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The Scientist : The Future of Public Engagement:

The facts never speak for themselves, which is why scientists need to "frame" their messages to the public.

By Matthew C. Nisbet & Dietram A. Scheufele
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The Typology of Frames Specific to Science-Related Issues

In a speech at this year's AAAS meeting in San Francisco, Google cofounder Larry Page proclaimed that "science has a serious marketing problem." As a solution, he suggested that tenure and grants be tied to the media impact of research.1 Page is just one of several leaders who have called attention to the urgent need for new directions in science communication. Yet unfortunately, still missing from much of the general discussion is a systematic understanding of how the public uses the media to form opinions about science-related topics, and a strategy for moving forward.

The dominant assumption is that ignorance is at the root of conflict over science. According to this traditional "popular science" model, the media should be used to educate the public about the technical details of the issue in dispute. Once citizens are brought up to speed on the science, they will be more likely to judge scientific issues as scientists do and controversy will go away. The facts are assumed to speak for themselves and to be interpreted by all citizens in similar ways. If the public does not accept or recognize these facts, then the failure in transmission is blamed on journalists, "irrational" beliefs, or both. Yet many scientists ignore the possibility that their communication efforts might be part of the problem.2

Perhaps worse, arguments in favor of the popular science model are not very scientific. In fact, they cut against more than 60 years of research in the social sciences, a body of work that suggests citizens prefer to rely on their social values to pick and choose information sources that confirm what they already believe, often making up their minds about a topic in the absence of knowledge.3 A second challenge to the popular science model is that in today's media world, by way of cable TV and the Internet, the public has greater access to quality information about science than at any time in history, yet public knowledge of science remains low. The reason is that a small audience remains attentive to science coverage, but the broader public literally tunes out, preferring other media content.

Given these realities, scientists must learn to focus on presenting, or "framing," their messages in ways that connect with diverse audiences. This means remaining true to the underlying science, but drawing on research to tailor messages in ways that make them personally relevant and meaningful to different publics. For example, when scientists are speaking to a group of people who think about the world primarily in economic terms, they should emphasize the economic relevance of science - such as, in the case of embryonic stem cell research, pointing out that expanded government funding would make the United States, or a particular state, more economically competitive.

The stakes are high. If across the media, scientists and their organizations are not effective in getting their messages across, then others will be. One of the reasons why a coordinated response to the Intelligent Design movement was slow to develop was that there was not enough appreciation among evolutionists for strategic communication. The Discovery Institute, through careful crafting and targeting of their message, created a public perception wedge, casting intelligent design as the "middle way," the scientific compromise between teaching "atheistic evolution" and constitutionally unacceptable biblical doctrine.

In political coverage, at the opinion pages, in television advertising, and at the cable news shows, if scientists don't evolve in their strategies, they will essentially be waving a white flag, surrendering their important role as communicators. ...