Cheung Kason Ka Ching, Chan Ho-Yin, Erduran Sibel
Department of Education, University of Oxford, 15 Norham Gardens, Oxford, OX2 6PY UK.
School of Geography and the Environment, University of Oxford, South Parks Road, Oxford, OX1 3QY UK.
Humanit Soc Sci Commun. 2023;10(1):282. doi: 10.1057/s41599-023-01771-2. Epub 2023 Jun 5.
News media plays a vital role in communicating scientific evidence to the public during the COVID-19 pandemic. Such communication is important for convincing the public to follow social distancing guidelines and to respond to health campaigns such as vaccination programmes. However, newspapers were criticised that they focus on the socio-political perspective of science, without explaining the nature of scientific works behind the government's decisions. This paper examines the connections of the nature of science categories in the COVID-19 era by four local newspapers in the United Kingdom between November 2021 to February 2022. refers to different aspects of how science works such as aims, values, methods and social institutions of science. Considering the news media may mediate public information and perception of scientific stories, it is relevant to ask how the various British newspapers covered aspects of science during the pandemic. In the period explored, Omicron variant was initially a variant of concern, and an increasing number of scientific evidence showed that the less severity of this variant might move the country from pandemic to endemic. We explored how news articles communicate public health information by addressing how science works during the period when Omicron variants surge. A novel discourse analysis approach, epistemic network analysis is used to characterise the frequency of connections of categories of the nature of science. The connection between political factors and the professional activities of scientists, as well as that with scientific practices are more apparent in left-populated and centralist outlets than in right-populated news outlets. Among four news outlets across the political spectrum, a left-populated newspaper, the Guardian, is not consistent in representing relations of different aspects of the nature of scientific works across different stages of the public health crisis. Inconsistency of addressing aspects of scientific works and a downplay of the cognitive-epistemic nature of scientific works likely lead to failure in trust and consumption of scientific knowledge by the public in the healthcare crisis.
在新冠疫情期间，新闻媒体在向公众传播科学证据方面发挥着至关重要的作用。这种传播对于说服公众遵守社交距离指导方针以及响应疫苗接种计划等健康宣传活动至关重要。然而，报纸受到批评，称其关注科学的社会政治视角，却不解释政府决策背后科学工作的本质。本文研究了英国四家地方报纸在2021年11月至2022年2月期间对新冠疫情时代科学本质类别的关联。科学本质指科学运作的不同方面，如科学的目标、价值观、方法和社会制度。鉴于新闻媒体可能会调解公众对科学报道的信息和认知，探讨英国各报纸在疫情期间如何报道科学方面的内容是有意义的。在所探讨的时期内，奥密克戎变种最初是一个受关注的变种，越来越多的科学证据表明，该变种的严重程度较低可能会使该国从疫情状态转变为地方病状态。我们通过探讨在奥密克戎变种激增期间科学如何运作，来研究新闻文章如何传播公共卫生信息。一种新颖的话语分析方法，即认知网络分析，被用于刻画科学本质类别的关联频率。政治因素与科学家的专业活动之间的联系，以及与科学实践的联系，在左派和中间派媒体中比在右派媒体中更为明显。在政治光谱上的四家新闻媒体中，左派报纸《卫报》在代表公共卫生危机不同阶段科学工作本质不同方面的关系时并不一致。在处理科学工作方面的不一致以及对科学工作认知-认识本质的淡化，可能导致公众在医疗危机中对科学知识的信任和接受失败。
