Legacy media as inhibitors and drivers of public reservations against science: global survey evidence on the link between media use and anti-science attitudes

Niels G. Mede

doi:10.1057/s41599-022-01058-y

Abstract

Public resentment toward scientific institutions, scholars, and their expertise challenges the status of science in society in many countries worldwide. It is thus essential to examine the global prevalence of such resentment—and the potential of legacy media to temper it, thanks to their ability to cultivate positive views of science, educate citizens, and connect publics to scientific discourse. However, existing research has mostly surveyed Western populations, focused on pro-science rather than anti-science views, rarely studied the role of media use, and often ignored country characteristics that may interact with media use. This secondary analysis addresses these caveats, drawing on the 2017–2020 wave of the World Values Survey (N = 70,867 in 49 countries) and three relevant country-level indicators (freedom of the press, populism, uncertainty avoidance). Findings indicate that anti-science attitudes vary substantially across countries and are more prevalent in many Latin American nations. Results of Bayesian multilevel regressions show that frequent use of newspapers, TV, and radio indeed alleviates anti-science attitudes in some countries—but fosters them in others, particularly in those where populist rhetoric is more prevalent in public discourse, potentially because such rhetoric often challenges science and academic expertise. These findings call for further comparative research on global reservations against science and reflections about their repercussions on the science-society nexus.

Highlights

Across the world, science has been challenged by public reservations against it—such as preference of faith over academic expertise, moral resentment toward scientists, or disinterest in scientific knowledge (Rutjens et al, 2022)
RQ3 analyses indicated that country differences in the association of media use and anti-science attitudes can be explained by differences in the prevalence of populist rhetoric in domestic political discourses: When including cross-level interactions between legacy media use and the three country-level indicators, we found that media use increases anti-science attitudes in countries with high prevalence of populist rhetoric, and decreases these attitudes in countries with low prevalence (b = 0.068, 89% Highest Density Intervals (HDI): 0.013–0.119)
Public resentment toward science has been discussed as a major challenge to informed citizenries, societies’ crisis resilience, and democratization worldwide (Flinders, 2021)

Summary

Introduction

Science has been challenged by public reservations against it—such as preference of faith over academic expertise, moral resentment toward scientists, or disinterest in scientific knowledge (Rutjens et al, 2022). Public resentment toward science curbs its potential to help individuals and societies cope with daily challenges as well as severe environmental, health, and economic crises like climate change or the COVID-19 pandemic (Luna et al, 2021). Such resentment has been shown to reduce people’s knowledge (Allum et al, 2008), compliance with government policies (Merkley and Loewen, 2021), or confidence in vaccination (Sturgis et al, 2021), and increase support for political movements and candidates that are skeptical of experts (Motta, 2018). Findings suggest that reservations against science are often more widespread within certain sociodemographic and attitudinal milieus, e.g., in older, lower educated, more religious, or politically conservative subpopulations (Chan, 2018; Noy and O’Brien, 2019; Rutjens et al, 2022)

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