Setting agendas, conveying expertise? The influence of Science Media Centers on science journalism in the United Kingdom and Germany

As newsroom resources continue to decline, journalists have become increasingly dependent on external expertise to navigate and verify complex scientific information. Science Media Centers (SMCs) aim to support quality science journalism by facilitating access to scientific experts at the interface between science and the media (Rödder 2015). However, SMCs operate differently across national contexts: the British SMC positions itself as an NGO promoting public engagement with scientific evidence, whereas the German SMC operates more as a journalism-oriented observation unit specializing in science (Buschow et al. 2022).
Despite growing scholarly interest in SMCs, their influence on journalism has not yet been investigated comparatively across countries. Addressing this gap, we examine (RQ1a) whether SMCs shape journalistic agenda-setting, (RQ1b) how often their materials are used by news outlets, and (RQ2) whether they affect the structure of experts cited in news articles.
Our study draws on 480 SMC releases (UK: 149; DE: 331 releases) published between 2022 and 2023. We identified all news articles on the same SMC event appearing from one day before to two days after each release within predefined media samples (UK: 36; DE: 40 outlets). ... mehrThis yielded 2,480 articles for the UK and 4,463 for Germany.
To determine SMC influence, we compared the experts referenced in SMC releases with those cited in news articles. We additionally used named entity recognition to identify other societal actors mentioned (DE: 6,333; UK: 5,110 entities). For comparability, analyses focus on events for which both SMC-influenced and SMC-uninfluenced articles existed (UK: 80 events; DE: 42 events).

RQ1a: In Germany, 32% of SMC releases were not covered by the media, compared to 18% in the UK. British SMC events (60%) were significantly more likely to receive medium-level coverage (10–50% of outlets) than German events (32%).

RQ1b: When coverage occurred, UK SMC materials were used significantly less frequently in articles (33%) than German materials (8%). This difference was particularly pronounced for low-attention events. In Germany, the corresponding articles are influenced by SMC materials in the median in 100% of cases, whereas in the UK, at least 50% of events feature only uninfluenced articles. When at least one influenced article existed, the difference between countries diminished.

RQ2: In SMC-influenced articles, an additional scientist is cited in the median both in Germany and in the UK compared to uninfluenced articles. An increased presence of independent experts was only observed in Germany.

Although we cannot draw causal conclusions, our findings suggest that both SMCs strengthen the integration of scientific expertise in news coverage. However, their agenda-setting functions differ substantially: the journalism-oriented German SMC appears to exert a stronger thematic influence than the NGO-like British SMC.


References
Buschow, C., Suhr, M., & Serger, H. (2022). Media work as field advancement: The case of Science Media Center Germany. Media and Communication, 10(1), 99–109.
Rödder, S. (2015). Science Media Centres and public policy. Science and Public Policy, 42(3), 387–400.