quality matters: press releases in science communication - spsa 2014
DESCRIPTION
Quality Matters: Science Translation from Press Releases to News - an Online Survey ExperimentTRANSCRIPT
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Quality Matters: Science Translation from Press Release to News
Paige Brown
Ph.D. Student, Manship School of Mass Communication
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Problem Statement• Poor quality and irresponsible reporting in
areas of science, medicine and environmental news.– Bad science? Over-claiming press releases?
Journalistic norms? Lack of science education?
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Goals
• What makes a potential science story newsworthy?
ars
tech
nic
a.c
om
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The Role of the Press Release
• Press releases have been found to serve as a point of distortion and hype in the process of translating peer-reviewed research into news media
• (Brechman et al., 2011; Brown, 2012).
How can press releases promote quality science journalism?
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Principles for Health & Science Journalists
1. Don’t report preliminary findings.
2. Communicate the absolute magnitude of (significant) differences.
3. Include caveats, major study limitations and conflicts of interest.
Lisa M Schwartz & Woloshin, 2004
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Methods
• Online survey experience of science communicators (recruited via Twitter, Listserv, E-mail).
• Participants were randomly assigned to one of four contrived, written 1-2 page press release conditions* within Qualtrics.– (1) a control press release– (2) a press release containing confirming evidence– (3) a press release containing disconfirming evidence – (4) a press release mentioning important study limitations.
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Methods
• After reading the 1-2 page written press release, participants were asked to answer a series of questions related to:– likelihood to pursue a story based on the press
release [adapted from (Schmierbach, 2005)] – perceived newsworthiness of the information
according to a variety of traditional news factors – Importance attributed to variety of news factors in
general
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Key Results: News Factors
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Key Results
• Participants who attributed high importance to conflict/controversy as a criteria of newsworthiness: – Indicated that the news outlet(s) they worked
for would be significantly more likely to write a story based on the disconfirming press release than on the control press release
(Conditional Effect = -1.78, S.E. = .69, p = .01.)
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Figure 1. Graphical representation of Hayes’ Process Analysis, with Mean±1SD Pick-a-Point conditioning, for importance of conflict/controversy moderation of stimulus effect on Likelihood2.
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Key Results
• Participants who attributed only moderate importance to facts/reliability of facts as a criteria of newsworthiness:– indicated that the news outlet(s) they worked
for would be significantly more likely to write a story based on the disconfirming press release than on the confirming press release
(Conditional Effect = -1.0, S.E. = .48, p < .05)
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Figure 2. Graphical representation of Hayes’ Process Analysis, with Mean±1SD Pick-a-Point conditioning, for importance of facts/reliability of facts moderation of stimulus effect on Likelihood2.
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Conclusion
• This study fills a gap in research on the direct impact of scientific press release quality on self-reported news decisions of journalists, and the moderating influence of traditional news factors on these decisions.
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Questions & Acknowledgements
Follow me, Ask Questions @FromTheLabBench
Thanks To:• Matt Shipman (*All stimulus articles were originally
written by and created in collaboration with Matt Shipman, an experienced science communicator and public communication specialist at NC State in Raleigh, North Carolina.)
• Manship School of Mass Communication• NASW-talk, Karl Bates & SCONC Listservs