Since last century the medialization of science, which is an oriented explanation towards the mass media, has been improved within the science community. Some sociologists view this need of medialization of science as a consequence of medialization of politics. Particularly, the medialization of biomedical studies has tremendous political impacts, depending on public communication of scientists and science organisations. Thus, the medialization of science is now looked at as a central challenge for scientists since it reinforces the social relevance of researchers work. Doing this, the scientists can improve their chances of scientific expertise becoming effective in policy-making.
Scientists seldom contact journalists on their own initiative. The truth is that media contact with scientists is not influenced primarily by subjectively perceived ‘costs’ and ‘benefits’, or by affective advocacy or rejection of such contact. Rather, it is dependent on the status of the scientist as measured by the number of scientific publications, and by whether the scientist occupies a leadership function as a project/group leader or head of an organizational unit or department. And this is particularly true for biomedical studies or other directly applied sciences. How can the "others" boost their science medialization?
The media is highly selective in which science it wishes to cover but in the large majority of cases the focus is on news values rather than news. That is to say that the science in the story is secondary to the effect on readers. Tabloid newspapers distort scientific research into two main areas, the scare story or the breakthrough. In both cases this gives false readings and an inaccurate view of what is actually going on. Minor advances in the understanding of cancer are frequently hailed as breakthroughs. minor increases in disease incidence often described as epidemics. The media is rarely interested in legitimising the scientists work, only in 'getting the story'. Apart from the specialised scientific media the mainstream does very little to assist the causes of science.
I entirely agree with you. Because of this I do think that science communication professionals need to be part of each research group. This person or group of persons would function as mediators between media and researchers. They should make the translation of a complex thing to a simple story to tell. They should find the words and the touch directed to society.
The exposition of science and technique to the mass media can perhaps be analyzed from the perspective of S&T social and political construction. This might be the case in the biomedical field which Maria Amelia has cited, and also in most large S&T organizations, like space agencies, agricultural research centers, etc. At the same time, the mass media has its own interests and values, as Barry mentioned, which may imply in tabloid-like editorial policies indeed, but, also, in responding to questions of broad social and political interest, like health, environmental change, etc. At the end, the resources of S&T actors to expose and to legitimize their work are probably dependent on their political articulation.
One particular question that occurred to me when I saw Maria's question is that I'm not familiar with studies responding to the question neither from the sociology of science field, nor in political science analyses. Maybe this is something that these fields are still to explore in more detail?
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