This article presents the results of a study carried out in Italy by the Permanent Observatory on science communication through the media. The aim of this research project coordinated by the staff of the MasterÂ’s Degree in Science Communication, ISAS, Trieste, in collaboration with Ilesis S.r.l., Rome, is to monitor and analyse systematically the amount of scientific information on TV and in the press.
A survey has been recently carried out for the first time in Italy concerning science communication through the media and the result has been that science hits the headlines. It is often front-page news in the press and it is also often among the main points of the news on TV. This is not very surprising.
"We can only appeal to society, considering that governments and parties have fallen constantly short of expectations since the late eighties. The public must know that without research there is no innovation, and without innovation there is no state-of-theart. The lack of research is a handicap for the development of the country". The words of Silvio Garattini, director of Milan's Mario Negri Institute, reveal rage and passion. This is how he explained the reasons why more than one year ago 1,500 Italian scientists made an unprecedented, resolute and unmediated appeal to the general public to
There is no use denying it: whenever a scientist gets a piece of news in a newspaper or on television concerning his own field of research, eight times out of ten he feels irritated. The reason does not solely depend on the fact that, in his opinion, the news given to the public is often rather inaccurate or centred on secondary aspects, sometimes even distorted. There is actually something more? Something deeper that the scientist can hardly grasp.
"Il ciclotrone" is the weekly science programme of "Radio Popolare - Popolare Network". During the last 12 years, once or twice a month listeners have been able to directly ask questions to the guest scientists in the studios, or to express their point of view on some controversial scientific issue. Phone-ins at Radio Popolare are not filtered; regular and occasional listeners are used to communicate with or through the radio, and in doing so they contribute to the sense of spontaneity which characterise the programmes.
In the increasingly fierce competition for leisure time and educational spending, museums are seriously challenged by edutainment, the Internet, CD-ROMs, and 500-channel satellite TV. For example, if a child is interested in dinosaurs, 20 years ago a parent would have been likely to take her to the museum to see some fossils. Today, many parents would probably begin by taking her to the computer to search the World Wide Web, where a quick search reveals thousands of dinosaur web pages. If the family did not find a site among these thousands that satisfied the child's curiosity - or if they
With support from the National Science Foundation and Best Buy, Twin Cities Public Television has produced a science series for children. Entitled "DragonflyTV," the series presents real kids engaged in real science to promote the process of science inquiry in viewers. This formative evaluation gathered feedback from 5th and 6th graders in response to three 28 minute videos, presented one per week. The following were the general research goals: To evaluate change in student ability to design an experiment To measure change in interest in doing one's own science investigation To determine
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Barbara FlaggTwin Cities Public Television