The use of Internet in newsgathering among European science journalists
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In order to understand how European science journalists feel about the education
of science journalists, respondents were asked if they agreed or not with the
sentence ‘Science journalists should have a science background’. Results can be
seen in figure 22.
22
20
18
16
14
12
Number
of
cases
10
8
6
4
Agree
N
agree
nor
disagree
Strongly
disagree
V
strongly
disagree
Disagree
V
strongly
agree
Strongly
agree
Figure 22 - ‘Science journalists should have a science background’
The majority of respondents (43.8 percent) agreed, strongly agreed or very
strongly agreed with the sentence, 35.4 percent declared themselves on the
disagree side of this issue and 20.8 percent neither agreed nor disagreed. As we
can see in table 24, journalists with a higher academic degree tend to support the
idea that science journalists should have a science background (Spearman’s rho =
0.280, p = 0.003). The majority of science/engineering/medicine graduates
(N=21/34; 61.7 percent) also advocates the need for science journalists to have a
science background. Only 25.7 of journalism/communication graduates (N=9/35)
have the same opinion.
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Disagree / Strongly
disagree / Very
strongly disagree
Neither agree nor
disagree
Agree / Strongly
agree / Very
strongly agree
High
School
Some
university
Level of education
University
degree
Master’s
degree PhD
Total
6 (75) 5 (41.7) 12 (29.2) 5 (23.8) 4 (30.8) 32
1 (12.5) 3 (25) 10 (24.3) 4 (19.1) 2 (15.4) 20
1 (12.5) 4 (33.3) 19 (46.4) 12 (57.1) 7 (53.8) 43
Total 8 12 41 21 13 95
(percentage in brackets)
Table 24 - ‘Science journalists should have a science background’ according to level of
education
Journalists are turning more and more to breaking news stories originated by
science journals. Nevertheless, literature states that science journalists prefer to
write feature stories (Dennis and McCartney 1979; Friedman 1986). To test this
old assumption, respondents were asked if they agreed or not with the following
sentence: ‘I prefer to write breaking news, instead of bigger, in-depth stories’.
Results are on figure 23 and show that the majority of European science
journalists (56.7 percent) still prefers to write feature articles. A significant
percentage (31.6) has no opinion about this issue and 11.7 percent prefer breaking
news.
103
40
30
20
Number
of
cases
10
0
Agree
N
agree
nor
disagree
Strongly
disagree
V
strongly
disagree
Disagree
V
strongly
agree
Strongly
agree
Figure 23- ‘I prefer to write breaking news, instead of bigger, in-depth stories’
In this survey we also probed the thoughts of European science journalists about
their own job, namely their opinion about the quality and quantity of science news
when compared to ten years ago. In the first question, we asked respondents about
the quality of science news and gave them four possible answers. Results are in
figure 24 and show that the majority of respondents (68 percent) thinks the quality
of science news is now better than it was 10 years ago. Only 5.2 percent of the
surveyed journalists think it is worse.
104
70
60
50
40
30
Number
of
cases
20
10
0
Better The same Worse I don't know
Figure 24 - ‘As a whole, do you think the quality of science news is better or worse than it
was 10 years ago?’
Not only quality of science news has increased in the last ten years in the eyes of
European science journalists, but its quantity has also increased. At least, 79.4
percent of the respondents think so. Only 8.2 percent think the quantity of science
news has decreased in the last ten years (see figure 25).
100
80
60
40
20
Count
0
Quant. has increased Quant. has decreased
Quantity is the same I don't know
Figure 25 - ‘As a whole, do you think the quantity of science news produced by the media has
increased or decreased in the last 10 years?’
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4.7. Use of the Internet among European science journalists
Several studies have tried to weight the use of Internet among journalists (Morton
1996; Donovan 1998; Curtin and Rhodenbaugh 2001). In the US, Craig Trumbo
and his colleagues conducted two very specific surveys, in order to understand the
relations of US science writers with the Internet (Trumbo, Sprecker et al. 2001).
In the second part of our survey, we have looked into the use European science
journalists make of the Internet, because we think it can give us a good picture of
how science journalism is changing in this continent. The questions were divided
into four different subjects: reasons for using the Internet; frequency of use; main
sources and their credibility; consequences of the use of Internet for science
journalism.
Reasons for using the Internet
What do science journalists use the Internet for? This was our first question in the
second part of the survey. Respondents were confronted with 11 possible answers
and asked to check all that applied. Results for this question can be seen in table
25.
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Use of Internet
Number
of answers Percent
Article research, reference material 93 95.9
Reading publications on-line 87 89.7
Contacting sources 78 80.4
Finding new sources, experts 76 78.4
Reading e-mail 76 78.4
Searching for press releases 75 77.3
Story ideas 66 68.0
Downloading still images 59 60.8
Downloading databases 36 37.1
Usenet newsgroups 16 16.5
Reading weblogs 11 11.3
Table 25 - What do you use the Internet for?
As we can see, most of the time European science journalists use the Internet they
do it to have access to reference material and reading publications on-line.
Contacting sources, reading e-mail and searching for press releases also make part
of their main reasons for using the Internet. From all the data collected in this
question, one particular issue deserves a brief note: more than half of the science
journalists who use the Internet to read weblogs (N=6/11; 54.5 percent) belong to
the first age group, that is, respondents who are 25 to 34 years old.
Frequency of use of the Internet
Respondents were asked how often they searched for information on-line and how
often they went on-line to check or send e-mail. For both these questions, there
were five possible answers: (1) Continuously – 3-4 times a day or more; (2)
Frequently – 1-2 times a day; (3) Sometimes – at least 2-3 times a week; (4)
Rarely – less than once a week; (5) Never or almost never. Results for these
questions can be checked in tables 26 and 27.
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Frequency Percent
Continuously (3-4 times a day or more) 68 70,8
Frequently (1-2 times a day or more) 25 26,0
Sometimes (at least 2-3 times a week) 3 3,1
Rarely (less than once a week) - -
Never or almost never - -
Total 96 100.0
Table 26 - Frequency of searching for information on-line
Frequency Percent
Continuously (3-4 times a day or more) 90 93,8
Frequently (1-2 times a day or more) 4 4,2
Sometimes (at least 2-3 times a week) 2 2,1
Rarely (less than once a week) - -
Never or almost never - -
Total 96 100.0
Table 27 - Frequency of e-mail checking and sending
We also asked respondents how much time they spend daily on the Internet, at
home and at work. As expected, the number of hours science journalists spend at
home searching for information on-line and dealing with e-mail is much less than
the number of hours they spend at work doing the same tasks. Our results show
that European science journalists spend around 40 minutes per day on the Internet
at home (N=96; STD=1.22) and 3.5 hours (N=95; STD=2.26) at work. While at
home, 46.9 percent of the journalists do not use the Internet at all and 35.4 percent
use it for 30 minutes to one hour.
At work, European science journalists use the Internet very frequently, as we can
see in table 28. To make results more understandable, we divided answers in three
different groups: (1) journalists who use Internet at work for less than 3 hours; (2)
journalists who use Internet at work for 3-4 hours; and journalists who use
Internet at work for more than 4 hours.
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Frequency Percent
< 3 hours 39 41.0
3-4 hours 32 33.7
> 4 hours 24 25.3
Total 95 100,0
Table 28 - Time spent on the Internet daily
The number of hours spent at work on the Internet is negatively related to the age
of respondents (Pearson R= -0.464, p < 0.001) as we can see in table 29: younger
journalists tend to use Internet much more than older professionals.
Time spent on the Internet daily
< 3hours 3-4 hours > 4 hours
25-34 years 7 (18.4) 4 (12.5) 15 (62.5) 26
35-44 years 9 (23.7) 12 (37.5) 6 (25) 27
45-54 years 13 (34.2) 10 (31.3) 3 (12.5) 26
55-64 years 9 (23.7) 6 (18.7) - 15
38 32 24 94
(percentage in brackets)
Table 29 - Time spent on the Internet daily by age group
Main sources and their credibility
One of the main aims of this survey is to understand if the Internet has changed
the sources of European science journalists, making them go further in their
searches for news, voices and controversies. Literature, produced some time
before the dissemination of the Internet, states that science journalists live too
close to their sources, tend to hunt in packs and depend too much on press releases
from scientific journals (for instance, Nelkin 1987). Has Internet changed this
pattern?
To answer this question, we asked three different questions to the respondents:
what were their three favourite sites for science news, which search engine they
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used most, and what credibility they gave to the institutions they usually talk to or
get information from.
The first question, about the favourite news sites, was completely open:
respondents were confronted with blank spaces they had to fill with their choices.
In this process, 264 blank spaces were filled, by 88 different subjects. The main
sites for science news identified by European science journalists and the number
of times they were cited are on table 30 (This table does not show sites that were
cited only once or twice).
Frequency Percent
Eurekalert 41 46.6
Nature 34 38.6
BBC News 34 38.6
New Scientist 25 28.4
Science 21 23.9
Alphagalileo 12 13.6
NASA 9 10.2
The New York Times 5 5.7
Cordis 4 4.5
ESA 4 4.5
CNN 3 3.4
Total 192 72.7
Table 30 - Favourite sites for science news
Older journalists show more diversity when asked about their favourite sites for
science news: 21.1 percent of veteran journalists (more than 20 years on the job)
do not mention any of the three top sites for science news identified in table 30, as
we can see in table 31 (Spearman’s rho = - 0.173, p = 0.05).
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(percentage in brackets)
Number of years as journalists
0-5 years 6-19 years > 20 years Total
None 1 (7.1) 2 (5.7) 8 (21.1) 11
One site 8 (57.1) 15 (42.9) 21 (55.2) 44
Two sites 5 (35.7) 16 (45.7) 9 (23.7) 30
Three sites - 2 (5.7) - 2
Total 14 35 38 87
Table 31 - Mention of the three first sites (Eurekalert, Nature, BBC)
according to number of years as journalists
To understand the diversity of sources of science journalists, we also asked
respondents to identify the search engine they used the most while doing their job.
Results are on table 32 and show the absolute dominance of Google with 86.9
percent of all the answers.32
Frequency Percent
Google 86 86.9
Yahoo 5 5.1
Altavista 3 3
Dogpile 1 1
Copernic 1 1
Eurekalert 1 1
Northern Light 1 1
Scirus 1 1
Alltheweb - -
Ask Jeeves - -
Excite - -
Lycos - -
Teoma - -
99 100
In bold, names of search engines written by respondents in the space “Other”.
Table 32 - Most used search engine
The last question involving sources was aimed at evaluating the credibility
European science journalists attribute to different on-line sources. Respondents
32
There are 99 answers to this question because some repondents chose one of the options given in
the questionnaire and also filled the space “other”.