Brechman Jean M, Lee Chul-Joo, Cappella Joseph N
Annenberg School for Communication, University of Pennsylvania.
Sci Commun. 2009 Jun;30(4):453-474. doi: 10.1177/1075547009332649.
Understanding how genetic science is communicated to the lay public is of great import, given that media coverage of genetics is increasing exponentially and that the ways in which discoveries are presented in the news can have significant effects on a variety of health outcomes. To address this issue, this study examines the presentation of genetic research relating to cancer outcomes and behaviors (i.e., prostate cancer, breast cancer, colon cancer, smoking and obesity) in both the press release ( = 23) and its subsequent news coverage ( = 71) by using both quantitative content analysis and qualitative textual analysis. In contrast to earlier studies reporting that news stories often misrepresent genetics by presenting biologically deterministic and simplified portrayals (e.g., Mountcastle-Shah et al., 2003; Ten Eych & Williment, 2003), our data shows no clear trends in the direction of distortion toward deterministic claims in news articles. Also, other errors commonly attributed to science journalism, such as lack of qualifying details and use of oversimplified language (e.g., "fat gene") are observed in press releases. These findings suggest that the intermediary press release rather than news coverage may serve as a source of distortion in the dissemination of science to the lay public. The implications of this study for future research in this area are discussed.
鉴于媒体对遗传学的报道呈指数级增长，且新闻中呈现研究发现的方式会对多种健康结果产生重大影响，了解遗传科学如何向普通公众传播至关重要。为解决这一问题，本研究通过定量内容分析和定性文本分析，考察了新闻稿（n = 23）及其后续新闻报道（n = 71）中与癌症结果和行为（即前列腺癌、乳腺癌、结肠癌、吸烟和肥胖）相关的基因研究呈现情况。与早期研究报告新闻报道经常通过呈现生物学决定论和简化描述来歪曲遗传学不同（例如，Mountcastle-Shah等人，2003年；Ten Eych和Williment，2003年），我们的数据显示新闻文章中朝着决定论主张歪曲的方向没有明显趋势。此外，在新闻稿中还观察到其他通常归因于科学新闻报道的错误，如缺乏限定细节和使用过于简化的语言（如“肥胖基因”）。这些发现表明，在向普通公众传播科学的过程中，作为中间环节的新闻稿而非新闻报道可能是造成歪曲的源头。本文讨论了该研究对该领域未来研究的启示。
