FRAME: Pandora's Box
nisbetmc | May 22, 2008
An artist's take on the "scary wonder" of nanotechnology.
The asbestos of tomorrow? As we wrote in our article last year at The Scientist, that's not the type of frame device that augurs well for public perceptions of nanotechnology. But it's exactly the perceptual lens by which the New York Times covers a new study appearing this week at Nature Nanotechnology. As Kenneth Chang opens the article, setting the train of thought for readers:
Nanotubes, one of the wonder materials of the new age of nanotechnology, may carry a health risk similar to that of asbestos, a wonder material of an…
nisbetmc | January 15, 2008
Conventional wisdom pegs 2007 as the long awaited tipping point in waking the American public up to the urgency of global warming. Yet as I review in my latest "Science and the Media" column at Skeptical Inquirer Online, such optimism runs up against the reality of public opinion.
Despite Gore's breakthrough success with Inconvenient Truth, American opinion today is little different from when the film premiered in May 2006. Gore has done a very good job of intensifying the beliefs of audiences who were already concerned about climate change, but a deep perceptual divide between partisans…
nisbetmc | August 14, 2007As part of its Climate Change Connections series, NPR's Nell Greenfieldboyce contributes a fascinating feature on how the extreme weather of 1816 likely inspired Mary Shelley's Frankenstein. That year, the volcano Mount Tambora erupted in Indonesia sending vast amounts of dust into the atmosphere, influencing climate across the globe. In Europe, it was called "The Year Without a Summer," or "eighteen hundred and froze to death."
Technorati Profile
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 | May 7, 2007With the semester finally winding down, over the weekend, I updated the tabs "What is Framing?" and "Popular Science vs. Framing." These new sections of my blog explain in detail research on framing and media influence and also present a generalizable typology of frames that re-appear across science debates. Both tabs include bibliographies of recommended literature.
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 | March 12, 2007
The next hurricane season is only a few months away, and when it comes to the possible link between global warming and more intense storms, according to a just released Gallup poll, roughly half of Americans think hurricanes have already become more powerful due to global warming or will in the next ten years.
Yet, relative to perceptions of this climate impact there remain major partisan differences. According to the survey, 83% of Democrats worry that hurricanes will become more powerful due to global warming compared to only 49% of Republicans.
nisbetmc | March 12, 2007 The Guardian has the details on the PR tactic of polar bear photos to (over)dramatize the impacts of global warming, tracing the idea to a 1993 Coca-Cola campaign. Here's a little bit about the strategic use of "cuddly anthropomorphism on the tundra":
One photograph in particular has captured the imagination. In a neat piece of marketing, the Canadian Ice Service made available a stunning image to coincide with the IPCC report. Two bears, probably a mother and her cub, are pictured on a spectacular ice block off northern Alaska that might have been modelled by Henry Moore. They appear to be…
nisbetmc | March 2, 2007In a column last year, I detailed the historical trajectory in the U.S. of frames on nuclear energy, with images moving from very positive interpretations centered on social progress and economic development during the 1950s and 1960s to a very negative focus on public accountability and a Pandora's Box of unknown disaster in the 1970s. These frames were locked in by the Three Mile Island accident in 1977, and reinforced in the 1980s by the Chernobyl disaster. Since TMI, no new nuclear reactors have been built in the U.S., and public support for nuclear energy has never moved above 50%.
Yet…
nisbetmc | February 20, 2007 Where have you heard this one before? Back in September, Canada's Environment Minister John Baird echoed the predictions of a university economist when he claimed that if Canada were to meet its's 2008-12 Kyoto targets, it would require "a rate of emissions decline unmatched by any modern nation in the history of the world except those who have suffered economic collapse, such as Russia. Canadians do not want empty promises on a plan that we cannot achieve and they do not want our country to face economic collapse."
This kind of "economic ruin" and "unfair burden" frame has long been used…
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…