Framing public epidemic hazards

A recent study published in Mass Comm and Society compared news coverage patterns of three epidemic diseases: mad cow disease, West Nile virus, and avian flu. The findings indicated that although journalists emphasized similar themes in general across these three issues, their narrative considerations changed as the diseases developed into different stages.

Specifically, this study looks into media framing and issue attention cycle of epidemic issues. We have talked about framing a lot. But not much research link framing with issue attention cycle, which, in a simplified way, refers to the ups and downs of media attention.

Although how to operationalize the "attention cycle" has undergone some debates, many researchers measured the concept by story numbers in different periods of time, which this study did. Previous research on this topic often focused on environmental issues (e.g. Downs, 1972) or climate change (McComas & Shanahan, 1999). This study expands the line of research to a different realm.

One thing interesting but not highlighted as the main selling point is that this study actually found different cyclical patterns of epidemic hazards from those of environmental issues. In other words, there was a "maintenance" stage for the latter, but not for the former. (The "maintenance stage" refers to a stage of relatively stable news coverage of an issue.) This indicates that media pays attention to different issues in a very different way.

What should be noted is that the issue of avian flu is in an early stage when media still having high interests. It is therefore not possible to compare media frames of avian flu to those of the other two hazards. Maybe future research can address this gap.

For more studies on issue attention cycle, please see:
1. Attention Cycles and Frames in the Plant Biotechnology Debate: Managing Power and Participation through the Press/Policy Connection, by Nisbet & Huge, 2006

2. Are issue-cycles culturally constructed? A comparison of French and American coverage of global climate change, by Brossard, Shanahan, & McComas, 2004.

Global warming is local

This weekend I attended a workshop about global warming at the local level, held by the Holtz Center for Science and Technology Studies and the Nelson Institute for Environmental Studies.

So, what does it mean that the global warming is local? The workshop did not provide evidence of the weather getting warmer in Wisconsin. Instead, those experts presented models for evaluating climate change, introduced the situation of a governmental task force in charge of policy-making related to climate change, and discussed what UW has done in its effort to tackle the problem.

It is interesting to learn that battling global climate change does not and can not dependent on a simple, all-encompassing approach. Different areas faced different problems and challenges in relation to climate change. For instance, Wisconsin uses a lot of coal for electricity, which released a great amount of carbon into the air. The main source of carbon or CO2 in California, however, comes from vehicle emissions.

It is also interesting to learn that UW has been dedicated to many efforts that is environmentally beneficial. For example, many of the buildings on campus use energy-effective glasses, nice ventilation systems, and rain water recycling systems.

They also talked about the use of biofuel, fuel produced from plants and crops, to decrease the level of greenhouse gas in the air. This remind me of an interesting conversation taken place between a friend of mine and me. One day when we were at a BP gas station, which always touts its efforts in contributing to a better environment by providing "green" fuels, T.L. Lin saw the "10% ethanol" label at the pumps and asked me what good ethanol will do to our vehicles. Both of us were thinking maybe it will make our cars run faster or to have better gas millage. In other words, we both relate the addition of ethanol in petrol to the economic aspect of our life, instead of the environmental aspect.

It is good to see that some steps have already been taken, at the state or local level, to combat climate change. Although I sometimes complain about the unusual hot weather during the summer, it never occurs to me that the battle grounds are so close to me.

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For some discussion about the relationship between ethanol (in the fuel) and global warming, please see Ethanol and Global Warming

For more articles related to biofuel and global warming, please see the Science page in the NY Times and Turn Food into Fuel in the Time Magazine.

Center for Sustainability and the Global Environment (SAGE)

Fear of science

This week I watched a movie The Mist, a Sci-Fi horror adapted from Stephen King's novel. Of course the movie has something to do with mist. Well, the storyline is sort of like this. After a night of thunderstorm, a unusual mist rolls into a small town where everybody knows each other . It is to the residents surprise that there seems to be something in the mist that catch and kill people. They later find out that those human-hunting monsters lurking in the thick mist were actually unleashed by some secret scientific experiments or actions carried out by the US military.

Many people found this movie successful in creating the creepy and breath-holding atmosphere. But to me, it is more like a vivid example of people's fear of science.

Although people in general agree that science and technology bring about positive impact on our society, there is a concomitant worry that the development of science may go beyond our control. Although imaginary, the reckless military scientific action and the ensuing detrimental impact reflect lively people's worry in "run-away science."

We have seen the same fear in the development of nuclear power, where people were excited about its ability to solve energy problems on the one hand and worried about its unexpected outcome on the other hand. The case of nanotechnology is probably more recent. A sizable proportion of people in a national opinion survey actually consider the "self-replicating nano-robots going out of control" as an important risk of nanotechnology.

These examples indicate that there exists "ambivalence" in people's attitude toward science. Unless scientists can claim confidently that they have a full control on what they are doing, people will always be skeptic about science. The mist is not the only instance that script writers express such fear (for American people). The movie--Godzilla, where radiations emitted from French nuclear test mutated lizards into gigantic monsters--was actually one that reflects the similar fear.

Are these only imaginations or likely to come true? I don't know. But seeing the fact that the catastrophes usually come from "secret" governmental or military operations, keeping the process of scientific development open to the public may not be a bad idea to reduce people's level of fear.

P.S. For those interested in the movie, please see an article in the NY Times.

Something Creepy This Way Creeps, and It Spells Bad News

nano uncertainty

Uncertainty is a concept worth exploring in the context of emerging technologies. A common definition of uncertainty is a state of mind due to an incomplete of information. Probability is therefore a prevalent expression of uncertainty. We often see predictions such as "20% chance of precipitation" or " the likelihood of the outbreak of a disease is X%." Experts provide probability because they don't have sufficient information for making a conclusive call.

Uncertainty comes not only by way of insufficient knowledge, it also originates from disagreements between scientists or experts. The case of global climate change provides a vivid example. Although there is a consensus among most of the scientists that human activities are culprits of the temperature increase, the balance reporting tenet that guides American journalism makes people feel like as if much more research is still needed in order to hold human accountable. Specifically, because of the need to be objective and balanced, journalists tend to give equal space to the two contradictory views (human-induced temperature increase vs uncertain cause), even there exists some consensus in the scientific community.

See discussions by Nisbet and Mooney (2007) in Science, 316 (5821) , p56.
And Journalistic Balance as Global Warming Bias by Boykoff and Boykoff (2004).

In the case of nanotechnology, people feel uncertain because the technology is new and a lot of its risks, properties, and benefits are unclear. In Europe. uncertainty about risks, benefits, and moral acceptability of nanotechnology is found to relate to people's uncertain attitudes of how they should support nanotechnology. (support with regular regulation, support with strict regulation, ...)

More interestingly, uncertainty about nanotechnology is found to be associated with uncertainty about GMF and GMP. The result may suggest two stories:

1. There exist an underlying uncertainty about sciences and technologies. In other words, it doesn't matter which technology was the subject of the question. People's uncertainty will be there as long as science is involved.

2. People use their past experiences of GMO, biotechnology, cloning, or stem cell research and apply them in the case of nanotechnology. That is, above and beyond how much people know about nanotechnology, the mental templates created by other controversial sciences also play a role.

Inasmuch as nano-outreach personnel wants to increase nano acceptance, they need to understand these factors or mechanisms that work to shape public attitudes, or uncertainty. They need to know that, in addition to providing information about nanotechnology, they should also deal with the similarities and differences between nanotechnology and other controversial technologies that people are more familiar with.