The use of Internet in newsgathering among European science journalists
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6. Discussion of the results
In this chapter we will discuss both the results of the survey of European science
journalists, presented in chapter 4, and the results of the interviews with a group
of these professionals, accessible in chapter 5. It is our conviction that the
research instruments used in this project provide us with a good picture of how
science journalism is evolving in the European Union.
As stated in the introduction, Internet is changing journalism all over the world.
The results obtained in our survey, and the subsequent interviews, show exactly
how this change is happening and how the use of information technologies by
science journalists is even transforming science journalism itself.
Within this project, we have been able to gather information that will allow us to
give answers to three main questions, not previously seized by the literature: Who
are the European Union science journalists working in national print media and
news agencies? What are their attitudes and expectations? How is Internet
transforming science journalism in Europe?
Throughout this chapter, we will be comparing our results with other studies done
on science journalists (mainly in the United States) and on the use journalists
make of the Internet. The first three sub-chapters will concentrate in the three
questions stated above and the last will try to make some suggestions to further
research in this field.
Before going into the findings of the project and their relationship to previous
research, some discussion needs to be done about the methodology that was
followed, mainly its advantages, disadvantages and limitations. Some concerns on
whether a science journalist by background can effectively conduct a research on
science journalism are also addressed.
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6.1. The problems of survey research
As explained in chapter 1, the main objective of this study is to understand the
way science journalism is carried out in national print media and news agencies of
the European Union and how Internet has been changing the routines of science
journalists in all these countries. Because no previous research had been done on
the subject, we decided to conduct a survey through the Internet of all science
journalists identified as included in the pre-set conditions for this project
33.
Interviews with 12 of the respondents followed the survey.
Surveys are useful for several reasons: first, they allow researchers to collect a lot
of information easily, even if subjects live in 14 different countries, as it was the
case in this project; second, they cost less than making in-depth interviews with
all the subjects; third, they allow respondents some time to think about the
answers, as they do not feel the pressure of an interviewer.
At the same time, there are also some risks with conducting surveys, the first of
which is the possibility of not having enough answers at the end of the exercise.
Other problem is the fact that you cannot adjust questions as you go along: you
have to maintain the same questions until the survey is finished. Other
disadvantage still is the fact that researchers do not control the variables, as they
can do in laboratory conditions. As a consequence, they can talk about a relation
between two variables, but they can never talk about causation. Finally, surveys
are very prone to problems in the wording of questions that can result in some
serious flaws when analyzing the results.
The main challenge of this survey of European science journalists was the
building of the sample to be surveyed. As explained in chapter 3, it is impossible
to find a reliable list of science journalists working in the European Union. Some
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The conditions are explained in depth in chapter 3, but the main idea was to survey science
journalists on staff (not free-lance journalists) for general national print media (not specialized
magazines) in all the countries of the European Union. At the beginning of this project, the
European Union had only 15 members. Now it has 27.
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countries have science journalists’ associations but, unfortunately, their member
lists are either incomplete, incorrect or outdated. The only exception might be the
French association of science journalists – Association des Journalistes
Scientifiques de la Presse d'Information (AJSPI).
On the other hand, because there is not much published research on the sociology
of European science journalists, literature could not help us determine who should
be surveyed, which printed media had science journalists, how could these
professionals be reached. In order to overcome these problems, we made personal
contacts with dozens of European science journalists and university researchers by
e-mail and by telephone, with the purpose of obtaining a list of science journalists
as inclusive as possible.
Although we may wonder if every national newspaper and magazine with a
science journalist on staff was contacted, we think we made all possible efforts to
include everyone, so that the results of the survey could be as trustful as possible.
The numbers reached for the sample – 208 journalists from 102 different media –
seems solid enough to say that the respondents to the survey truly represent what
they should represent: science journalists working on staff of national print media
and news agencies in the (former) European Union.
The survey for this project obtained 97 answers, which correspond to a response
rate of 46.6 percent. Other studies, had similar response rates. At the end of the
70s, Dennis and McCartney (Dennis and McCartney 1979, p.921) sent
questionnaires to 196 science American science journalists and received 75
answers, a response rate of 38 percent. In the 1990s, McCleneghan (1994)
conducted also a survey of American science journalists and obtained a response
rate of 65 percent (N=82) for 127 professionals contacted. The other surveys
involving science journalists, were conducted in the United States by Trumbo,
Sprecker et al. (2001) in 1994 and 1999. The 1994 survey had a response rate of
59 percent (N=96) and the 1999 survey a response rate of 72 percent (N=230).
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In order to avoid or limit problems with the wording of the questions, the website
of the survey was tested by several subjects before the actual respondents had
access to it. During this process, that took around two months, several corrections
were made, including some suggested by Schonlau, Fricker Jr. et al. (2002) in
their Guidelines for Designing and Implementing Internet Surveys. None of the
actual respondents contacted us about any particular question on the survey.
Some authors have pointed out some disadvantages of using e-mail and the web
instead of normal mail surveys (Bachman, Elfrink et al. 1996; Paolo, Bonaminio
et al. 2000). Others have written about its advantages (Kiesler and Sproull 1986;
Tse 1998). In our case, it seemed appropriate to adopt a web survey, mainly
because journalists work in very tight deadlines and do not have enough spare
time to respond to a written questionnaire, folding it into an envelope and sending
it back to the researchers. Because literature has shown that science journalists use
e-mail and the Internet quite often (Trumbo, Sprecker et al. 2001), it seemed wise
to try to get them to cooperate by sending a simple URL in an e-mail message.
On the other hand, by not exaggerating in the number of questions and preparing
the website in order to avoid scrolling – as suggested by Schonlau, Fricker Jr. et al
(2000) –, we could minimize the chances of having a lot of science journalists
giving up before finishing the questionnaire. Only one of the surveyed journalists
gave up before the survey was completed. His answers were not taken into
account for the results.
The decision to conduct interviews after the survey was taken because we thought
it would be interesting to have some more information on what journalists think
about the Internet and the use they make of it. Although interviews were done to
only 12 science journalists, they helped us frame some of the main questions
Internet is raising in newsrooms all over Europe. A similar study, to know how
American science journalists were using e-mail and the Internet, was conducted
by Dumlao and Duke (2003). For their project, these researchers interviewed 20
science journalists. In 1994, van Trigt, de Jong-van der Berg et al. (1994)
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interviewed seven Dutch science journalists. Hansen (1994) interviewed 31
British science journalists.
The main problem with the interviews for this project was the fact they were
conducted in English – including one Portuguese science journalist (the native
language of the author of this thesis) was interviewed in English. The fact that the
respondents were not using their native language might have caused some
retraction on their opinions – most answers were short, contained syntax errors
and used very straightforward words. Even though European science journalists
are used to read hundreds of scientific articles in English, some certainly lack the
ability to use the right words in this right context. Nevertheless, the results were
satisfactory and helped us understand where science journalism is heading and the
influence Internet is having on the work of these professionals.
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6.2. Can an “insider” be and “outsider”?
One of the main challenges of this research project was to keep it within scientific
boundaries, using my experience as a science journalist to gather all the
information to make it possible, but without crossing the crucial frontiers between
journalist and researcher.
The discussion whether an “insider” can conduct a good research project is
decades old. On one hand, there are the scientists who argue that only “insiders”
can really understand the issues they are studying. For them, an “outsider” has no
capacity to understand alien groups, cultures or societies. As Robert Merton
writes, in his essay Insiders and Outsiders: A Chapter in the Sociology of
Knowledge,
the argument holds that as a matter of social epistemology, only
black historians can truly understand black history, only black
ethnologists can understand black culture, only black sociologists
can understand the social life of blacks, and so on. (Merton 1972,
p.13)
On the other hand, there are the scientists who argue that you need to be an
“outsider” to really attain objectivity. Merton, again, explains this position:
Dominated by the customs of our group, we maintain received
opinions, distort our perceptions to have them accord with these
opinions, and are thus held in ignorance and led into error which we
parochially mistake for the truth. (Merton 1972, p. 30-31)
In social sciences, objects and subjects are usually the same. Sociologists are
people that study people, and their task is to make men and women understand the
patterns they form together and the changing nature of the society they live in.
Norbert Elias (1956, p.234) says that “the investigators themselves form part of
these patterns”, and “they cannot help experiencing them, directly or by
identification, as immediate participants from within”.
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The social world can only be known and understood through people who are also
part of that world (May and Williams 1998). Researchers need to detach
themselves as much as they can from their own experiences and follow scientific
methodologies that can help them avoid the biases within.
To analyse and understand [the complex processes of society]
requires a theoretical and technical competence which, as such,
transcends one’s status as Insider and Outsider. The role of the social
scientists concerned with achieving knowledge about society
requires enough detachment and trained capacity to know how to
assemble and assess the evidence without regard for what the
analysis seems to imply about the worth of one’s group. (Merton
1972, p.41)
During this whole project I tried to follow these recommendations and, despite
being a professional science journalist aware of the specific problems of the trade,
I tried to be as objective as possible, both in the building of the survey and the
interviews, and also in their interpretation.
In the methodology chapter, I already explained the steps taken in order to assure
that the sample was as inclusive as possible and the questions were as balanced as
required by a scientific study of this nature. The ordering of the questions was
also taken into account, as it can influence the respondents’ answers. Although the
surveyed sample is not large enough to allow statistically sophisticated analysis, I
tried to back all my statements with statistical tests, which show several
interesting correlations between variables and allow some sound conclusions.
Nevertheless, the science journalist was always nearby throughout the first part of
this project. First, it was present, when choosing the theme for the thesis. Science
journalism is a personal interest for a long time and to study it more deeply was an
opportunity I could not miss. Second, it was present during the whole process of
obtaining the names and contacts of the European science journalists to be
surveyed. Journalists are trained to find people, and that training certainly helped
in getting this task done.
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During my journalistic career, I went through the transformations science
journalism is undergoing all over the world. In 1989, when I started in Público, a
Portuguese daily newspaper, the Internet only existed in military complexes and
universities. Nowadays, the Internet has invaded all corners of our daily lives and
is changing the way science journalists work, as we will see in the next chapters.
As an “insider”, I was not aware of how broad this influence is and how deeply
Internet is changing science journalism itself. In that respect, the researcher
showed the journalist a lot of realities he just couldn’t see, because he was too
close.
During the writing of this thesis, it is the researcher that comes to the surface and
shows the journalist how science journalism is being done in European
newsrooms. The conclusions of this project are those of the researcher and not
those of the journalist, although I tend to agree with Norbert Elias: “Their own
[the scientists’] participation and involvement is itself one of the conditions for
comprehending the problems they try to solve as scientists.” (Elias 1956, p.238)
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6.3. Who are the European Union science journalists working in national
print media and news agencies?
European science journalists34 are mostly men (although women are closing the
gap), they have at least a university degree (36.4 percent have a master’s or a
PhD), their average age is 42.7 (in Southern countries they are younger) and they
are very experienced professionals (17.7 years as journalists; 11.9 years as science
journalists).
What is the main relevance of these numbers? First of all, we can say that
European science journalists are not young journalists, just out of the university.
McCleneghan (1994) surveyed American science journalists and “found the
median age of the science reporter to be 44” – 42.7 in our survey. In the same
study, science journalists had “nine median years of science reporting and 10
median years of non-science reporting”. In our study, science journalists seem to
be a little more experienced – mean of 11.9 years as science journalists and 17.7
years as journalists. Similar results were obtained by Hansen (1994) on his study
of British science journalists: science reporting for 11 years, on average;
journalists for 18 years, on average.
This difference in the experience of science journalists between our study and
McCleneghan’s might be explained by the type of media surveyed. In our study,
for each country, we surveyed national media, where usually journalists start
working after getting some experience in regional media. In McCleneghan’s
survey, the respondents belonged to important newspapers but, most of them, not
national outlets. Although some of these newspapers have a much higher
circulation than many European national newspapers, the fact is that they serve a
regional community. It is normal that, as they get more experienced, these
journalists move to bigger, national newspapers.
34
Again, I am using the expression European science journalists as a synonym of “European
Union science journalists working in national print media and news agencies”. I am sticking to it
for the sake of clear writing…
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In what concerns the sex of the European science journalists surveyed, it is clear
that, although the majority is still male, this situation won’t last for long. The
percentage of women science journalists gets higher and higher as you move to
younger generations. This tendency to have more women in newsrooms is not an
exclusive of science journalism. According to the most recent report of the
International Federation of Journalists, prepared by Bettina Peters, women
journalists in Europe are now 40 percent of the work force (Peters 2001).
One important note to make is that, in this survey, women science journalists are
already the majority in Greece, Italy and Portugal. Portuguese and Greek
journalists are, on average, the youngest of the surveyed – Portuguese science
journalists have a mean age of 34.7, while Greek science journalists have a mean
age of 28.8. Italians have a mean age of 43.3. This difference can be explained by
the evolution of journalism in both Greece and Portugal, where democracy arrived
late in the 20th century and journalism can still be considered a recent activity.
European science journalists are also highly educated. When comparing the
results of our survey with other data for education in Europe and the world, we
can easily see that these journalists are high above the average level of education
of their respective countries. In OECD countries, for instance, an average 32
percent complete a first university degree (OECD 2004). In this survey, 79.1
percent of the respondents have at least a first university degree.
Other surveys on science journalists have also shown that these professionals
seem to be more educated than the average journalist. In his research,
McCleneghan (1994) found that 21.7 percent of science journalists had at least a
master’s degree. In her study of French science journalists, Tristani-Potteaux
(1997) pointed out that 96 percent had a university degree, compared with 68.8
percent of French journalists holding a university degree.
Most of the journalists surveyed work for media that give some attention to the
communication of science to the general public. Although they work in national
non-specialized media, most of the respondents do not work alone on the science