Last month Pew released a comprehensive analysis of news audience trends over time and across demographics. One of the key findings (depicted at left) was the continued decline in public attention to news about science and technology, with only 13% of Americans saying they follow the topic "very closely."
News about the environment and health fair better, with roughly 1 out of 5 Americans answering that they follow these issues "very closely." Yet even for health, there has been a significant decline in news attention, dropping from 26% in 2002.
Far more troubling, however, is the massive gender gap in the news audience for science and technology. As the table at left depicts, among the audience who follows science and technology "very closely," 71% are men compared to 29% who are women. The gender gap on science and technology is the widest for any news genre and roughly equivalent to that for sports. Whereas men dominate the news audience for science and technology, women are disproportionately represented among the attentive audience for health (64% women to 34% men). There is no significant gender gap on news about the environment.
As I have written before, these trends reflect the "problem of choice" in a fragmented media system. Absent a strong preference or motivation for news about a particular topic, even among the college educated, an individual can very easily avoid such information, and only pay attention to their preferred news genre or alternatively, the many competing entertainment content choices.
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Clearly we need scientific version of a Venus/Serena Williams (or a sarah palin?)
I would offer myself up but I cant hit a tennis ball and I have never shot a moose and I am about 20 years too old.
Sigh. I could have been somebody
Part of the problem is the categories.
In this survey, "technology" (i.e. gadgets) is grouped with "science". Yet "weather" (i.e. meterology), "the environment" (how is this not science?), and "health" are their own categories.
Also, clearly women are interested in celebrities. If women need to read science, simply inject more science into articles about celebrities and health.
I have a real problem with the categories as well, Becca. It really negates the whole poll for me. After all, if women are reading about climate change instead iPods, I'm all good with that.
Maybe this is a good time to take a moment and give props to all the women who follow this (and other) science blogs!
The old Time magazine cover said ~"Why are men and women different? New studies show they are born that way."
Based on my personal experience, and with a few notable exceptions, interest in science is itself biased.
My wife is a mathematician with two science degrees, better at math than most if not all the men she encountered, even at the graduate level. But she's an exception.
My daughter is getting interested in math and science, but it is and has been a real struggle. She's not interested in crashing cars together like her big brother was (think particle accelerator).
Her brother, on the other hand, is a natural, requiring very little encouragment, a natural intuition.
My daughter's aptitude in math is probably way above average, but it's clear she'd rather do girl activities.
She is a natural girly girl, who would rather dress up than play. (She did not get her interest in style from either her mother or her father--her natural apptitutde is artistic, while her parents' can barely pick out a cordinated outfit. She is always correct us in fact.)
Mind you, neither me nor my wife encourage her to do girly things (dress up, dance, sing). We have to go way out of our way to attempt to make math fun for her.
Anyway, she's only 4, so that she can already read an analog clock and add two two-digit numbers probably puts her way ahead of the rest of the country. But her brother could do these things at 3. (He's currently mastering algebra at age 7).
I taught her chess, too, but she has absolutely no natural interest in winning. She just likes playing. My son, on the other hand, is very competative, and likes to win, and hates to loose. My daughter could care less, as long as she's spending time with Dad.
We have to face facts. Men and women are different.
Little boys enjoy compettition, while little girls enjoy companionship for its own sake. Yes there are exceptions, but there are also natural trends.
How we can use these common sense observations to reduce the gap?
We could make math uncompetative, which may lead to fewer boys doing well in math. This would reduce the gap. While this sounds ridiculous, I think this is exactly a side effect of current programs.
We could require fathers to do what I do with my daughter, spend a lot of time teaching them math and science. I am not sure it will work in the long run (I'll let you know in 14 years).
Or, we could keep trying to let boys do the best they can, and girls do the best they can, and accept it that more boys than girls will do well.
The fact that the media themselves (at least in my country) use the same categories, doesn't make it any better. Science stories in the papers will be clearly labeled "Science and technology", and if you're a somewhat experienced newspaper reader, you know that this means a lot of meaningless stories about the latest Apple product. Editors seem to have a very stereotyped image of what a science story should look like. So of course you turn the page in search for the "environment" section instead.
I'm with Becca, Jessica and Kjerstin. The categories are in part dictating the results. One could, for example, think that not often watching Discovery, a purported 'scence and technology' channel means I'm not interested in science. Well no. I'm not interested in motorcycle building, mega-machines, blowing stuff up or how good one animal might be at fighting another animal.
When science news includes subjects I have an interest in, such as biology, paleontology, archaeology, zoology, geology, climate science, etc., I watch. Otherwise my husband can have the remote, I'll go back to the computer for my information.