In his Sept. column at Scientific American, Michael Shermer, publisher of Skeptic magazine, echoes the very same warnings about the Dawkins-Hitchens PR campaign emphasized here at Framing Science and in […]
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I’m back in DC after spending the previous two weeks in San Francisco as an Osher Fellow at The Exploratorium. It was my second visit this year to the world’s […]
As Sciencereports, the big news this week is that Congress passed a bill that adopts almost all of the recommendations of the 2005 National Academies report Rising Above the Gathering […]
HYDERABAD, India – Dozens of Muslim protesters led by three lawmakers attacked an exiled Bangladeshi writer at the release of her book in southern India on Thursday, calling her “anti-Islam,” […]
The Scientist is currently sponsoring an online discussion about framing and new directions in science communication. The web feature is in advance of an article I am contributing to the […]
As part of its Climate Change Connections series, NPR’s Nell Greenfieldboyce contributes a fascinating feature on how the extreme weather of 1816 likely inspired Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein. That year, the […]
As I’ve observed before, with this election cycle’s crop of GOP candidates, when general election time arrives, it’s going to be difficult to employ the traditional Republican strategy of claiming […]
When I was about 7 years old, my Dad brought home a collection of audio tapes that contained the 6.5 hour 1981 NPR broadcast of the radio version of Star […]
As I wrote in response to the NY Times‘ review of Storm World, the success of The Republican War on Science provides a powerful frame of reference for Chris Mooney’s […]
In provoking the emotions of fear and anger among non-believers, the Dawkins-Hitchens PR campaign motivates many atheists to be ever more vocal in attacking and complaining about religion. Yet does […]
As I’ve documented several times here at Framing Science, despite record amounts of news attention to climate change, the issue has often been eclipsed by coverage of “Paris Nicole Smith” […]
In the 2004 election, the great majority of voters didn’t deliberate the specific policy positions of the candidates and then make an informed choice. Instead, in order to make up […]
The AP reports that organizers of Pope Benedict XVI’s visit to Austria next month are offering the faithful a foretaste: daily cell phone text messages with quotes from the pontiff. […]
Back in November, when Missouri passed a constitutional amendment protecting the ability of scientists to conduct embryonic stem cell research in the state, it was heralded as one more political […]
The NY Times has the dish on perhaps the final tragedy in the fall of Korean stem cell researcher Hwang Woo Suk. Apparently Hwang’s lab was the first to derive […]
Are you an information technology optimist or skeptic? Chances are, if you are a regular blog reader or poster, you fall in the former category. Yet ever feel like all […]
The Corporation for Public Broadcasting has launched an ambitious new public outreach campaign that echoes many of the strategies I think science organizations and institutions can use to strengthen their […]
Talk about facilitating incidental exposure to science. The Boston Globe explains how David Beckham is able to curl a soccer ball around an 8 man wide wall. Hat tip to […]
On Sunday, the LA Times ran two major feature articles on the emerging influence and power of documentary film. One article contrasted the works of Michael Moore and Ken Burns. […]
I guess I shouldn’t be surprised that the best selling books of the past decade have been converted into a video game for kids and young adults. That’s right, available […]
Last week, analysts at Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty released a 70 page analysis of the strategies, tactics, and messages of the Sunni insurgent propaganda campaign. It’s the most interesting thing […]
Pew has released an analysis of the most frequently used words at the most popular sections of the presidential candidate Web sites, their candidate biographies. The findings are somewhat surprising, […]
Big Tobacco.Big Oil.Big Pharma.Big Biotech.Big Nanotech?Each of these phrases are examples of frame devices, words that act like triggers in activating underlying cultural meanings. In fact, these frame devices instantly […]
As I’ve argued at this blog many times and in our article at Science, defining evolution in terms of medical progress is probably the best way to translate its’ importance […]
Oxford University Press has published a new edited volume featuring research on public opinion and media coverage of the plant biotech debate in the US, Europe, Africa, India,and Brazil. The […]
Gallup has released an analysis of how support for various presidential candidates breaks down by church attendance. Somewhat surprisingly, in a general election match up, Hillary and Rudy are neck […]
Gore’s Live Earth concert series was supposed to catalyze American public attention around the problem of global warming, but did it? Polling data is not yet available regarding the concert’s […]
Has the effort by liberals to re-brand themselves as progressives been successful? What about Republicans who no longer describe themselves as a conservative but rather as a “Reagan Republican”? Rasmussen […]
In journalism, professional norms favor telling gripping stories about individuals and places. Applied to the debate over global warming, many journalists believe that if they can recast the complex issue […]
Last week I posted on the “Misunderstood Meanings of Science Literacy,” noting that scientists, policymakers, and journalists tend to narrowly focus on the recall of facts about science as the […]