Pew has released an extensive analysis by political scientist Michael Robinson of three decades of its news consumption data. Among the key findings, since the 1980s, the percentage of the public who say they follow news about science and technology "very closely" has dropped by half, from roughly 30% during the 1980s to roughly 15% today. Meanwhile, the percentage of Americans who say they follow personalities and entertainment has doubled to 17%, while the proportion paying very close attention to terrorism/war; bad weather; and money top all issues, with each at 40% respectively.
In a separate analysis of Pew's News Index tracking for the second quarter of 2007, the research group reports that over the past three months, news about either the environment or science accounted for only 3% of total news coverage, while health and medicine accounted for roughly 4%.
Once again, these numbers underscore the stark reality that engaging the public through popular science media only reaches the already informed, interested, and knowledgeable. In the digital age, it's a problem of too many media choices. Absent a preference for science news, the public tunes out, choosing to devote their attention to other types of news content, or more likely, other forms of entertainment media. At the same time, news organizations are cutting back on the time and space devoted to science, technology, and the environment while also cutting back on their science and technology correspondents.
The challenge is to figure out how to recast, or frame, information about science in ways that attract the interest of non-traditional audiences and that reach them via the media that they prefer to use, whether it's entertainment media, sports, weather, or celebrity and leisure coverage. A lot of this depends on facilitating incidental exposure to science, reaching audiences with science-related content in media places where they are not looking for it.
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Questionable report -- consider the stats on "Health and Safety" -- it wasn't a category in the '86 - '89 time period, then when it was introduced, the attention to the "Science and Technology" category dropped suddenly. So -- how much overlap was there? If you combine H&S with S&T, the trend is 33%, then 40% then 45%. This wouldn't surprise me given Americans' increasing focus on personal well being (suggested in my view by "Money" category as well). Or, alternatively, if you were to break out "H&S" overlap from "S&T" for 86-89, I think it's likely you'd see a slight upward trend in "S&T", because it did go up 1 % in the last reporting period. Contrast to "Sports" which trended down the whole way -- so there are now nearly as many Americans highly interested in pure science (excluding "Health and Safety") as in sports! A very positive development, I'm guessing probably resulting from increased interest in IT because of employment trends. (But, it's a guess!) If there are nearly as many Americans highly interested in Science as in Sports, wow!
Also, why de-emphasize that these are American stats? The headline of the Pew report clearly states this, but you have to read the above posting very carefully catch the buried reference to "Americans". It would be very interesting to see how American results compare to other parts of the world -- but probably this info isn't available.
News coverage serves its clientele, who are the corporate advertisers, not the viewers or readers. If newsies are giving science short shrift, it's because of corporate interests. Most of the science coverage in the major media is only wafer-thin, a sad sick joke.
I subscribe to Science, Nature, Scientific American, American Scientist, New Scientist, and Science News, and so I get some actual coverage of what's going on. When I see something from those magazines that shows up on TV or in the paper, the Big Media treatment is laughable.
Take a fresh look at the Gallup numbers. Big Media give us heavy coverage of religion, religious views, religion in politics, religion in culture, and so on, yet 'religion' isn't among the categories.
If the media would dish out nothing but the antics of drunken girl celebrities, then that would be the only thing for the polls to reflect. The fact that I have even heard of Paris, Britney, or Lindsay is outrageous. These polls reflect people's responses to what's been dished out to them relentlessly.
The only TV news I get is what's on while I'm flossing.
Still, we are very close to overcoming the Celebrity Scandals category! (if only...)
I am an example. I used to subscribe to Scientific American but after its scandalous, biased, unfair and unscientific treatment of Bjorn Lomholt on the subject of Global Warming I terminated my subscribtion.
Jens Bagh