The Public Interpretation of Biotechnological Risk

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The social production of scientific knowledge and media accounts of that knowledge have received more scholarly attention than have the social processes through which readers and audiences without technical training interpret this information. Risk communication issues relevant to newly emerging biotechnology highlight the importance of understanding how public opinion is formed in this area, a process that may depend as much on ethical and value considerations as on the assimilation of technical information. This research is intended to develop empirical data that will contribute to a better theoretical understanding of the interaction between the scientific community, the public, and the media. Communicating scientific information to nontechnical publics can be analyzed as a problem in cross-cultural communication. The study proposed will focus on media accounts of biotechnology and associated risks and audience responses to these accounts to generate a fuller understanding of the more general dynamics of how lay publics evaluate or interpret information on the risks associated with new science and new technology. The research proposed will take place in two phases: content analysis of newspaper coverage of medical and agricultural biotechnology, and focus group research to elucidate the concerns that arise in actual social decision making situations involving these technologies. The technique involves assigning groups of subjects the task of reading a news article about risks associated with a new development and reaching a group consensus on the acceptability of that risk. Discussions are tape recorded and both transcript analysis and analysis of post discussion questionnaires are used to gain insight into the reasoning used. In this study, results from content analysis of recent news clippings will be used to select articles that cover a variety of issues to form the basis for the focus group discussion. There will be three groups of six participants each who will consider each of six articles, for a total of 18 group discussions. Two groups will be composed of students and one of adults. The research will help to answer three sets of questions. The first asks whether responses to media coverage of biotechnology are similar to responses to other science or technology coverage. The second asks whether the responses result from the coverage, or do readers' concerns shape their responses independently of the way the media cover the issues. The third asks what types of preexisting values, beliefs, and opinions are brought into the process, and in what ways? Presentation and discussion of results will occur in a campus seminar on risk, at national meetings, and in journal publications.