S&T and the media FROM A reader's perspective, last Thursday (June 7) was a watershed day for The Gleaner. The paper carried a 'Pieces of the Past' history page on exactly the 309th anniversary of the great Port Royal earthquake. And there was a Science and Technology page, both in Section A of the paper. I am exuberantly happy to see two areas of keen personal interest and of large significance for the society given some prime space in one of the country's leading media organisations. I will forego the history today for another time and write about the Science and Technology. For some years now, there has been a major international movement at least in the developed countries for promoting the public understanding of science. Quite surprisingly, in this the age of the ascendancy of the electronic media, one study in the United States has found that the public relies more on newspapers and magazines for most of its information on Science and Technology. Perhaps the permanence of print allowing review and the taking in information at one's own pace has something to do with the preference. "Why should anyone care about the public understanding of science?" asks John Durant, Professor of the Public Understanding of Science at Imperial College, University of London. Yes, there are professorial chairs and journals devoted to the study of the public understanding of science! Professor Durant answers his own question: "First science is arguably the greatest achievement of our culture, and people deserve to know about it; second, science affects everyone's life, and people need to know about it; third, many public policy decisions involve science and these can only be genuinely democratic if they arise out of informed public debate; and fourth, science is publicly supported, and such support is (or at least ought to be) based on at least a minimal level of public knowledge". Public interest in Science and Technology is far greater than media coverage here would suggest. As long as science and Technology is made relevant to people's everyday concerns there is strong public interest. Interest in medical development, perhaps not surprisingly, leads the way. The medicine page of this newspaper done by Eulalee Thompson is a winner holding strong public interest. My column last week on what Science has to say about environmental factors in breast cancer drew high interest and a spate of responses. There were some cases I know of where women sought The Gleaner late in the day just to get hold of a personal copy of that column. What is surprising is how far ahead self-reported interest in Science, Technology and Medicine news is ahead of some of the areas given far more prominence by the media. A British survey came up with the following percentages for "very interested" when respondents were asked how interested they were in a variety of issue areas in the news: New medical discoveries (49%). New inventions and technologies (39%). New scientific discoveries (38%). Sports in the news (28%). New films(17%). Politics (16%). Comparative data for the USA for Science, Technology and Medicine interest was consistently higher vis-a-vis other interests. My own work in broadcasting the radio programme 'Science Serving Us' with Alma Mock Yen more than substantiates the existence of strong public interest in Science and Technology in Jamaica. We have received correspondence, calls, and face to face positive feedback from every conceivable category of society and from all across the country. By far the most popular broadcast ever was the one which began with the news item of the death by suffocation of three young men in the police lock-up at Constant Spring. The science was respiration and surviving a low oxygen environment but the shocking news was a powerful peg. Science Serving Us now airs on KLAS FM 89 Sundays at 7:30 p.m. The mass media plays a crucial role in disseminating information about Science and Technology for public interest in and public understanding of Science and Technology. Over the past couple of years, I have been involved with an exciting CARIMAC initiative for providing journalists-in-training with some basic competence in Science Journalism. Science Journalism is a well established beat in mass media as can be readily ascertained if one reads, listens or views the big media outlets of the United States, Britain and other advanced countries. But the Caribbean is yet to catch up. The idea at CARIMAC now is to produce a cadre of "communications mediators" between the scientific community and media audiences. The elective course "Science, Society and Media" is a survey course covering: The Nature of Science and Technology, their development and impact on society and some current major areas of news-making growth in the field locally and internationally. Science Journalism Identifying, investigating and reporting in student's media specialisation S & T news and S & T components of regular news; Researching, packaging and presenting S & T information as feature stories in the mass media for audiences of laypersons. This course is designed to provide for the student who wishes to develop expertise as a communicator in Science and Technology a grounding in the general principles (not the technical details) of Science and Technology and basic skills for Science Journalism. The student, at the end of the course, is expected to have acquired an intellectual and practical base from which to produce popular, mass media news and feature stories on Science and Technology. People who do Science, Society and Media are expected to be able to: 1. Identify and judge what is news in Science and Technology. 2. Locate news-making agencies and persons in the local and international Science and Technology systems. 3. Evaluate the likely impact of Science and Technology news on the society. 4. Identify the Science and Technology components of the general news and follow those stories with appropriate investigative work. 5. Produce S & T news and feature stories as a communication mediator between the scientific community and the lay public. So watch out! The science journalists are coming! UWI has recently introduced a new set of Foundation courses for all students. "Science, Medicine, Technology and Society" is one of these courses required, on the reasonable assumption that all well educated persons graduating from a university should have a working knowledge of this vitally important area in the society and culture. Other members of the society which has been largely built by Science and Technology also need by some means a basic familiarity with Science and Technology. The Faculty of Pure and Applied Sciences is also exploring a full-fledged combo degree in Science and Journalism with CARIMAC. When all of this is taken together, it is not hard to see why a Science and Technology page in this newspaper would have generated almost child-like excitement in someone who has devoted a great deal of time and energy over years to doing and encouraging Science and Technology communication. Martin Henry is a communications consultant.
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