scholarly journals SETI and the Media

2004 ◽  
Vol 213 ◽  
pp. 535-541
Author(s):  
Seth Shostak

Of all the research areas of modern discovery science, few attract more attention than the search for extraterrestrial intelligence. This is partially due to the fact that SETI is accessible, since the public can readily understand the goals of the research. The man in the street also finds SETI particularly exciting, a fact reflected by the ubiquitous presence of extraterrestrials in popular culture. The media interact with SETI in three areas: (1) reporting on research efforts, (2) being the principal conduit of information in case of a SETI detection, and (3) linking the subject deliberately or otherwise to the many stories of alien visitation. In this paper we will discuss the way science meets the media, and how and whether this often dicey relationship might serve to raise the general level of science literacy.

2018 ◽  
Vol 4 (2) ◽  
pp. 624
Author(s):  
Vanessa Matos Santos ◽  
Victor Pereira Albergaria

Esta pesquisa consiste no estudo de caso entre as coberturas da morte do ator mexicano Roberto Gómez Bolaños, o “Chespirito”, feitas pelo canal FOROtv, pertencente ao conglomerado de mídias mexicano Televisa, e pelo Sistema Brasileiro de Televisão. O aspecto cultural merece especial destaque e, por meio da problematização das distinções existentes entre a morte (substantivo) e o morrer (verbo), o presente estudo demonstra que as coberturas da mídia nestes casos se fazem a partir da relevância da personagem para a identidade do público. Conclui-se, por meio do estudo de caso, que ocorreu o ofuscamento do sujeito (Roberto Bolaños) em detrimento da personagem (Chespirito). A cobertura sobre o morrer de Chespirito serviu, na verdade, para reafirmar sua vida e presença na mídia.     PALAVRAS-CHAVE: Morte; Morrer; Roberto Bolaños; Chespirito; Cobertura de mídia; Televisão.     ABSTRACT This research is the case study of the coverage of the death of Mexican actor Roberto Gómez Bolaños "Chespirito" made by FOROtv, news channel belonging to the Mexican media conglomerate Televisa, and the Sistema Brasileiro de Televisão. The cultural aspect deserves special attention, and through the questioning of existing distinctions between death (noun) and the die (verb), this study shows that media coverage in these cases are made from the importance of the character to the identity of the public. So, through the case study, the conclusion is that ocurred the obscuring of the subject (Roberto Bolaños) at the expense of the character (Chespirito). The coverage of the death of Chespirito served actually to reaffirm his life and presence in the media.   KEYWORDS: Death; Dying; Roberto Bolaños; Chespirito; Media coverage; Television.     RESUMEN Esta investigación es el estudio de caso de la cobertura de la muerte del actor mexicano Chespirito, el "Power Board", realizado por el canal FOROtv perteneciente al conglomerado de medios Televisa de México, y el Sistema Brasileño de Televisión. El aspecto cultural merece una atención especial y, a través de preguntas de las diferencias existentes entre la muerte (sustantivo) y la matriz (verbo), este estudio muestra que la cobertura de los medios de comunicación en estos casos se hace de la importancia del carácter de la identidad el público. En conclusión, a través del estudio de caso, que se oscurece el sujeto (Roberto Bolaños) a expensas de carácter (Chespirito). La cobertura de la muerte de Chespirito sirve en realidad para reafirmar su vida y su presencia en los medios de comunicación.   PALABRAS CLAVE: Muerte; morir; Roberto Bolaños; Chespirito; la cobertura de los medios de comunicación; Televisión.


2018 ◽  
Vol 2 (1) ◽  
pp. 9
Author(s):  
Juliane Lopes Ferreira dos Santos ◽  
Denise Silva Matias ◽  
Nauana Nascimento Novais

Introduction: In 2015 Brazil was surprised by an increase in the incidence of microcephaly, related by the Ministry of Health to Zika virus infection during pregnancy. This theme, which was notorious for public health, reached wide popular repercussion through the media. Objectives: To describe the presence of the scientific paradigm in the discourse of health professionals, researchers or journalists who inform the lay public about biological causation. Methodology: All the news made available on the digital platform of the Folha de São Paulo newspaper, containing the key term "Zika and microcephalia" and published between November 11, 2015 and March 4, 2016, was performed. Scientific elucidation on the subject. The news items were classified as to the presence of certainty or uncertainty about the relationship between Zika and microcephaly in their content and the central idea in the subject titles. Results: Of the 387 reports analyzed, 51.4% related Zika as a causal factor of microcephaly, while 32.8% considered the presence of uncertainty in the relationship. It was verified that the newspaper privileged subjects related to the repercussions due to the diseases, being predominant the report of control measures. Considering the origin of the news, it was significant the use of official sources, presented in 82% of the news. Conclusion: The scientific paradigm was disregarded, ignoring the uncertainty principle and the scientific debate. The limitations of both journalists and health managers were also demonstrated in the elaboration of an effective communication with the public in emergency situations.


Author(s):  
Philip Moniz ◽  
Christopher Wlezien

Salience refers to the extent to which people cognitively and behaviorally engage with a political issue (or other object), although it has meant different things to different scholars studying different phenomena. The word originally was used in the social sciences to refer to the importance of political issues to individuals’ vote choice. It also has been used to designate attention being paid to issues by policy makers and the news media, yet it can pertain to voters as well. Thus, salience sometimes refers to importance and other times to attention—two related but distinct concepts—and is applied to different actors. The large and growing body of research on the subject has produced real knowledge about policies and policy, but the understanding is limited in several ways. First, the conceptualization of salience is not always clear, which is of obvious relevance to theorizing and limits assessment of how (even whether) research builds on and extends existing literature. Second, the match between conceptualization and measurement is not always clear, which is of consequence for analysis and impacts the contribution research makes. Third, partly by implication, but also because the connections between research in different areas—the public, the media, and policy—are not always clear, the consequences of salience for representative democracy remain unsettled.


Author(s):  
Stefan Machura

Criminal justice and its institutions are key objects of popular culture and attract extensive media attention. The portrayal of the justice system, its rules, professions, and institutions has been invigorated with the invention of new media technology. The authorities’ reaction to wrong doing has proven not less exciting to the audience than the criminal acts themselves. French sociologist Emile Durkheim emphasized that every member of society has an interest in social cohesion and wishes to see perpetrators appropriately punished. The media plays to this basic inclination. From the reactions of the justice system to crime people take clues not only for its effectiveness but the public also wants to see its basic values represented in the work of officials and their decisions. Therefore, aspects of procedural and distributive justice are picked up by popular imagination and exploited to the full by media producers. Beyond recognition that media depictions of criminal justice will follow media conventions and will therefore be distorted in systematic ways, it has to be acknowledged that those representations and the expectations they formed have become a major force in society. Political repercussions and influences on how crime is dealt with are a consequence.


2015 ◽  
Vol 9 (4) ◽  
pp. 428-445
Author(s):  
Rein Brouwer

A public (practical) theology is about recognizing religious phenomena in (popular) culture and society, and reflecting on these phenomena from a theological perspective. There is a lot of G/god in the public domain, so one could assume that ‘the fields are white for harvest already’ (John 4:35), theologically speaking. References to biblical stories and figures abound in art and culture and religious themes and questions are the subject of movie pictures and media attention. Theologians are well suited to interpret these public phenomena because they have access to a huge database of concepts, narratives and practices to make meaning from this fragmented G/god in public domain. But what sort of G/god are we talking about? This paper explores John Caputo’s theopoetics as a model for a public theology. Caputo’s theology is presented as a way of tracing God, perhaps, in a product of popular culture.


2020 ◽  
Vol 2 (1) ◽  
pp. 20
Author(s):  
Miatus Sholikhah ◽  
Siti Zunariyah

<p>Most of Indonesia’s rivers fall into the heavily polluted category. One of the heavily polluted rivers in Indonesu is the Brantas River. This research had purpose to understanding the problems in Brantas River and also to know the environmental movement in order to recovering Brantas River. The theory which was used in this research was New Social Movement theory from Rajendra Singh. This research was qualitative research with etnography methods. Data was obtained by observation, detailed interview, and also documentation. The subject of this research was Ecoton, the public accompanied by Ecoton on the headwaters and the downstream of the Brantas River, and the school accompanied by Ecoton. Researcher was using source triangulation techniques to test the collected data legitimation. Researcher used Miles and Huberman’s outlook in data analysis, which consist of three activity lines; data reduction, data presentation and draw conclusions.</p>            Results show that there were many problems happened in Brantas River from the headwaters to the downstream. There were five problems found in this research. <em>First,</em> problems in Brantas River headwaters was reclaiming the land functions and illegal logging. <em>Second,</em> there were many abandoned buildings on the riverside. <em>Third</em>, domestic pollution from household. The buildings which were built on the riverside had made the people to easily throw away their garbages to the Brantas River. Mostly it was diapers, which could endanger human and the fishes whom lives in Brantas River. <em>Fourth</em>, the industrial pollution which already exceeds the permittable treshold. Industry had oftenly disposed their waste to the river without conducted the sewage management procedure which then created the new problems in Brantas River: a mass death fish. A mass death fish had become the <em>fifth</em> problems in Brantas River. The damage of environmental condition of Brantas River had pushed the movement from Ecoton. In their movement, Ecoton had the characteristic new social movement which was the ideology of care to the Brantas River damage. The strategy which was used by Ecoton were conducted partitions research, environmental education, advocation and also involved the media on every movement they had done. Ecoton had the non-institutional structure, which was unconcerned with power but put their focus to reach the aims and the visions.


2020 ◽  
Vol 9 (2) ◽  
pp. 38-76
Author(s):  
Lana Kerzner ◽  
Chelsea Temple Jones ◽  
Beth Haller ◽  
Arthur Blaser

Canadian news coverage is reflecting and shaping an evolution of thought about how we must publicly account for animals’ roles in the disability rights movement. Through a textual analysis of 26 news media articles published between 2012 and 2017, this research demonstrates that the media play a key role in reporting on discrimination, yet media narratives about service animals and their owners too often fail to capture the complexity of policies and laws that govern their lives. In Canada, there is widespread public confusion about the rights of disabled people and their service animals. This incertitude is relevant to both disability and animal oppression. This research identifies nine frames within the media narratives, as well as evaluating perspectives from critical animal studies in the news articles. These frames, which emerge in the media reports, in their descriptions of human and (less often) animal rights, illustrate public confusion surrounding these rights. The confusion is inevitable given the many laws in Canada that govern service animals. Thus, to give context to the news coverage, this article also surveys the legal protections for disabled people who use service animals in Canada, and suggests that until the news media understand the legalities surrounding service animals, they will not be well equipped to fulfil their role of informing the public. This is a lost opportunity in light of the media’s potential role as a pivotal tool to educate the public about disability and animal rights.


2019 ◽  
Vol 64 (5) ◽  
pp. 620-637
Author(s):  
Lorenzo Bosi ◽  
Anna Lavizzari ◽  
Stefania Voli

Recent scientific studies have reached the near-unanimous conclusion that the media produce a stereotypical representation of young people. However, research in this area has not often scrutinized whether there are any significant differences in the coverage of the subject matter. Notably, this article examines whether the political leaning of newspapers has any impact on the levels of plurality in the news coverage of youth. On the basis of political claim analyses of six newspapers from three countries (Greece, Italy, and Spain), we find that the coverage of youth in the public debate is very similar if we compare center-right to center-left newspapers. This suggests that the social construction of the concept of youth dominates in the adult world, regardless of any political differences. Nonetheless, differences emerge when young people are given the opportunity to speak for themselves; center-left newspapers are more likely to recognize the agency of, and give a voice to, young people.


2017 ◽  
Vol 3 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-21
Author(s):  
Jef Poppelmonde ◽  
Idesbald Goddeeris

Based on the 1951 Refugee Convention, persons who have left their country ‘owing to well-founded fear of being persecuted for reasons of race, religion, nationality, membership of a particular social group, or political opinion’ are entitled to protection. The principle of non-refoulement provides that ‘no country shall expel or return a refugee against his or her will, in any manner whatsoever, to a territory where he or she fears threats to life or freedom’. 1 Following the increasing numbers of asylum seekers in the 1990s, host countries began to apply the Refugee Convention criteria more strictly and refused a growing number of applicants. 2 Since the summer of 2015 Europe has found itself in the middle of what is described as a ‘refugee crisis’. The crisis has brought debates about asylum, borders and return policies to the centre of the public and political conversation. A growing portion of society has called for a stricter asylum policy. This article will argue that even before this latest ‘refugee crisis’ discourses on asylum were becoming more restrictive, with a growing focus on return rather than protection. It will also show that the debates on asylum keep moving away from the definition provided in the 1951 Refugee Convention. It will do so by comparing the Belgian debates on forced return – and on asylum in general, which is inseparably connected to the subject – in the media and parliament during two periods: 1998–2001 and 2011–2013. 3 In the first section, we will elaborate on the theoretical framework of the analysis, paying attention to relevant concepts and secondary literature, as well as to the research questions and methodology. We will then discuss the most important empirical data on the debates’ topics and stances. In a third and final section, the major shifts in the debates will be analysed.


Author(s):  
Munevver Elif Gurses ◽  
Filiz Erdogan Tugran

Nowadays, with globalization, dark tourism has become one of the rising stars of popular culture and tourism trends; in fact, it has existed in human life for centuries. Although the role of the media in this popularization process is great, visits to tombs and monuments, museum visits, historical sites, and places that are remembered with negative stories actually get involved in the dark tourism activity, albeit unknowingly. Dark tourism has been the subject of academic research in the last two decades, thanks to its popularity; basically, it describes travels to places famous for death, catastrophe, natural disaster, war, or legendary narratives. The heartbeat of the “storyteller,” who had an important place for Walter Benjamin and that he defended to disappear, started to be heard again in the dark tourism event. This research is the product of an effort to rethink the storyteller through dark tourism.


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