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

这个实验研究项目将探索媒体信息如何影响公众对新纳米技术的风险、监管充分性和公平性的看法。公众对新技术的舆论继续受到大众媒体信息的重要影响，尽管传播渠道正在发生变化，新的战略正在发展，以加强公众对技术政策的讨论。新闻机构不独立于更广泛的社会行事，新闻受众积极解读他们收到的信息。尽管如此，新闻报道仍然是普通人获得关于新兴技术的信息的主要来源。该项目有可能加深我们对新闻媒体如何描述与技术有关的风险、监管和正义问题的理解，以及对公众舆论和态度形成的影响。我们还试图更好地把握公众讨论、媒体信息和流行思想之间的复杂互动。对技术风险的看法、对监管当局的信任和对公平的看法似乎也密切相关，但我们还没有完全掌握其中的原因。虽然我们建议从单独研究这些领域开始，但我们的最终目标是提高我们对它们相互关联性的理论理解。这项研究计划还旨在建设能力，以更好地了解未来公众对新兴技术的反应。这一能力建设不仅涉及国际和平协会和共同国际组织及其直接合作者，还包括对媒体在传播新兴技术中的S作用感兴趣的更广泛的研究人员网络--这个网络将通过在项目年早期举行的国际跨学科研讨会而得到进一步加强。这次研讨会将在2006年春季举行的早期研讨会的基础上进行，并将使更广泛的学者群体对该项目产生兴趣。

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.