback and personal thoughts on framing and the BBC video had some blatant aims to tie nanotechnology to nature. Between these two sources, it seems that the scientific community has a ways to go to obtain really meaningful feedback and supply unbiased, informative findings to the public. So what steps will be taken to better these areas? Could the audience just choose a different channel? Or should the scientific community develop a different approach to media communication? The important part is that the foundation is there to solve these problems and now it’s just up to finding the best way to approach the scientific and public interface.
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