Nanotechnology framing in the Canadian national news media

Michael G. Tyshenko

Technology in Society, 2014, vol. 37, issue C, 38-48

Abstract: News media remains one of the foremost communication portals for information regarding the risks and benefits of new technologies. News media content provides information which helps to shape public attitudes toward emerging technologies. An analysis of national news media content from May 2008 to May 2012 was conducted for nanotechnology content in Canada using three different frames. The results show that the framing has been “nano-optimistic” and narrowly focused on university research, scientific innovations, near term applications, and university-business collaborative research efforts, all which are dominated by subject-matter experts. There has been negligible media coverage of public discussions surrounding nanotechnology developments, scant reporting of non-governmental organization activities, and few reports of international nanotechnology developments. In Canada, it is still relatively early in the nanotechnology development cycle. To increase public knowledge in Canada the news media content should go beyond its current narrow framing of scientific innovation and near term research applications. Media content in other countries has provided more information on broader societal, ethical, legal, policy, regulatory and international issues over time. Regulators and stakeholders should follow the Council of Canadian Academies 2008 expert panel advice to incorporate early risk communication, public outreach and include the pubic in nanotechnology policy development.

Keywords: Nanotechnology; Public perception; Risk communication; Discourse; News media (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2014
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (3)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0160791X1300047X
Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:teinso:v:37:y:2014:i:c:p:38-48

DOI: 10.1016/j.techsoc.2013.07.001

Access Statistics for this article

Technology in Society is currently edited by Charla Griffy-Brown

More articles in Technology in Society from Elsevier
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Catherine Liu ().