Representations of Nanotechnology in Norwegian Newspapers — Implications for Public Participation

Abstract

Public participation is a prominent issue in the nanoethics literature. This paper analyses the emerging awareness of nanoscience and nanotechnology (nano S&T) in the Norwegian public sphere, as evidenced by newspaper coverage. In particular, attention is on representations of nano S&T and their relation to public participation. Three dominant representations are found; nano S&T as positive, nano S&T as important for the future and nano S&T as under control. It is argued that the prominence of these representations is unfortunate because they can discourage public participation. The paper concludes by pointing to some broader questions about public participation as an instrument for governance of nano S&T.

Communication about scientific uncertainty: how scientists and science journalists deal with uncertainties in nanoparticle research

“…These results are in line with previous studies [24,27,33]. The main topics are basic research and nanomedicine, whereas environment topics are seldom mentioned.…”

“…Most of them have been long-term studies over a period of 10 years, and the majority of content analysis includes only the press coverage about nanotechnology [21][22][23][24][25][26][27][28][29][30]. Further, media such as online media or magazines have seldom been considered [31,32] and there has been a lack of investigations of TV science coverage.…”

“…The scientific progress is frequently emphasized, and the research context and scientific facts are most frequently mentioned [24,25,28,30,33,34]. Furthermore, the research about nanotechnology is often presented as rather certain: media coverage emphasizes positive aspects and benefits and scientific evidence is presented as strong [24,27,33]. Scientific uncertainty is seldom mentioned [23,31] and only with regard to risks to the environment or human health [24,35].…”

Microblogging and nanotweets: Nanotechnology on Twitter

“…Anderson, Allan et al, 2005;Kjølberg, 2009;Kjaergaard, 2010;Donk, Metag, Kohring, & Marcinkowski, 2012;Groboljsek & Mali, 2012;Veltri, 2012 ▪ Women and the college-educated are also slightly more likely than average to use the service.…”

Understanding trends and changes in media coverage of nanotechnology in India

“…[3][4][5] There are studies exploring these effects in the context of nanotechnology such as, studies on scientists' views on nanotechnology reporting, [6] the framing of concepts important to nanotechnology by scientists and other agents, [7,8] the framing of risks, [9] and multiple content analyses of newspaper coverage of nanotechnology, [10][11][12][13][14] in order to understand who is setting the debate, how they are setting it, and what topics are being debated. In their in-depth study, Kahan et al, [15] shows that public perception on risks and benefits regarding nanotechnology is being guided less by factual knowledge and more by their affective or emotional responses to it.…”