|
Washington: Blogs on
new discoveries, inventions and technologies often bristle with
comments casting science in a negative, disparaging light, says a
new study.
"Wonder how much taxpayer cash went into this 'deep' study?" or "I
think you can take all these studies by pointy headed scientists,
99 percent of whom are socialists and communists", "Yawn. Climate
change myth wackos at it again", are some of these instances.
For rapidly developing nanotechnology, a technology already built
into more than 1,300 consumer products, exposure to uncivil online
comments is one of several variables that can directly influence
the perception of risk linked with it, according to University of
Wisconsin-Madison study, the Journal of Computer Mediated
Communication reports.
Dominique Brossard reported the results of a study showing the
tone of blog comments alone can influence the perception of risk
posed by nanotechnology, the science of manipulating materials at
the smallest scales, according to a Washington statement.
The study sampled a representative cross-section of 2,338
Americans in an online experiment, where the civility of blog
comments was manipulated, according to a Washington statement.
For example, introducing name calling into commentary tacked onto
an otherwise balanced newspaper blog post, the study showed, could
elicit either lower or higher perceptions of risk, depending on
one's predisposition to the science of nanotechnology.
"When people encounter an unfamiliar issue like nanotechnology,
they often rely on an existing value such as religiosity or
deference to science to form a judgment," explained Ashley
Anderson, postdoctoral fellow in the Centre for Climate Change
Communication at George Mason University, who led the study.
Highly religious readers, the study revealed, were more likely to
see nanotechnology as risky when exposed to rude comments compared
to less religious readers, Brossard noted.
"Blogs have been a part of the new media landscape for quite some
time now, but our study is the first to look at the potential
effects blog comments have on public perceptions of science," said
Brossard.
These findings were presented at the annual meeting of the
American Association for the Advancement of Science.
|
Comments
|
Quick links