The use of Internet in newsgathering among European science journalists
41
I will promote an admittedly radical idea: that is, certification of
broadcast medical reporters. (…) I challenge the National
Association of Science Writers, the American Medical Writers
Association, and the Radio-Television News Directors Association
(…) to open a dialogue on certification of broadcast medical
reporters who have met certain educational or background criteria.
That might help viewers distinguish the professionals from the
puppets. (Schwitzer 2002)
From time to time, the idea of certification resurfaces:
The fraternity of medical journalists should develop some kind of
system to ensure that those who wish to become medical journalists
have a basic knowledge of the subject and some way of certifying
tham that would be recognized by employers and the reading and
viewing and listening public. (Johnson 1998, p.91)
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2.2. Journalists and the Internet
The diffusion of innovations has been studied since the 1960s. In one of the most
cited books in this area, Everett M. Rogers states that diffusion of innovations is
‘the process by which an innovation is communicated through certain channels
over time’ (Rogers 1995, p.11). According to this author, the innovation-decision
process has five main steps: knowledge, persuasion, decision, implementation and
confirmation (p.20). Most studies conducted on the adoption of Internet by the
general public and by specific communities, like journalists, have relied on the
description of the process done by this author (see, for instance, Garrison 2001).
Rogers also classified the adopters of innovations in five different categories
(p.262): The innovators (the first 2.5 percent who adhere to the innovation); the
early adopters (the following 13.5 percent); the early majority (the next 34
percent); the late majority (the following 34 percent), and, finally, the laggards
(the remaining 16 percent). These categories have also been used to describe the
state of adoption of particular innovations, like the Internet, by different
communities (see, for instance, Mahler and Rogers 1999).
The adoption of the World Wide Web by the general public started in 1993/1994
(Berners-Lee 1999, p.86-87) and, since then, it has experienced a huge explosion,
specially in more developed countries. According to comScore Network, a
consumer behaviour communications consultancy, the number of Internet users
aged 15+ was, in March 2006, 694 million world-wide12.
There is no doubt that the Internet is also changing the newsgathering procedures
of journalists (Morton 1996; Donovan 1998; Curtin and Rhodenbaugh 2001).
Because there are few peer-reviewed studies on the use of Internet by European
journalists, we can have an idea of that change by reading the research done on
12
See http://www.comscore.com/press/release.asp?press=849
43
the subject in the United States, which shows that the Internet made its way into
newsrooms rather quickly.
From 1994 to 1995, the percentage of reporters who said that the Internet was
their preferred newsgathering tool increased from 25 to 45 percent (Garrison
1997). The percentage of US newspapers with a circulation of 20,000 or more that
used online resources increased from 57.2 percent in 1994 to 95.1 percent in 1998,
and newspapers who declared they were using the web daily or more often
increased from 27.4 percent to 63.2 percent in the same period (Garrison 2000).
More recently, Garrison found a growing role for e-mail in the newsroom: 75.1
percent of the respondents to a survey he conducted at the end of 2001 in daily
newspapers in the United States reported using e-mail to exchange information
with their sources (Garrison 2004).
A survey of 45 Computer-Assisted Research trainers (27 responses) from several
US newspapers showed that, by March/April 1998, 60 percent of journalists were
using the Internet for e-mail communication and 48 percent for Internet searches
(Maier 2000). In this particular survey, the author applied the adoption categories
proposed by Rogers (1995) to conclude that ‘the diffusion of computer-assisted
reporting has gone beyond the innovator stage and is arguably emerging from the
early adopter stage into the early majority stage’ (Maier 2000, p.106). Similarly, a
survey of large Iowa dailies, conducted in 1997, also found that the computer
adoption level was already around 50 percent (Niebauer Jr., Abbott et al. 2000).
In one study carried out in the UK on the impact of the Internet on information
seeking in the media, Nicholas et al. (2000, p.113) found that, by 1997, ‘few
journalists in the UK used the Internet, but even fewer had made up their minds
about it.’ In contrast, in his doctoral thesis on the representation of science in the
United Kingdom, Holliman (2000) says that:
44
The production of science news is changing due to the introduction
of electronic communications and particularly the Internet in
providing credible source material for science news. Rather than
increasing the global coverage of science news, this appears to have
led to an increased reliance on US science. (Holliman 2000, p. 309)
In their annual study on the use of Internet by American media, Middleberg and
Ross (2000) found that the percentage of print journalists searching for
information online has increased from 23 percent in 1995 to 81 percent in 2000.
Nearly all respondents to the 2000 survey (98 percent) said that they went online
at least daily to check e-mail, and spent about 15 hours a week reading and
sending e-mail.
Of all journalists surveyed, 53 percent say they’re online
‘continously – defined as at least two or three times day or more –
and another 29 percent say they’re online frequently – meaning up to
two times a day. (Middleberg and Ross 2000, p.6)
Craig Trumbo and his colleagues conducted two surveys of members of the
National Association of Science Writers (NASW), in the United States, and found
that the use of e-mail and the Web increased significantly between 1994 and 1999
(Trumbo, Sprecker et al. 2001). Subsequent in-depth interviews with 20
respondents to this survey concluded that ‘E-mail and the Web are having a
tremendous impact on the practices of science journalism and on the lives of
science writers’ (Dumlao and Duke 2003, p.302). Greater productivity and
increased work stress seem to be the direct results of the adoption of this
innovation.
Similar conclusions were drawn by other authors:
Currently, the rise of the Web is one of the main reasons for the
acceleration of technicalization and economicalization in journalism,
and it faces a difficult challenge in applying professional standards
to the Web (…) Economics and the technology of the news gathering
process will dominate future news production. (Loosen 2002)
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Science institutions and scholarly journals understood from the early days of
Internet the importance this new tool could have in the dissemination of science
news. Twenty-five years ago, long before the democratisation of the Web,
Tuchman (1978, p.18) observed that ‘reporters tend to gather around places where
stories might be expected to occur, such as central police stations and courts
processing crimes’.
The central source of science news had yet to appear. So, in May 1996, the
American Association for the Advancement of Science created Eurekalert!, a site
that brings together scientific sources and journalists. Sources pay up to $1000
dollars a year to have their embargoed materials posted on the site, journalists pay
nothing to access that information (Marshall 1998). However, to be allowed into
the site, journalists must at all times respect the embargoes decided by the news
promoters and, if they do not, permission to access the information will be
cancelled.
By May 2002, 25,000 press releases had already been posted in Eurekalert! and
more than 4,000 reporters from 45 countries had access to that information.
Twenty-six percent of those journalists used the site daily and 33 percent several
times a week (O'Malley 2002). In November 2002, there were 1330 journalists
from the European Union accessing Eurekalert!, 501 (37,6%) came from the
United Kingdom (O’Malley, pers.comm.). Journalists interviewed by Holliman
(2000, p.309) have acknowledged the strength of Eurekalert! as a source of
credible science news but, at the same time, a way of putting greater emphasis on
American science.
Another important source of science news and press releases on the Internet is the
European rival of Eurekalert! – AlphaGalileo – which was launched in September
1998, with the promise of being ‘an effective one-stop shop for news on European
science, engineering and technology’ (Green 1998). According to the ‘newsletter’
AlphaGalileo eNews, sent regularly to all journalists registered with the service,
3584 journalists had access to AlphaGalileo in November 2002. The service was
run by the British Association for the Advancement of Science, and was
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supported by European Union through a contract under the Raising Public
Awareness programme. On 1st April 2003, AlphaGalileo Foundation became a
not-for-profit company limited by guarantee.
From the point of view of the science institutions, Internet has greatly increased
their capacity of reaching wider audiences. In 2000, Sharlean Duke conducted a
survey of 244 NASW members (125 responses) who identified themselves as
public relations practicioners. She found that 66 percent of the respondents
considered e-mail ‘essential’ on their relations with journalists and 86 percent
agreed that the Web had improved their work (Duke 2002).
The use of Internet for the dissemination of science news has not been studied
extensively, but from the huge numbers of journalists who are accessing the main
services available we can have an idea of the impact that this innovation is having
in the area. And journalists are aware of this situation. For instance, David
Whitehouse, who is now the science editor for BBC News, summed up back in
1999 the dependence of science reporters from a few websites:
‘The concentration of press releases in a few Web sites has resulted
in less diversity among journalists. It has made journals and public
relations offices more powerful. Look at the newspapers, all the
newspapers, and you will see (in the UK, at least) they have over 90
percent of their stories in common. It is now a brave science
journalist who ignores a press release in Eurekalert!, knowing that all
his or her competitors will run with it. This means that there are
fewer surprises these days.’ (Whitehouse 1999)
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2.3. Public understanding of science and the media
Over the last 25 years, public understanding of science (PUS) research has tried to
understand how science is perceived and absorbed by the general public. The
House of Lords Science and Society report defined public understanding of
science in general terms as the ‘understanding of scientific matters by “nonexperts.”’
(House of Lords 2000)
The discussion on PUS has evolved around three paradigms – science literacy,
public understanding of science and science and society -, as Bauer, Allum et. al
(2007) have shown. These paradigms illustrate different ways to look at the
relations between science and the public, and attribute different roles to the main
actors of this process.
The first period (1960s to mid-80s) is characterized by the idea that there is a
knowledge deficit and an insufficiently literate public. In this paradigm, media
should help educate the public about science, especially about its facts and
methods:
This deficit model serves the education agenda, demanding increased
efforts in science education at all stages of the life cycle. (Bauer,
Allum et al. 2007, p.80)
The second period is largely influenced by the Royal Society of London report
The Public Understanding of Science, released in 1985. In this period, PUS
researchers also talk about a knowledge deficit of the population, but the attitude
of the public is now their main concern:
The public is not positive enough about science and technology;
there are dangers citizens become negative or outright anti-science,
and this is of natural concern to institutions of science. (Bauer,
Allum et al. 2007, p.82)
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In this period, research turns to attitudes towards science (for example, Einsiedel
1994). Although all the researchers agree that the public has an ‘attitudinal deficit’
towards science, they cannot agree on what to do about it. On one side of the
discussion, the scientists who believe that it is still possible to educate the public
because ‘the more you know, the more you love it’. On the other side of the table,
the researchers who argue that values and emotions are facts of life and that the
only way to fight the deficit is to try to seduce the public towards science (Bauer,
Allum et al. 2007).
In the last period – the so called Science and Society –, from mid 1990s to
present, researchers point out several deficits that are preventing science to reach
the whole population: public deficits of knowledge, attitude or trust, and also
deficits on the part of scientists and scientific institutions. In this paradigm, ‘the
distinction between research and intervention is blurred’ (Bauer, Allum et al.
2007, p.85) and ‘rebuild public trust’ seems to be the motto of every report or
white paper.
Journalists and the media, in general, have tried not to take an active part on this
discussion. Tom Wilkie, at the time science editor of The Independent, was one of
the voices defending the need for the press to maintain its independence on the
debate about PUS:
The function of those who work on newspapers is to sell newspapers
to the public: we are not in the business of educating the public.
(Wilkie 1991, p.577)
Nevertheless, the fact is that the news media play a role in informing the public
about science (Hargreaves, Lewis et al. 2003), and science institutions use the
media to promote their agenda.
The major finding of McCombs and Shaw (1972) study was that the media
agenda could influence the public agenda. Subsequent studies have proven their
assumption right (Funkhouser 1973; Brosius and Kepplinger 1990; MacKuen
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1991). Scientists and science institutions have long understood their capacity of
influencing the agenda in order to promote science and its benefits:
Scientists themselves are players in competition for media space and
public sympathy, rather than simply disinterested suppliers of
information. (Miller 1999, p.214)
In their 1978 study, Hall and his colleagues argue that ‘accredited’ sources enjoy
privileged access to the media. They get more space, because they have expert
knowledge and they represent a powerful sector of society. As a consequence,
they become ‘primary definers’ of the issues on the agenda (Hall, Critcher et al.
1978).
The public understanding of science movement has pushed scientists to become
primary definers of the science agenda, urging them to communicate with the
public as often as possible. As Gregory and Miller (1998) write, in the opening of
their book Science in Public, ‘in the last decade or so, scientists have been
delivered a new commandment from on high: thou shalt communicate.’
This appeal for communication has pushed scientists, science journals and science
institutions to create mechanisms to promote their activities, preserving, at the
same time, some control on the outcome of that public relations effort.
Eurekalert!, for instance, was created by the American Association for the
Advancement of Science, with rules for journalists set by the universities and
research journals.
As science has grown as a profession, so the worry has increased that
the scientific profession itself has vested interests to which scientists
will attend. Scientists want better grants, more equipment and so on.
They want to be taken more and more seriously by politicians and
policy-makers. (Yearley 2005, p.XIII)
Scientists are ‘sources with a mission’ (Nelkin 1984) and are challenged to be
science communicators and to ‘enter into dialogue with their peers, with the
public, and with mediators’ (Burns, O'Connor et al. 2003). However, scientists
50
have for long been complaining about the inaccuracies of science reporting and
‘efforts have been directed to softening or limiting the mediating influence of the
press’ (Dornan 1990). To control this influence, some of the scientists involved in
the PUS debate have suggested some remedies, among which were the teaching of
science to journalists, the education of scientists themselves, or the promotion of a
direct communication between researchers and the public, bypassing mediators.
In the long road towards popularization of science, journalists are just one level of
the communication chain that brings science from universities and laboratories to
the general public (Wynne 1992). The shared culture between scientists and
science journalists on what concerns accuracy of reporting, for instance, helped
the construction of a trustful relationship that benefits both sides (Gregory and
Miller 1998; Geller, Bernhardt et al. 2005).
From the viewpoint of scientists and scientific institutions, science journalists can
be powerful allies, spreading the message of science they were sent to proclaim.
The Internet can help this mission and give scientists a little more control on the
information they produce, bringing them closer to the public:
The power of journalists as mediators of science news appears to be
shifting, as new technologies replace traditional newsgathering
techniques. (Holliman 2000, p.312)