Science and technology issues are not very important in television news

2010/06/22 Etxebeste Aduriz, Egoitz - Elhuyar Zientzia

• Elhuyarren berriak

According to a study by the Elhuyar Foundation, science and technology issues have no particular relevance and priority in television news. That is the subject of Science and Technology elaborated by Andoni Eizagirre: the main conclusion of the research Informative on television. The Elhuyar Foundation, with the sponsorship of the Department of Education of the Basque Government, has analyzed for six months the dissemination of scientific and technological issues in television news. The nightly news reports of ETB1, ETB2, TVE and La2 have been analyzed and 69 news on science and technology released on randomly selected days have been analyzed.

One of the main conclusions of the study is that news reports have no special relevance and priority, and that other issues are prioritized. To determine the degree of representativeness of the news, we analyzed the presence and location of the news, the duration of the news and the importance given to the sound and image. Only 4% of the scientific news has appeared in the headline and 25% of all inbound headlines. Of the news analyzed, 58% have been long lasting, 16% medium duration and 26% short.

As for the topic, the news has been grouped into four blocks: “Science and technology”, “Effects of science”, “Scientific policies” and “Scientific system”. The news of the group “Implications of science” are the most numerous (58%), on the influence of science and technology in society.

As for the origin of the news, these come mainly from other sources: TV channels have no habit of dealing with news about science and technology. As for the genre, reports or chronicles are scarce, the news is recorded in deferred and the most common style is the informative. In the analysis of the characters, the news that collect different points of view on the event are scarce, but the origin of the authority in general is diverse and its position usually coincide with the treatment of the news. Finally, according to the television network, it has been concluded that a differentiated attention is given to local events: ETB1 and ETB2 serve the Basque territory the most. They are dominated by news of Basque origin.