Brave new media

Time was when scientists didn’t need to track many media to know how science was being presented to the public. True science buffs read magazines like Science News or Scientific American, or watched Jacques Cousteau specials on TV. But the average person heard only about sensational discoveries and was rarely exposed to how research was done or what day-to-day science was like. Then, during the late 1970s and early 1980s, science and medical coverage boomed, and scientists realized the value of a widespread appreciation of research. Magazines like Discover and Science 80-something packaged research for lay readers; newspapers started science pages; science appeared on public radio; and new production companies thrived on making television shows and multi-part science series. Now, new technologies and new media promise to make the progress of scientific research even more accessible. Scientists can help the public understand the drama and the incremental nature of their work. Already, many institutions have web sites and send out press materials electronically. But as on-line media proliferate, researchers and their institutions — and even journalists — must make sure they stay in the driver’s seat as they travel the information superhighway. It’s a brave new media world with many unknowns. So far, those who put stories, data or images on the internet have little control over who uses that information and how. As news groups, web pages, and so forth bring research closer to the rest of the world, efforts to bring science to the public could backfire if it is not presented properly. At the 1996 meeting of the National Association of Science Writers, in Baltimore, about 700 science writers learned how on-line services are revolutionizing the dissemination of scientific news; in addition, the compact digital video camera has begun to change how all news is gathered. On-line, many newspapers, magazines, and publishing houses are setting up home pages with science ‘news’. One colorful web site is Discovery On-line, at http://www.discovery.com/, a sample from which is illustrated. Although the content is similar to a newspaper’s science section, the presentation alters how the stories are put together and what effect they have on the reader, says Steven W. Allison, an associate editor with Discovery On-line. The on-line reader does not have to go through the text sequentially: with a click of the mouse, “you can move around [the story] in many different ways,” he explains. Also, the communication can be on-going. For example, last fall Discovery On-line followed an undersea submersible during a month-long expedition in the Galapagos. Each day, the scientists on board sent digital photographs and provided updates on their progress. Such unfolding science stories may soon be commonplace, because a small-format digital video camera is changing how television news is gathered, says Peggy Girshman of Video News International, a Philadelphia-based company promoting this technology. The $ 5 000, 5 pound cameras are no more difficult to transport or use than a portable computer — quite a change from the $ 40 000, 35 pound cameras shouldered by today’s TV production crews. Moreover, footage can be transmitted electronically, with no loss of quality. These differences mean that science journalists, and even scientists, can film experiments as they happen, or can quickly get to where the action is. News organizations will be more apt to devote a camera, and perhaps a person, to a two-month expedition or to follow scientists around the lab for weeks at a time. The alternative for TV has often been to stage parts of an experiment, in a feeble attempt to give viewers some inkling of what research is really like. Now the dynamism of research can begin to come through. As Allison says about Discovery On-line “TV has been like a black box and we’re opening up that box and stirring it around.”