Susanna Hornig Priest
Biographic Data
| ID | 292336 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Susanna Hornig Priest |
| GIVEN NAMES | Susanna Hornig |
| FAMILY NAME | Priest |
| SIGNATURE | PRIEST S H |
| AFFILIATIONS | Texas A&M University |
| VERIFIED | No |
| TOTAL WORKS | 41 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 53 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 41 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 1994 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2023 |
| H-INDEX | 4 |
Introduction to Sharon Dunwoody Memorial Issue
This introduction to our February 2023 issue is intended to provide context for the issue content, which presents multiple examples of the ongoing influence of the work of the late Sharon Dunwoody. Contemporary research articles, commentary pieces, and the introduction itself reflect Sharon’s deep influence on science communication and science communication researchers and their work
Introduction to This Theme Issue on Processing Covid Information
Of Note
Of Note
Special Issue
Theme Issue
Of Note
Ethics and Practice in Science Communication
Nanotechnology and the Public
Technological Literacy and Democracy The Challenges of Risk Society Nanotechnology, Risk, and Society Audiences, Stakeholders, Cultures, and Nanotechnology Risk The Role of Advocacy in Democracy Social, Cultural, and Psychological Influences Persuasion Research Disseminating Information about New Technologies Media's Role in Risk Societies Media Effects Theory in the Internet Age Museums and Science Centers Lessons and Future Challenges
Issue Introduction
Of Note
Communicating Climate Change
This book asks and answers the question of what communication research and other social sciences can offer that will help the global community to address climate change by identifying the conditions t
Of Note
Recent Books
Climate Change
Recent Books
Critical Science Literacy
Increasing public knowledge of science is a widely recognized goal, but what that knowledge might consist of is rarely unpacked. Existing measures of science literacy tend to focus on textbook knowledge of science. Yet constructing a meaningful list of facts, even facts in application, is not only difficult but less than satisfying as an indicator of what people actually know—or need to know—as citizens. Revisiting this concept from a more sociol…
Recent Books
Changes
Master Mechanics & Wicked Wizards
Understanding public support for stem cell research
This paper analyzes data from a 2005 telephone survey of 1200 people in the US that included questions about attitudes toward stem cell research and a broad range of communication variables. After all controls, trust in university scientists and religious leaders, exposure to national television news, familiarity, and religious service attendance produced statistically significant main effects on perception of research benefits, together explaini…
Science and Technology Policy and Ethics
As a pluralistic democracy, we must accommodate a wide range of views about science and technology, as in so many other areas. Science museums may have a unique role to play in mediating between "the public" (actually a broad range of publics with different values and interests) and the policy-making process, although participating in the turn toward "engaging the public" is a relatively new role for them. While public engagement is not a panacea…
No More “Business as Usual”
Curiouser and Curiouser
As this September 2009 issue of Science Communication goes to press, considerable media and email “buzz” about public understanding of science—and scientists’ understanding of the public—has been generated by the release of a new survey of around 2000 Americans and 2500 members of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) conducted by the The Pew Research Center for The People & The Press, in collaboration with AAAS (full rep…
North American audiences for news of emerging technologies
New approaches are needed to think about audiences, subcultures, and publics in the context of increasing attention to the pluralistic nature of modern societies. Subgroup differences influencing reactions to technological change abound but may not correspond neatly to national boundaries. Often attributed to the influence of media messages, these differences are more clearly associated with message interpretation than with uniform media effects.…
Misplaced Faith
Science communicators and the broader scientific community often expect media information campaigns to mold attitudes about science and technology in predictable ways. But resistance to technology is not always based on ignorance, and the ability of media-based education to directly shape opinions is actually quite limited. This article uses data from a recent U.S. national survey on opinions about biotechnology to argue that trust in institution…
Structuring Public Debate on Biotechnology
A study of themes arising within focus group discussions of U.S. lay publics (both student and nonstudent adults) in response to newspaper coverage of biotechnology is consistent with the assertion that media frames and reader schemas interact to produce an understanding of a newly emerging issue. Newspaper coverage heavily dominated by institutional sources and dealing with only a narrow range of issues may be limiting the terms of public debate…
No More “Business as Usual”
Public Discourse and Scientific Controversy
Spiral-of-silence theory tries to account for the dynamics through which visible dissent decreases as public opinion begins to appear hegemonic; it argues that fear of social isolation inhibits the expression of opinions perceived to be in the minority. This analysis applies spiral-of-silence theory to public opinion about biotechnology in the United States. Although comparisons to Europe may disguise this fact, a substantial minority of United S…
Special Issue
Theme Issue
North American audiences for news of emerging technologies
New approaches are needed to think about audiences, subcultures, and publics in the context of increasing attention to the pluralistic nature of modern societies. Subgroup differences influencing reactions to technological change abound but may not correspond neatly to national boundaries. Often attributed to the influence of media messages, these differences are more clearly associated with message interpretation than with uniform media effects.…
Master Mechanics & Wicked Wizards
Structuring Public Debate on Biotechnology
A study of themes arising within focus group discussions of U.S. lay publics (both student and nonstudent adults) in response to newspaper coverage of biotechnology is consistent with the assertion that media frames and reader schemas interact to produce an understanding of a newly emerging issue. Newspaper coverage heavily dominated by institutional sources and dealing with only a narrow range of issues may be limiting the terms of public debate…
Science content and social context
Content analysts have made substantial progress in moving beyond the framework in which science news is assessed primarily in terms of accuracy and adequacy, but content-analytic studies of science news remain under-theorized and too narrowly focused. We recommend that content analysts (1) broaden their scope of inquiry to accommodate the great diversity of outlets and audiences for science news, and (2) offer more explicit and rigorous theoretic…
Information Equity, Public Understanding of Science, and the Biotechnology Debate
Contrary to common assumptions within the scientific community, media effects are largely long-term and indirect, coverage does not always overrepresent fringe positions, and messages are interpreted actively by audience members. Lay publics associate more risk with science and technology in their social context than with the underlying science itself, and general attitudes toward science influence the degree of risk associated with particular ne…
Commentary
Misplaced Faith
Science communicators and the broader scientific community often expect media information campaigns to mold attitudes about science and technology in predictable ways. But resistance to technology is not always based on ignorance, and the ability of media-based education to directly shape opinions is actually quite limited. This article uses data from a recent U.S. national survey on opinions about biotechnology to argue that trust in institution…
A Grain of Truth
Chapter 1 Introduction Chapter 2 Reinventing Milk Chapter 3 World Reaction Chapter 4 U.S. Public Opinion Emerges Chapter 5 U.S. Culture and the New Genetics Chapter 6 The Labeling Controversy and Public Perceptions of Risk Chapter 7 The Cloning Story Chapter 8 The Terminator Gene Chapter 9 Lessons and Directions
Issues Emerging through the 2002 AAAS Roundtable on Biotechnology Policy Formation in Europe and North America
A roundtable discussion on biotechnology policy formation in Europe and North America was held at the 2002 annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science in Boston. The panel members present represented linked research teams studying media, opinion, and public policy formation in Canada, the United States, Austria, Finland, Norway, Switzerland, and the United Kingdom; additional contributions were made to this effort by…
Introductory Note
The “Trust Gap” Hypothesis
Using results from the 1999 Eurobarometer survey and a parallel telephone survey done in the United States in 2000, this study explored the relationship between levels of knowledge, educational levels, and degrees of encouragement for biotechnology development across a number of medical and agricultural applications. This cross‐cultural exploration found only weak relationships among these variables, calling into question the common assumption th…
News coverage of biotechnology debates
Biotechnology, media and public opinion across national boundaries
The biotechnology controversy highlights national differences in policy processes, ethical systems, and value choices. The debate over food biotechnology in particular has pitted a vision of science as inherently progressive against one of science as an instrument of economic imperialism. The media have become implicated in this drama. Within U.S. scientific and policy circles, anti-biotechnology sentiment elsewhere has often been attributed to i…
Commentary—Room at the Bottom of Pandora's Box
The public opinion climate for gene technologies in Canada and the United States
This exploratory study of Canadian and US public opinion about gene technologies is based primarily on survey data collected by the Government of Canada, with media data from a widely available commercial database (LexisNexis) used in an illustrative case study of the apparent resonance between the climate of opinion and media frames in different regions of the two countries. The study uses regression modeling, factor analysis and cluster analysi…
Public Discourse and Scientific Controversy
Spiral-of-silence theory tries to account for the dynamics through which visible dissent decreases as public opinion begins to appear hegemonic; it argues that fear of social isolation inhibits the expression of opinions perceived to be in the minority. This analysis applies spiral-of-silence theory to public opinion about biotechnology in the United States. Although comparisons to Europe may disguise this fact, a substantial minority of United S…
Science Communication
North American audiences for news of emerging technologies
New approaches are needed to think about audiences, subcultures, and publics in the context of increasing attention to the pluralistic nature of modern societies. Subgroup differences influencing reactions to technological change abound but may not correspond neatly to national boundaries. Often attributed to the influence of media messages, these differences are more clearly associated with message interpretation than with uniform media effects.…
Linking Theory and Practice
Understanding public support for stem cell research
This paper analyzes data from a 2005 telephone survey of 1200 people in the US that included questions about attitudes toward stem cell research and a broad range of communication variables. After all controls, trust in university scientists and religious leaders, exposure to national television news, familiarity, and religious service attendance produced statistically significant main effects on perception of research benefits, together explaini…
Science and Technology Policy and Ethics
As a pluralistic democracy, we must accommodate a wide range of views about science and technology, as in so many other areas. Science museums may have a unique role to play in mediating between "the public" (actually a broad range of publics with different values and interests) and the policy-making process, although participating in the turn toward "engaging the public" is a relatively new role for them. While public engagement is not a panacea…
No More “Business as Usual”
Curiouser and Curiouser
As this September 2009 issue of Science Communication goes to press, considerable media and email “buzz” about public understanding of science—and scientists’ understanding of the public—has been generated by the release of a new survey of around 2000 Americans and 2500 members of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) conducted by the The Pew Research Center for The People & The Press, in collaboration with AAAS (full rep…
Changes
Master Mechanics & Wicked Wizards
Critical Science Literacy
Increasing public knowledge of science is a widely recognized goal, but what that knowledge might consist of is rarely unpacked. Existing measures of science literacy tend to focus on textbook knowledge of science. Yet constructing a meaningful list of facts, even facts in application, is not only difficult but less than satisfying as an indicator of what people actually know—or need to know—as citizens. Revisiting this concept from a more sociol…
Recent Books
Political science (35 works) · Sociology (30 works) · Climate Change Communication and Perception (21 works) · Epistemology (18 works) · Public relations (14 works) · Law (13 works) · Philosophy (13 works) · Philosophy (13 works) · Computer Science (9 works) · Science communication (9 works)