The idea of faculty engaging in meaningful dialogue with different publics instead of simply communicating their research to interested audiences has gradually morphed from a novel concept to a ...mainstay within most parts of the academy. Given the wide variety of public engagement modalities, it may be unsurprising that we still lack a comprehensive and granular understanding of factors that influence faculty willingness to engage with public audiences. Those nuances are not always captured by quantitative surveys that rely on pre-determined categories to assess scholars' willingness to engage. While closed-ended categories are useful to examine which factors influence the willingness to engage more than others, it is unlikely that pre-determined categories comprehensively represent the range of factors that undermine or encourage engagement, including perceptual influences, institutional barriers, and scholars' lived experiences. To gain insight into these individual perspectives and lived experiences, we conducted focus group discussions with faculty members at a large midwestern land-grant university in the United States. Our findings provide context to previous studies of public engagement and suggest four themes for future research. These themes affirm the persistence of institutional barriers to engaging with the public, particularly the expectations in the promotion process for tenure-track faculty. However, we also find a perception that junior faculty and graduate students are challenging the status quo by introducing a new wave of attention to public engagement. This finding suggests a "trickle-up" effect through junior faculty and graduate students expecting institutional support for public engagement. Our findings highlight the need to consider how both top-down factors such as institutional expectations and bottom-up factors such as graduate student interest shape faculty members' decisions to participate in public engagement activities.
Effective public engagement with complex technologies requires a nuanced understanding of how different audiences make sense of and communicate disruptive technologies with immense social ...implications. Using latent class analysis (LCA) on nationally-representative survey data (N = 2,700), we examine public attitudes on different aspects of AI, and segment the U.S. population based on their AI-related risk and benefit perceptions. Our analysis reveals five segments: the negative, perceiving risks outweighing benefits; the ambivalent, seeing high risks and benefits; the tepid, perceiving slightly more benefits than risks; the ambiguous, perceiving moderate risks and benefits; and the indifferent, perceiving low risks and benefits. For societal debates surrounding a deeply disruptive issue like AI, our findings suggest potential opportunities for engagement by soliciting input from individuals in segments with varying levels of support for AI, as well as a way to widen representation of voices and ensure responsible innovation of AI.
•We classify Americans' AI perceptions into five segments: negative, ambivalent, tepid, ambiguous, and indifferent classes.•Views of AI vary both by the level of news attention and the content audiences attend to.•The negative and the ambivalent classes largely differ in support for AI, but agree that their voices should be heard.•The indifferent and the ambiguous classes include more minorities who may be disproportionately affected by AI.•Now is a great time to engage with the publics on issues related to AI because it is not overtly politicized.
The increasing intensity of wildfires and hurricanes signal the reality of climate change, drawing media coverage that could capture the attention of policymakers. In a computational content analysis ...of 8906 news articles from four national newspapers, we compare coverage of wildfires and hurricanes in the U.S. from 2016 to 2021 examining volume and references to climate change, policy, and politicization. Our findings show patterns that provide new insight into how media may impact policymaking addressing climate change challenges. We find greater mentions of climate change in wildfire news coverage, suggesting that journalists more often associate wildfires with climate change than hurricanes. Volumetric data suggest a potential normalization effect implying decreased media attention of these events could reduce support for subsequent policy action. Overall, however, we do not see evidence that wildfires and hurricanes are focusing events for climate policy. We further discuss the implications of our findings, raising several questions and suggestions for future research.
KEY POLICY HIGHLIGHTS
Climate change is more often mentioned in mainstream national U.S. news media connected to wildfires, while economic factors are more associated with hurricanes. Related policy may be more accepted when framed accordingly.
Because less media attention may be paid to hurricanes and wildfires over time, as the novelty and dramatization factors diminish, the likelihood of their presence on policy agendas may be reduced.
Recurring extreme wildfires and hurricanes may become expected by the public, policymakers, and news media. Normalization would mean extreme hurricanes and wildfires won't fit the definition of focusing events, suggesting that these events would not affect the policy agenda.
Scientists are increasingly expected to participate in public engagement around prominent science and technology issues. However, scientists remain concerned that public engagement takes time away ...from conducting research. Little is known about the relationship between scientists’ productivity and their willingness to participate in different types of public engagement. Using a census survey of scientists from 30 U.S. land-grant universities (N = 5,208), we find that productive scientists are slightly more willing to participate in public scholarship than less productive scientists. In addition, social science consideration, institutional incentives, and self-efficacy are associated with a greater willingness to participate in public scholarship and informal science education.
Scientists are expected to engage with the public, especially when society faces challenges like the COVID-19 pandemic or climate change, but what public engagement means to scientists is not clear. ...We use a triangulated, mixed-methods approach combining survey and focus group data to gain insight into how pre-tenure and tenured scientists personally conceptualize public engagement. Our findings indicate that scientists’ understanding of public engagement is similarly complex and diverse as the scholarly literature. While definitions and examples of one-way forms of engagement are the most salient for scientists, regardless of tenure status, scientists also believe public engagement with science includes two-way forms of engagement, such as citizen and community involvement in research. These findings suggest that clear definitions of public engagement are not necessarily required for its application but may be useful to guide scientists in their engagement efforts, so they align with what is expected of them.
The call for public scholarship to emphasize the broader impacts of science has raised questions about how universities can support this work among their scientists. This study quantitatively ...assesses how institutional factors shape scientists’ participation in public scholarship, a subset of public engagement focusing on scientists’ involvement in public debate and democratic decision-making related to science policy. Based on a 2018 survey of scientists from 46 US land-grant universities (N = 6,242), hierarchical linear modeling results show that institutional factors, including tenure guidelines and the extent of government funding, play a minor role in influencing scientists’ public scholarship participation. More importantly, scientists’ perceptions of the university climate on support for engagement, including support from high-level administrators and for graduate students, are significant predictors of participation in public scholarship. Ultimately, these findings support the recommendation that universities should coordinate individual motivations with institutional missions to support a broader culture of public engagement.
The use of artificial intelligence-based algorithms for the curation of news content by social media platforms like Facebook and Twitter has upended the gatekeeping role long held by traditional news ...outlets. This has caused some US policymakers to argue that platforms are skewing news diets against them, and such claims are beginning to take hold among some voters. In a nationally representative survey experiment, we explore whether traditional models of media bias perceptions extend to beliefs about algorithmic news bias. We find that partisan cues effectively shape individuals’ attitudes about algorithmic news bias but have asymmetrical effects. Specifically, whereas in-group directional partisan cues stimulate bias perceptions for members of both parties, Democrats, but not Republicans, also respond to out-group cues. We conclude with a discussion about the implications for the formation of attitudes about new technologies and the potential for polarization.
Using data from a nationally representative survey of U.S. adults, this study explores how trust in key actors to responsibly manage artificial intelligence (AI) develops among members of the U.S. ...population and how trust, along with other key factors, shapes public attitudes toward AI. Greater trust is linked to stronger support for AI, both directly and indirectly (through risk and benefit perceptions). Furthermore, the strength or direction of the link between trust and support—as well as media diets and trust—differs significantly for liberals and conservatives, suggesting that Americans are indeed beginning to process AI-related information through a political lens.
The field of science communication is uniquely positioned to study the implications of the intersection between wicked science and society, making it essential for post-normal scientific inquiry. ...This dissertation includes three studies that exemplify the utility of mixed-methods science communication scholarship for addressing wicked issues in the local context. Specifically, this dissertation explores how local communities make decisions about climate change and the energy transition and considers strategies for communicating about them in polarized contexts. To do so, I conducted three studies that apply science communication theory and community-engaged mixed-methods approaches to examine wicked science issues in local contexts. The first study analyzes two workshops of energy leaders in the state of Wisconsin (U.S.) that map mental models of local energy management to inform future local clean energy transition efforts. Findings showed that positive perceptions of energy independence are affected by tensions between interests in technology adoption and perceived feasibility related to public opinion, among other things. The second study is part of a larger community-engaged case study about the city of Beloit, Wisconsin (U.S.). This study uses interviews of local opinion leaders to gain insight into the social arena surrounding local climate (in)action and inform communication strategies about climate change. Findings highlight complexities in local decision-making and climate change as a low city priority, but also suggest that resilience and sustainability may be useful for climate communication strategies and engagement. Collaboration with the involved community partners will continue with additional research and engagement informed by these data. The last study analyzes a survey experiment of U.S. adults that tests whether framing communication about local issues in terms of “resilience” and “sustainability” influence perceptions of local (climate) action. Rather than these terms influencing attitudes, findings showed that nuanced environmental attitudes and political ideology were drivers of perceptions about local action. These findings raise questions as to how nuances in social identities may interact and influence perspectives of local government action on wicked issues that future mixed-methods research will address. Overall, this research contributes to the evolving approaches of post-normal science, as highlighted by the practical, theoretical, and methodological implications that inform a science communication research agenda navigating wicked science issues in local contexts.
The idea of faculty engaging in meaningful dialogue with different publics instead of simply communicating their research to interested audiences has gradually morphed from a novel concept to a ...mainstay within most parts of the academy. Given the wide variety of public engagement modalities, it may be unsurprising that we still lack a comprehensive and granular understanding of factors that influence faculty willingness to engage with public audiences. Those nuances are not always captured by quantitative surveys that rely on pre-determined categories to assess scholars' willingness to engage. While closed-ended categories are useful to examine which factors influence the willingness to engage more than others, it is unlikely that pre-determined categories comprehensively represent the range of factors that undermine or encourage engagement, including perceptual influences, institutional barriers, and scholars' lived experiences. To gain insight into these individual perspectives and lived experiences, we conducted focus group discussions with faculty members at a large midwestern land-grant university in the United States. Our findings provide context to previous studies of public engagement and suggest four themes for future research. These themes affirm the persistence of institutional barriers to engaging with the public, particularly the expectations in the promotion process for tenure-track faculty. However, we also find a perception that junior faculty and graduate students are challenging the status quo by introducing a new wave of attention to public engagement. This finding suggests a "trickle-up" effect through junior faculty and graduate students expecting institutional support for public engagement. Our findings highlight the need to consider how both top-down factors such as institutional expectations and bottom-up factors such as graduate student interest shape faculty members' decisions to participate in public engagement activities.
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