Martin W Bauer
Biographic Data
| ID | 370868 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Martin W Bauer |
| GIVEN NAMES | Martin W |
| FAMILY NAME | Bauer |
| SIGNATURE | BAUER M W |
| AFFILIATIONS | London School of Economics and Political Science |
| ORCID | 0000-0002-0800-8133 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 55 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 804 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 53 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 2 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 1993 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2025 |
| H-INDEX | 11 |
Dialogicality and Conspiracy Theory
This study investigates how people who believe in conspiracy theory (CT) hold those beliefs. It considers whether believing a conspiracist explanation of an issue or event permits or precludes also believing a non‐conspiracist explanation—that is, the degree to which endorsing CTs can be dialogical. Dialogicality involves the coexistence of conspiracist and non‐conspiracist beliefs in advancing claims and contrasts with the view that all conspira…
Bridging science communication and open science—Working inclusively toward the common good
The 2020–2022 pandemic highlighted concerns about “information disorders”, pressing for approaches capable of guiding the science-society alliance toward a mutually beneficial direction. This essay advocates for and presents a framework proposing the combination of Open Science (OS) and Science Communication (SciComm) practices. OS encourages public access to scientific material, while SciComm has historically enabled public understanding of scie…
Worldviews, attitudes to science and science policy in Kuwait
The relevance of policymaking stems from its utility in helping social systems manage the output of their constituent members by shaping behavioural and procedural processes. Whilst policymaking might be well-meaning, it does not always lead to satisfactory outcomes. Policy may fail in generating uptake or establishing intent. For this reason, the study of the psychological characteristics of citizens is pertinent in understanding reactions to po…
The Communication Function of Universities
This article offers a view on the emerging practice of managing external relations of the modern university, and the role of science communication in this. With a representative sample of research universities in four countries, we seek to broaden our understanding of the science communication (SC) function and its niche within the modern university. We distinguish science communication from corporate communication functions and examine how they …
In search of a Tawney Moment
Has rising income inequality become a scandalous social problem as the English ethical socialist R. H. Tawney anticipated in an earlier era? We examine the salience and framing of income inequality within major UK and US newspapers over the period 1990-2015. Specifically, this includes the global banking crisis of 2008, which was the most significant financial crisis in capitalist economies since the Great Depression of 1929. Did this event trigg…
Atención pública a la ciencia 1820-2010
Publicamos la traducción de este artículo del profesor Martin W. Bauer, que formó parte del libro The Sciences’ Media Connection –Public Communication and its Repercussions, editado por Simone Rödder, Martina Franzen y Peter Weingart en 2012*. En la parte III de dicha publicación, dedicada a la cobertura mediática de la ciencia, se incluye este estudio que analiza un periodo de dos siglos dotándolo de un índice que refleja el nivel de atención pú…
Science Cultures in a Diverse World
Understanding a liminal condition
Our research explored the social representations of the ‘vegetative state’ across different cultural (India, Italy, and the UK) and social milieus (left‐leaning, right‐leaning, and religious/tabloid newspapers). The aim was to discover how public discourse engages liminality between life and death. Qualitative and quantitative text analyses were conducted on news headlines and full‐texts from British (n = 300), Indian (n = 300), and Italian (n = …
The Fukushima Accident and Public Perceptions About Nuclear Power Around the Globe – A Challenge & Response Model
We examine the impact of the Fukushima accident (March 2011) on global public perceptions of nuclear power. We contrast conceptually and empirically two models, an event & effect (EE) model [Kim, Y., Kim, M., & Kim, W. (2013). Effect of Fukushima nuclear disaster on global public acceptance of nuclear energy. Energy Policy, 61, 822–828] and our own challenge & response (CR) model. We replicate Kim et al. (2013), who modelled retrospective opinion…
‘I have faith in science and in God’
This study, of modern common sense in Nigeria, combines questionnaires and interviews to examine the compatibility and incompatibility of religion and science. Nigeria is a large country with a complex diversity of religious, ethnic and cultural practices that condition the reception and elaboration of science in everyday life. We find evaluative attitudes to science structured as ‘progress’, ‘fear’ and ‘mythical image’. Scientific knowledge and …
Beyond “Monologicality”? Exploring Conspiracist Worldviews
Conspiracy theories (CTs) are widespread ways by which people make sense of unsettling or disturbing cultural events. Belief in CTs is often connected to problematic consequences, such as decreased engagement with conventional political action or even political extremism, so understanding the psychological and social qualities of CT belief is important. CTs have often been understood to be "monological," displaying the tendency for belief in one …
Psychology, Social
Communication involves intrinsically social and psychological processes, hence theories of communication should interface with theories and findings from social psychology. Social psychology studies the interdependence of mind and social settings at three levels (which are themselves interdependent), relating the mind to social settings of increasing complexity—the micro level of interpersonal interaction, the meso level of relations between indi…
Results of the essay competition on the ‘deficit concept’
A word from the parting editor, 4760 pages down the line
Science literacy and beyond
And the new editor of Public Understanding of Science will be
PUS has gone global in documenting the local culture of science
Classical Statements
Textual Analysis
PUS in turbulent times II – A shifting vocabulary that brokers inter-disciplinary knowledge
To reflect further on 20 years of the journal, we present a lexicographic and bibliometric study of all papers published in Public Understanding of Science (PUS). Lexicographical analysis of the vocabulary of 465 abstracts shows five classes of associated concepts in two periods, 1992–2001 and 2002–2010. The concern for public attitudes and mass media coverage remains on the card; while language has shifted from ‘public understanding’ to ‘public …
Conspiracy theories as quasi-religious mentality
Conspiracy theories (CTs) can take many forms and vary widely in popularity, the intensity with which they are believed and their effects on individual and collective behavior. An integrated account of CTs thus needs to explain how they come to appeal to potential believers, how they spread from one person to the next via communication, and how they motivate collective action. We summarize these aspects under the labels of stick, spread, and acti…
Public Understanding of Science – a peer-review journal for turbulent times
The mobilization of scientists for public engagement
In Search of the Universal Dimensions of Public Perception of Science
One possible way of solving the problem with the cross-cultural validity of the indicators of public understanding of science is analysis of the latent structure of sets of statements used in previous surveys. The factor analysis of eighteen statements from Eurobarometer 224 (2005) reveals three stable replicable latent dimensions—Evaluation, Efficacy and Control. The Efficacy dimension was replicated in the data of thirty-four countries particip…
Qualitative researching with text, image and sound
This handbook provides a critical guide to the past, present and future of ethnography
Handbook of Ethnography
Introduction to Part One The Chicago School of Ethnography - Mary Jo Deegan Symbolic Interactionism and Ethnography - Paul Rock Currents of Cultural Fieldwork - James D Faubion British Social Anthropology - Sharon Macdonald Into the Community - Lodewijk Brunt Mass-Observation's Fieldwork Methods - Liz Stanley Orientalism - Julie Marcus Ethnomethodology and Ethnography - Melvin Pollner and Robert M Emerson Phenomenology and Ethnography - Ilja Maso…
Towards a Paradigm for Research on Social Representations
Based on Moscovici’s (1961) classical study on the cultivation of psychoanalytic ideas in France in the 1950’s and our own research on modern biotechnology, we propose a paradigm for researching social representations. Following a consideration of the nature of representations and of the ‘iconoclastic suspicion’ that haunts them, we propose a model of the emergence of meaning relating three elements: subjects, objects, and projects. The basic uni…
What can we learn from 25 years of PUS survey research? Liberating and expanding the agenda
This paper reviews key issues of public understanding of science (PUS) research over the last quarter of a century. We show how the discussion has moved in relation to large-scale surveys of public perceptions by tracing developments through three paradigms: science literacy, public understanding of science and science and society. Naming matters here like elsewhere as a marker of "tribal identity." Each paradigm frames the problem differently, p…
Misunderstanding Science? The Public Reconstruction of Science and Technology
Social Representations Theory
The study " Psychoanalysis-its image and its public " intimates that common sense is increasingly informed by science. But common sense asserts its autonomy and, in turn, may affect the trajectory of science. This is a process that leads to many differentiations-in common sense, in scientific innovation and in political and regulatory structures. Bauer and Gaskell's toblerone model of triangles of mediation provided a distillation of their readin…
Conspiracy theories as quasi-religious mentality
Conspiracy theories (CTs) can take many forms and vary widely in popularity, the intensity with which they are believed and their effects on individual and collective behavior. An integrated account of CTs thus needs to explain how they come to appeal to potential believers, how they spread from one person to the next via communication, and how they motivate collective action. We summarize these aspects under the labels of stick, spread, and acti…
Computer-Aided Qualitative Data Analysis. Theory, Methods, and Practice
Distinguishing Red and Green Biotechnology
Public debates tend to operate with distinctions, which allow comparative judgments and choices. How such distinctions fall are matters of historical and social scientific interest. In the case of biotechnology, a number of distinctions were suggested in public debates over the years. During the 1990s the red/green distinction of biotechnology came to dominate media coverage, public perceptions, and regulation across Europe. By 1999, medical biot…
European Public Perceptions of Science
Journal Article EUROPEAN PUBLIC PERCEPTIONS OF SCIENCE Get access Martin Bauer, Martin Bauer Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar John Durant, John Durant Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar Geoffrey Evans Geoffrey Evans Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar International Journal of Public Opinion Research, Volume 6, Issue 2, SUMMER 1994, P…
Public Perceptions and Mass Media in the Biotechnology Controversy
The official journal of the World Association for Public Opinion Research. A comparative, multidisciplinary forum serving the international community, the journal publishes papers that provide informed analysis and comment on public opinion research
Public Knowledge of and Attitudes to Science
Research on the public understanding of science has measured knowledge as acquaintance with scientific facts and methods and attitudes as evaluations of societal consequences of science and technology. The authors propose alternative concepts and measures: knowledge of the workings of scientific institutions and attitudes to the nature of science. The viability, reliability, and validity of the new measures are demonstrated on British and Bulgari…
The medicalization of science news - from the "rocket-scalpel" to the "gene-meteorite" complex
This paper explores the medicalization-of-science-news thesis. Considering the results from surveys and media analyses, biomedical news appears to be the current core of the public representation of science. Why is this the case? A historical approach may bring us one step closer to an answer. A longitudinal analysis of science in the press demonstrates a shift in the core representation of science in the 1930s, and again in the 1980s/1990s, a tr…
Arenas, Platforms, and the Biotechnology Movement
In this article, the author discusses key assumptions of a comparative research project on the public controversies over biotechnology and genetic engineering in as many as sixteen different countries. Key ideas of arenas, platforms, and the technology movement are briefly introduced with markers to empirical results comparing the three arenas of regulation, mass media coverage, and public perceptions and their interrelations in different context…
The Communication Function of Universities
This article offers a view on the emerging practice of managing external relations of the modern university, and the role of science communication in this. With a representative sample of research universities in four countries, we seek to broaden our understanding of the science communication (SC) function and its niche within the modern university. We distinguish science communication from corporate communication functions and examine how they …
Understanding a liminal condition
Our research explored the social representations of the ‘vegetative state’ across different cultural (India, Italy, and the UK) and social milieus (left‐leaning, right‐leaning, and religious/tabloid newspapers). The aim was to discover how public discourse engages liminality between life and death. Qualitative and quantitative text analyses were conducted on news headlines and full‐texts from British (n = 300), Indian (n = 300), and Italian (n = …
Long-Term Trends in the Public Representation of Science Across the ‘Iron Curtain’
This paper compares changing patterns of science news over a period of 50 years. The study analyses a biannual corpus of 2800 news articles in Britain (the Daily Telegraph) and 5800 in Bulgaria ( Rabotnichesko Delo), and shows divergent and convergent trends. Britain carries considerably more science news than Bulgaria all through the period, while the coverage shows parallel swings: increasing intensity during the 1950s, a turning point in the e…
In search of a Tawney Moment
Has rising income inequality become a scandalous social problem as the English ethical socialist R. H. Tawney anticipated in an earlier era? We examine the salience and framing of income inequality within major UK and US newspapers over the period 1990-2015. Specifically, this includes the global banking crisis of 2008, which was the most significant financial crisis in capitalist economies since the Great Depression of 1929. Did this event trigg…
Dialogicality and Conspiracy Theory
This study investigates how people who believe in conspiracy theory (CT) hold those beliefs. It considers whether believing a conspiracist explanation of an issue or event permits or precludes also believing a non‐conspiracist explanation—that is, the degree to which endorsing CTs can be dialogical. Dialogicality involves the coexistence of conspiracist and non‐conspiracist beliefs in advancing claims and contrasts with the view that all conspira…
Worldviews, attitudes to science and science policy in Kuwait
The relevance of policymaking stems from its utility in helping social systems manage the output of their constituent members by shaping behavioural and procedural processes. Whilst policymaking might be well-meaning, it does not always lead to satisfactory outcomes. Policy may fail in generating uptake or establishing intent. For this reason, the study of the psychological characteristics of citizens is pertinent in understanding reactions to po…
Mapping variety in public understanding of science
We analyse around 15 000 responses from 11 countries to the open survey question `please tell me in your own words, what does it mean to study something scientifically' in order to show cultural diversity in public representations of science. In past studies this question has been coded on a five-point rating scale that is used to rank scientific literacy across different countries. We develop, apply and evaluate an alternative coding frame. We s…
European Public Perceptions of Science
Journal Article EUROPEAN PUBLIC PERCEPTIONS OF SCIENCE Get access Martin Bauer, Martin Bauer Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar John Durant, John Durant Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar Geoffrey Evans Geoffrey Evans Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar International Journal of Public Opinion Research, Volume 6, Issue 2, SUMMER 1994, P…
Familiarizing the unfamiliar
A new resource for science communication studies
Meanings of self-attributed ignorance
Socio-demographic correlates of DK-responses in knowledge surveys
With the increasing specialization of the knowledge society, knowledge in some areas means ignorance in others, which amounts to the knowledge-ignorance paradox. In the debate on public understanding of science the status of “ignorance” is controversial. How is scientific ignorance distributed by age, education, religion, social category or gender? We attempt to answer this and other questions by analysing “Don't Know”-responses in a European-wid…
Computer-Aided Qualitative Data Analysis. Theory, Methods, and Practice
Misunderstanding Science? The Public Reconstruction of Science and Technology
The medicalization of science news - from the "rocket-scalpel" to the "gene-meteorite" complex
This paper explores the medicalization-of-science-news thesis. Considering the results from surveys and media analyses, biomedical news appears to be the current core of the public representation of science. Why is this the case? A historical approach may bring us one step closer to an answer. A longitudinal analysis of science in the press demonstrates a shift in the core representation of science in the 1930s, and again in the 1980s/1990s, a tr…
Worlds Apart? The Reception of Genetically Modified Foods in Europe and the U.S.
Recent controversies about genetically modified foods in the United Kingdom and several other European countries highlight the apparent differences that exist in public opinion on this subject across the Atlantic. Why are people in the United States seemingly untroubled by a technology that causes Europeans so many difficulties? The results of survey research on public perceptions of biotechnology in Europe and the United States during 1996–1997,…
Towards a Paradigm for Research on Social Representations
Based on Moscovici’s (1961) classical study on the cultivation of psychoanalytic ideas in France in the 1950’s and our own research on modern biotechnology, we propose a paradigm for researching social representations. Following a consideration of the nature of representations and of the ‘iconoclastic suspicion’ that haunts them, we propose a model of the emergence of meaning relating three elements: subjects, objects, and projects. The basic uni…
Qualitative Researching with Text, Image and Sound
Narrative Interviewing
Classical Content Analysis
Biotechnology and the European public
Public Knowledge of and Attitudes to Science
Research on the public understanding of science has measured knowledge as acquaintance with scientific facts and methods and attitudes as evaluations of societal consequences of science and technology. The authors propose alternative concepts and measures: knowledge of the workings of scientific institutions and attitudes to the nature of science. The viability, reliability, and validity of the new measures are demonstrated on British and Bulgari…
Handbook of Ethnography
Introduction to Part One The Chicago School of Ethnography - Mary Jo Deegan Symbolic Interactionism and Ethnography - Paul Rock Currents of Cultural Fieldwork - James D Faubion British Social Anthropology - Sharon Macdonald Into the Community - Lodewijk Brunt Mass-Observation's Fieldwork Methods - Liz Stanley Orientalism - Julie Marcus Ethnomethodology and Ethnography - Melvin Pollner and Robert M Emerson Phenomenology and Ethnography - Ilja Maso…
Controversial medical and agri-food biotechnology
Whether biotechnology is one or several developments is not clear. Once distinctions are required, the question is: Which one prevails? When the good, the bad, and the ugly settle, where do they fall? Evaluation implies distinction, and representation drives attitude. The controversies over biotechnology are fertile ground on which to study these issues. The imports of genetically modified (GM) soya into Europe in 1996-97 and the cloning of Dolly…
Arenas, Platforms, and the Biotechnology Movement
In this article, the author discusses key assumptions of a comparative research project on the public controversies over biotechnology and genetic engineering in as many as sixteen different countries. Key ideas of arenas, platforms, and the technology movement are briefly introduced with markers to empirical results comparing the three arenas of regulation, mass media coverage, and public perceptions and their interrelations in different context…
Distinguishing Red and Green Biotechnology
Public debates tend to operate with distinctions, which allow comparative judgments and choices. How such distinctions fall are matters of historical and social scientific interest. In the case of biotechnology, a number of distinctions were suggested in public debates over the years. During the 1990s the red/green distinction of biotechnology came to dominate media coverage, public perceptions, and regulation across Europe. By 1999, medical biot…
Public Perceptions and Mass Media in the Biotechnology Controversy
The official journal of the World Association for Public Opinion Research. A comparative, multidisciplinary forum serving the international community, the journal publishes papers that provide informed analysis and comment on public opinion research
Long-Term Trends in the Public Representation of Science Across the ‘Iron Curtain’
This paper compares changing patterns of science news over a period of 50 years. The study analyses a biannual corpus of 2800 news articles in Britain (the Daily Telegraph) and 5800 in Bulgaria ( Rabotnichesko Delo), and shows divergent and convergent trends. Britain carries considerably more science news than Bulgaria all through the period, while the coverage shows parallel swings: increasing intensity during the 1950s, a turning point in the e…
Content Analysis. An Introduction to its Methodology – By Klaus Krippendorff From Words to Numbers. Narrative, Data and Social Science – By Roberto Franzosi
The public career of the ‘gene’—trends in public sentiments from 1946 to 2002
The paper shows, on the basis of longitudinal analysis of the British press, that public opinion of genetic research and biotechnology varies over two long-term waves: from 1946 to 1972 and from 1973 to the 2000s. Each wave shows a nested phase of enthusiasm and of scepticism. During the first wave, biological news has little salience and evaluation parallels the attitudes to general science. During the second wave, genetic engineering becomes a …
Le fait accompli et son influence sociale
Sociology (37 works) · Political science (26 works) · Climate Change Communication and Perception (25 works) · Psychology (20 works) · Epistemology (18 works) · Computer Science (16 works) · Politics (15 works) · Social science (15 works) · Law (13 works) · Social Psychology (11 works)