Repercussions of media coverage on science? A critical assessment of a popular thesis

The topic of this paper is the relationship between journalism and science. In order to describe a potentially relevant dynamic in this relationship, the German sociologist of science Peter Weingart proposed the term "medialization." It describes phenomena of change within science, such as the oversimplification or exaggeration of research findings, which are associated with an increased need for public attention within science. This concept focuses on the repercussions of journalism on science. Inscribed in the term is the assumption that journalism potentially has great social significance. At the very least, journalism, or the mass media it dominates, is thought to influence processes of change within science. The paper aims to assess the social impact of science reporting in order to plausibilize the significance of the role played by journalism. This is based on recent, partly unpublished empirical findings by a German-French DFG/ANR project, which relate to the ability of journalism to focus public attention on scientific events and actors. The results are essentially negative, in the sense that journalism hardly, or at best only very sporadically, succeeds in focusing public attention on individual scientific events or actors. ... mehrBased on the journalism’s very limited performance in this regard, we consider it implausible that journalism could be as significant a factor as the concept of medialization indicates.