Trajectories of Socioscientific Issues in News Media: Looking into the Future

Abstract

Socioscientific issues, such as global warming, constitute some of the most significant issues we face in our culture, yet they often appear to be poorly understood by the general public. Why might this be? The public knowledge of socioscientific issues in large part derives from the coverage of these topics in the news media – newspapers, radio and video broadcast (either in the traditional formats or on-line). This chapter, using various case studies, discusses common practices engaged in by journalists (and news media companies) – practices which are essentially within the very DNA of journalistic practice – that contribute to problems with accurate representation of socioscientific issues in the news media and the difficulties the general public has in understanding those issues when they use the news media as a source of information. In discussing the case studies questions arise such as if news media should be trusted to convey those topics, if news media reports should be used to teach subjects such as global warming to students and if so how, or even if students should be learning about those issues in science classrooms at all or if some other venue is more appropriate.