NER: Building Capacity For Understanding and Assessing the Impact of Nanotechnology Media Messages: Long-Term Strategy for Improving Public Communication About Emerging Technology

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This program of experimental research will explore how media messages influence public perceptions of riskiness, regulatory adequacy, and fairness for new nanotechnologies. Public opinion for new technology continues to be influenced by mass media messages in important ways, even while the channels of communication are changing and new strategies are evolving to enhance public engagement in discussions of technology policy. News institutions do not act independently of the broader society, and news audiences actively interpret the messages they receive. Despite this, news accounts remain primary sources of the information available to ordinary people about newly emerging technologies.The project has the potential to enhance our understanding of how news media portray issues of risk, regulation, and justice with respect to technology, as well as the consequences for public opinion and attitude formation. We also seek to better grasp the complex interactions among public discussion, media messages, and popular thinking. Perceptions of technological risk, trust in regulatory authorities, and perceptions of fairness also appear to be closely interrelated, but we do not yet fully grasp how. While we propose to begin by studying each of these areas individually, our ultimate goal is to improve our theoretical understanding of their interconnectedness.This research program is also intended to build capacity to better understand public responses to emerging technology more generally in the future. This capacity building involves not only the PI and co-PI and their direct collaborators, but also a broader network of researchers interested in the media''s role in communicating emerging technologies - a network that will be further strengthened by an international, interdisciplinary workshop early in the project year. This workshop will build on an earlier one that took place in spring of 2006 and will bring the thinking of a wider community of scholars to bear on the project.