Onderzoeksartikel

Onderzoek in de krant: een analyse van de berichtgeving in kranten over wetenschappelijk onderzoek

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Abstract

This article presents an analysis of the covering of scientific news in five Dutch newspapers, completed by interviews with ten news editors and scientific journalists. The content analysis focusses on the actual reporting of background and methodological facts of the research covered. In a sum total of 96 editions of the newspapers we found 624 articles with references to results of scientific research. The majority of the reports appear in the news part of the dailies; 30% appear on special science pages or in other supplements. In general 55% of the reports concern the social sciences, but on the special science pages the natural sciences (47%) and medical science (29%) dominate. Generally speaking, information about scientific research is short and restricted to the mentioning of researchers or research institute. The majority of the reports (60%) lacks any reference to a source (press release, article, science report), but on the science pages 65% of the cases mentions an article in a scientific journal as a source. The journalistic practice of citating impersonally or paraphrasing makes it unclear whether researchers actually were asked for a reaction. In 4% of the news reports other researchers commented on the research. The majority of the reports contain simple statistics (numbers, percentages), more advanced statistical information is rare (3 cases). In interviews with news editors and science journalists two perspectives were found: a ‘news values orientation’ and a ‘research quality orientation’. As most social scientific research is reported in the news part of the newspapers, the covering of scientific news generally lacks a critical approach to conceptual and statistical formulations used to inform the general public.

How to Cite:

Wester, F., Pleijter, A. & Hijsmans, E., (2002) “Onderzoek in de krant: een analyse van de berichtgeving in kranten over wetenschappelijk onderzoek”, Tijdschrift voor Communicatiewetenschap 30(1), 55–76.