A team of LSC researchers recently published an article in New Media & Society that explores media coverage of nanotechnology. Their study, “Coverage of emerging technologies: A comparison between print and online media,” examines differences in volume and thematic coverage between US print newspapers and two popular online sources: Google News and Google Blog Search. The abstract and full text are available here.
The results reveal that while print news media and Google News coverage of nanotechnology has peaked and started to decline, Google Blog Search coverage remains on the rise. Additionally, the researchers found that online users are more likely to encounter a diverse set of nanotechnology themes than are users who rely more heavily on print newspapers. The findings suggest that public discourse for nanotechnology will be shaped, at least in part, by media consumers’ preferred information platform.
The study was authored by current and former LSC graduate students Michael Cacciatore, Ashley Anderson, Doo-Hun Choi, Xuan Liang, Peter Ladwig, and Anthony Dudo who is now an assistant professor in the Department of Advertising and Public Relations at the University of Texas at Austin, with LSC faculty members Dominique Brossard and Dietram Scheufele, and Communication Arts professor Michael Xenos.