Entertainment Media
nisbetmc | January 1, 2008If anyone knows their way around airports, it's Frank Luntz. The language maestro estimates he logs 300,000 miles a year and stays in 100 hotels as he jets around the world consulting with corporate clients and political conservatives. At Business Week, he offers readers his tips on surviving airports.
nisbetmc | November 13, 2007Pew has posted advertising revenue analysis for major magazines over the past year. Not surprisingly, the "big three" news magazines continue to suffer, other mags such as The New Yorker hold steady, while the celebrity magazines continue to thrive. As Pew reports:
It's been a rough year for the three major U.S. newsweeklies and a boom year for the celebrity/gossip magazines, according to the most recent advertising numbers released by the Publishers Information Bureau (PIB), measuring ad pages in about 250 titles.
The 2007 ad pages are down substantially at the two biggest newsweeklies. Time…
nisbetmc | October 19, 2007Science magazine runs the following news report on Gore's Nobel prize and his impact on the policy debate and public opinion. The article quotes Steve Schneider, Michael Oppenheimer, Robert Watson, and other key scientists who note the immense importance of Gore's work on climate change over the years.
Climate researchers have known Gore as the rare policymaker who brings scientists in--and listens. When he visited Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory in Palisades, New York, as a senator, recalls geochemist Wallace Broecker, "he said, 'I don't want a tour. I just want to sit around a table with…
nisbetmc | October 17, 2007In a new regular column over at DesmogBlog, Chris Mooney elaborates on the arguments first offered here. We should applaud Gore, writes Chris, but we also need to draw on data and evidence in order to accurately evaluate his impact and consider what else needs to be done:
However, there's one arena in which we seriously ought to criticize the Gore communications juggernaut--it just isn't the realm of scientific accuracy. Rather, the true issue is the one that Matthew Nisbet has been highlighting, and what I might term the "Gore paradox": Gore is our top mass media communicator on climate…
nisbetmc | September 5, 2007
Say what? Fred Thompson is launching his presidential candidacy on Jay Leno? In today's fragmented media world, it's a smart move. As the political scientist Matt Baum describes in a recent study, and as I have detailed on this blog many times, with so many media choices, audiences without a preference for political information are tuning out hard news and instead spending their media time with entertainment and infotainment media.
When candidates go on late night comedy, they reach the limited number of "persuadables" left in the electorate, non-news audiences who have few other sources of…
nisbetmc | June 29, 2007
To date, nanotechnology has followed a public trajectory similar to that of plant biotechnology in the United States. Relatively low levels of attention have been paid to the still nascent issue in the media, with coverage concentrated at the science and business beats. This coverage has been framed heavily in social progress and economic development terms with a few stories focusing on elements of the uncertainty of possible risks and/or regulatory matters involving the accountability of industry and scientists. Given low amounts of media attention and the heavy focus on the promise of…
nisbetmc | June 25, 2007"I think one movie can make a difference; I do believe that," says director Michael Moore. Indeed, speculation over the impact of his new documentary SICKO was the subject of a news feature in the Sunday New York Times:
Whether embracing Mr. Moore's remedy or disdaining it, elected officials and policy experts agreed last week that the film was likely to have broad political impact, perhaps along the lines of "An Inconvenient Truth," Al Gore's jeremiad on global warming. It will, they predicted, crystallize the frustration that is a pre-existing condition for so many health care consumers.…
nisbetmc | April 11, 2007
How difficult is it for a well known political figure to break through the perceptual screens of partisanship, along with the ingrained frames of reference that citizens have developed over years, and boost their standing in the polls?
Consider Al Gore. Despite winning an Academy Award, receiving tons of free (and often glamorous) publicity in news coverage and on entertainment TV, Gore's favorability rating has only nudged up slightly in the latest Gallup polling.
According to the Gallup survey, only slightly more than half of Dems and only slightly more than a third of Independents would…
nisbetmc | March 14, 2007My quick summary reaction to Bill Broad's provocative NY Times article surveying a few scientists and social scientists' opinions on Al Gore's Inconvenient Truth:
1) Just like in politics generally, science-related blogs can strongly shape the news agenda and framing of an issue, and Broad's article is a leading example. Roger Pielke and Kevin Vranes at UColorado's Prometheus site have been doing a great job in adding their expertise and views to the climate change discussion over the past few years. In the process, they have emerged as a valuable source for journalists trying to make…
nisbetmc | February 25, 2007 One of the great paradoxes of contemporary society is that Americans by way of the Internet and specialized cable TV channels have greater access to scientific information than at any other time in history, yet knowledge of science and related policy matters remains very low. The problem is too many content choices. In a fragmented media system, strong "preference gaps" exist, as citizens not only select among media choices based on ideology or religious views, but also based on their preference, or lack thereof, for science-related content. As a result, with a wide diversity of…
nisbetmc | February 16, 2007
In the week following the Friday, Feb. 2 release of the Fourth IPCC report on global climate change, few if any Americans reported that global warming was the issue they were following most closely. Instead, the public turned its gaze back to the war in Iraq, while others, especially women ages 18 to 29, were distracted by the media frenzy over the death of Anna Nicole Smith. The trends are reported in the first release of Pew's media interest index, an innovative new project matching audience data to weekly content analyses of the top news stories.
Things were only marginally different…
nisbetmc | February 11, 2007
Though they may appear very simple, intensive time and effort goes into plotting the jacket covers for intended blockbuster novels like Michael Crichton's Next. Today's backpage essay at the NY Times Book Review describes how over the past 30 years a whole design style has sprung up called "the big book look." The goal, according to the article, is to make the book "pop" with the cover "punched out and vibrant."
It's not just the editor, the editor in chief, the publisher, and the author who sign off on the final design, but often the lead fiction buyers at Barnes & Noble and Borders…
nisbetmc | February 10, 2007
A series of concerts "bigger than Live Aid" are being planned for July, in a bid to put the subject of climate change before a global audience of two billion, reports the Financial Times. The event, scheduled for July 7, will feature co-ordinated film, music and television events in seven cities including London, Washington DC, Shanghai, Rio de Janeiro, Cape Town and Kyoto, with major broadcasters and media owners aiming to magnify public concern over global warming. Al Gore is reported to be a chief organizer.
Given the major challenges that even major moments like the release of the IPCC…
nisbetmc | February 7, 2007How much impact has Al Gore's Inconvenient Truth had on the global warming debate? More generally, how can we understand the range of influences that a documentary film might have on the public or on policy? I address these questions and others in the introduction to a recent report published by the Center for Social Media at American University.
As I review, in a fragmented media system with many competing choices, even blockbuster documentaries such as Inconvenient Truth reach relatively small audiences of already concerned or engaged citizens. Selectivity bias, however, can be…
nisbetmc | January 8, 2007
After spending the past three years on the faculty at Ohio State, I remain ambivalent about the vast commercialization and big time money pouring into college athletics. Of course, it will all be on stage tonight as OSU takes on Florida in the BCS championship game.
As USA Today spotlighted last Friday in a front page cover story, Ohio State outspends every university in the country on athletics, and football obviously is the cash cow. One can raise eyebrows about the $2 million-a-year salary for Jim Tressel, express doubts about whether you want the football coach to the be national face…
nisbetmc | January 3, 2007
Time out for a bit of soft journalism....Variety reports that after an eighteen year wait, Indiana Jones 4 is going into production and will be released in May 2008.
After years of languishing in development, the fourth installment of the Indiana Jones franchise is finally moving ahead, as Steven Spielberg, George Lucas and Harrison Ford look to reconnect with their blockbuster roots. For Spielberg in particular, the project marks a return to the kind of pure entertainment fare on which he built his career before his interests turned to more social-minded fare like "Schindler's List," "…
nisbetmc | December 18, 2006
ScienceBlogs readers are hipsters. So I just wanted to add to the buzz about the new video for the U2 single "Window in the Skies." Definitely an instant classic. Watch it here. Just press play.
nisbetmc | November 9, 2006
Buzz is building for Mel Gibson's Dec. 8 release of Apocalypto[trailer]. The film's actual plot is still a bit of a secret. Judging by the title and the focus on the decline of the Mayan civilization, Gibson is offering a metaphor for "the end times." Like Gibson's Passion, the movie is likely to serve as a rallying point for Evangelicals, especially after the recent election and other events have taken some of the wind out of the Evangelical movement.
Yet what effects is a movie with a clear, if not symbolic, political and social message likely to have on audiences? To contextualize…
nisbetmc | August 4, 2006
Gallup has released a poll report detailing trends in Gore's favorability ratings, indicating that despite the speculation that Inconvenient Truth has morphed the image of the VP in the public's mind, there has been little change in public evaluations. (Go here and watch an ad, to access the report.)
Why has there been little movement in the VP's favorability ratings, despite a juggernaut media campaign? As has been the case with most previous political documentaries, they draw a strong like-minded audience. Viewers of Truth are already predisposed to favor Gore and to be concerned about…
nisbetmc | August 2, 2006
With Mel Gibson's DWI arrest and associated comments about Jews, re-newed attention has been focused on the content and possible effects of Gibson's The Passion of the Christ. The film depicts the high priest Caiaphas as leading an angry, bloodthirsty Jewish mob demanding the death of Jesus, and the Roman ruler Pontius Pilate as a malleable governor pressured to hand down a death sentence.
In a Science and the Media column back in 2004, I reviewed the available polling data to determine if the movie had any effects on audiences. Among adults, the available data showed that attitudes and…