This article reports on a content analysis of science coverage by the leading Italian newspaper, Il Corriere della Sera, over a period of fifty years. Results show an expansion of such coverage over time, although it was increasingly “institutionalized” in new sections devoted to science and medicine. The typical science story can be described as dealing with biomedical issues, referring to a geographical context outside Italy, relying on uncontested scientific expertise and presenting the consequences of science activity in a positive fashion.
However, deeper analysis suggests the presence of a marked dualism between two distinct journalistic genres: (1) “science-popularization,” which is characteristic of special sections, overwhelmingly dominated by biomedical topics, depicting science as straightforward, consensual, and bringing improvement to people's lives; and (2) “science as news,” dealing more frequently with other fields such as the physical sciences, paying closer attention to controversy and to the harmful consequences of scientific enterprise. A comparison with similar studies in other countries is also presented.
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References
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Jader Jacobelli , ed., Scienza e informazione (Roma-Bari: Laterza, 1996).
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The “Di Bella affair” was centered on an alleged “alternative” cure for cancer and for several weeks was one of the most visible issues in the Italian media, provoking a heated public debate. In the course of the debate, a document on the “ethics of scientific journalism” was signed by scientists and scientific journalists, which berated the media for their treatment of the affair (www.ilsole24ore.it/etica).
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Steven Epstein , Impure Science: AIDS, Activism and the Politics of Knowledge (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1996).
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Massimiano Bucchi , Science and the Media. Alternative Routes in Scientific Communication (London and New York: Routledge, 1998).
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Agnes Allansdottiret al. , “Italy,” in Biotechnology in the Public Sphere: A European Sourcebook, eds. John Durantet al., (London: Science Museum, 1998), 89-99.
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surveys conducted in Italy on the same theme include see for instance Massimiano Bucchi and Federico Neresini, “Biotech remains unloved by the more informed,”Nature216 (2002): 461.
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Marianne. G. Pellechia , “Trends in science coverage: a content analysis of three US newspapers,”Public Understanding of Science6 (1997): 49-68.
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A more comprehensive account of the project's results is contained in Gustavo Guizzardi (ed.), La Scienza negoziata. Discipline biomediche nello spazio pubblico (Bologna: Il Mulino, 2002).
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A similarly constructed study has also been carried out in Bulgaria, Kristina Petkovaet al., Modernisation and Images of Science: Comparing Britain and Bulgaria 1946-1994, Research Report (Budapest: Central European University, 2000).
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Fourteen days (two for each weekday) were selected for each year since 1947. Once the first week of the first year (e.g. the eighth of the fifty-two weeks of the year) had been selected, the Monday of that week was considered. We then proceeded at four-week intervals (52/14 = 3.7 approximated to 4), thus selecting the 12th week and the Tuesday of that week, the 16th and the Wednesday of that week, and so on. The operation was repeated for the next year, but by moving the week forward by one unit (so that we now started with the ninth week rather than the eighth) and moving the weekday back by one unit (so that it was now Sunday rather than Monday).
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David M. Phillipset al. , “Importance of the lay press in the transmission of medical knowledge to the scientific community,”New England Journal of Medicine, (11 October 1991): 1180-1183.
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Massimiano Bucchi , “La scienza e i mass media: la fusione fredda nei quotidiani italiani,”Nuncius, 2 (1996): 581-611.
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Dorothy Nelkin , Selling Science: How the Press Covers Science and Technology (New York: Freeman, 1995).
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On the subject of “balance” in representing science issues see also James W. Dearing, “Newspaper coverage of maverick science: creating controversy through balancing,”Public Understanding of Science4 (1995): 341-361.
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S. Holly Stocking , “How journalists deal with scientific uncertainty,” in Communicating Uncertainty. Media Coverage of Controversial Science, ed. Sharon M. Friedmanet al. (Mahwah: Lawrence Erlbaum, 1999), 23-42.
18.
see also Einsiedel, “Framing science and technology.”
19.
The total is more than 100 because an article title may refer to more than one aspect.
20.
Cf. Hans Mathias Kepplinger, Künstliche Horizonte. Folgen, Darstellung and Akzeptanz von Technik in der Bundesrepublik (Frankfurt: Campus, 1989). Kepplinger examined the coverage of science in the German daily press between 1965 and 1985, considering its increasingly negative attitude towards science to be responsible of the vanishing confidence of German citizens in scientific research.
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Renate G. Bader , “How Science News Influence Newspaper Science Coverage: A Case Study,”Journalism Quarterly67 (1990): 88-96.
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See Bauer, Science and Technology.
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Einsiedel , “Framing science and technology.” Einsedel's study, however, analyzes in detail only one year of science coverage (1987) by seven Canadian newspapers.
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Martin Bauer , “The Medicalization of Science News—from the Rocket-Scalpel to the Gene-Meteorite Complex,”Social Science Information37 (1998): 731-751.
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Petkova , Modernisation and Images of Science.
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Massimiano Bucchi and Federico Neresini, “Biotech Remains Unloved by the More Informed,”Nature216 (2002): 461.
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Einsiedel , “Framing science and technology.”
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Einsiedel , “Framing science and technology.”
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Bucchi , Science and the Media.
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Hans Peter Peters , “Scientists as Public Experts,” paper presented at the 6th PCST Conference, Geneva, 1 February 2000.
31.
For an analysis of media coverage of issues in terms of frames and “symbolic packages,” see, for instance, William A. Gamson and Andre Modigliani, “Media Discourse and Public Opinion on Nuclear Power: A Constructionist Approach,”American Journal of Sociology95 (1989): 1-37.
