scholarly journals The brain seduction: the public perception of neuroscience

2009 ◽  
Vol 08 (04) ◽  
pp. L01 ◽  
Author(s):  
Donato Ramani
Keyword(s):  
Public Perception ◽  
Science And Society ◽  
Self Identity ◽  
The Public ◽  
The Past ◽  
Present Letter ◽  
Values And Beliefs ◽  
Health Related ◽  
The Media ◽  
The Brain

The increasing number of magazine covers dedicated to brain studies and the success of magazines and scientific journals entirely dedicated to brain and mind indicate a strong interest on these themes. This interest is clearly surpassing the boundaries of scientific and medical researches and applications and underlines an engagement of the general public, too. This phenomenon appears to be enhanced by the increasing number of basic researches focusing on non-health-related fMRI studies, investigating aspects of personality as emotions, will, personal values and beliefs, self-identity and behaviour. The broad coverage by the media raises some central questions related to the complexity of researches, the intrinsic limits of these technologies, the results’ interpretative boundaries, factors which are crucial to properly understand the studies’ value. In case of an incomplete communication, if those fundamental interpretative elements are not well understood, we could register a misinterpretation in the public perception of the studies that opens new compelling questions. As already observed in the past debates on science and technologies applications, in this case, too, we assist to a communicative problem that set against scientific community on one side and media, on the other. Focusing our attention, in particular, on the debate on fMRI, taken as a good model, in the present letter we will investigate the most interesting aspects of the current discussion on neuroscience and neuroscience public perception. This analysis was performed as one of the bid - brains in dialogue - activities (www.neuromedia.eu). bid is a three year project supported by the European Commission under the 7th Framework Program and coordinated by Sissa, the International School for Advanced Studies of Trieste, aimed at fostering dialogue between science and society on the new challenges coming from neuroscience.

scholarly journals Parents and Teachers’ Perceptions of the Tone and Emotional Impact of Education News Coverage

2021 ◽  
Vol 2 (2) ◽  
pp. 193-207
Author(s):  
Kathryn Shine ◽  
Shane L. Rogers
Keyword(s):  
Public Perception ◽  
General Pattern ◽  
News Coverage ◽  
Emotional Impact ◽  
Teachers Perceptions ◽  
The Public ◽  
The Media ◽  
Standardised Testing ◽  
Perceptions Of Education ◽  
Education News

This study examines Australian teachers (n = 268) and parents’ (n = 206) self-reported perceptions of education news coverage and how the coverage affects them. Overall, the participants reported a perception that news coverage of teachers, schools, the education system and standardised testing was generally negative in tone. Participants reported typically feeling demoralised by negative stories and inspired by positive stories. A high importance was placed upon the public perception of education by participants. However, trust in the media reporting of educational issues was low. An exception to this general pattern of findings was that participants did not place as much importance upon the public perception of standardised testing and reported being less affected by negative or positive stories on that topic compared to the other education aspects. This research is one of the few studies to investigate the potential emotional impact that news coverage of education can have on media consumers.

Risks to the Public

2021 ◽  
Vol 46 (2) ◽  
pp. 11-15
Author(s):  
Peter G. Neumann
Keyword(s):  
Computer Systems ◽  
Strong Sense ◽  
Risk Awareness ◽  
Short Term ◽  
The Public ◽  
The Past ◽  
The Media ◽  
Potential Risks ◽  
Security And Reliability

Mini-editorial (PGN) 2020 was a crazy year, with all kinds of risks on display. As usual, many of the lessons noted in past issues of SEN and RISKS have been largely ignored, and failures continue to mirror events from the past that have long been discussed here. Issues such as safety, security, and reliability always seem to need more foresight than they receive. Y2K con- tinues to hit somewhere each New Year's Day, when short- term remediations that demanded periodic upgrading have been forgotten. (I suppose old COBOL code will still ex- ist in year 2100, when there may be ambiguities relating to dates that could be 21xx or 20xx (although 19xx is unlikely), and the narrow windowing xes will fail even more dramati- cally.) Election integrity continues to be a real concern, where we are caught in the crosshairs between computer systems and networks that are not meaningfully trustworthy or au- ditable, and the nontechnological risks are still pervasive from unbalanced redistricting, creative dysinformation, poli- tics, Citzens United, and foreign interference. We need non- partisan scrutiny and defense against would-be subverters to overcome potential attacks and inadvertent mistakes. In pres- ence of potential risks in every part of the process, a strong sense of risk-awareness is required by voters, election officials, and the media (both proactively and remedially, as needed).

Mental Health Ontologies

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Janna Hastings
Keyword(s):  
Mental Health ◽  
Mental Illness ◽  
Public Discourse ◽  
Theoretical Frameworks ◽  
The Public ◽  
Holistic Understanding ◽  
Public Health Challenges ◽  
Health Related ◽  
The Media ◽  
The Way

Mental health presents one of the defining public health challenges of our time. Proponents of different conceptions of what mental illness is wage war for the hearts and minds of patients, practitioners, policy-makers, and the public. Debate and fragmentation around the nature of the entities that feature in the mental health domain divide resources and reduce progress. The way mental health is publicly discussed in the media has tangible effects, in terms of stigma, access to healthcare and resources, and private expectations of recovery. This book explores in detail the sorts of statements that are made about mental health in the media and public reporting of scientific research, grounding them in the wider context of the theoretical frameworks, assumptions and metaphors that they draw from. The author shows how a holistic understanding of the way that different aspects of mental illness are interrelated can be developed from evidence-based interpretation of the latest research findings. She offers some ideas about corrective, integrative approaches to discussing mental health-related matters publicly that may reduce the opposition between conceptualisations while still aiming to reduce stigma, shame and blame. In particular, she emphasises that discourse in the media needs to be anchored to an overview of all the research results across the field and argues that this could be achieved using new technological infrastructures. The author provides an integrative account of what mental health is, together with an improved understanding of the factors driving the persistence of oppositional accounts in the public discourse. The book will be of benefit to researchers, practitioners and students in the domain of mental health.

scholarly journals ANALISIS AKTIVITAS HUBUNGAN MEDIA DALAM MANAJEMEN KRISIS DI PERGURUAN TINGGI

2018 ◽  
Vol 11 (1) ◽  
pp. 86
Author(s):  
Narayana Mahendra Prastya
Keyword(s):  
Mass Media ◽  
Public Relations ◽  
Public Perception ◽  
Media Relations ◽  
The Public ◽  
News Sources ◽  
The Media ◽  
The University ◽  
Information Subsidies

Tulisan ini bertujuan untuk menganalisis aktivitas hubungan media yang dilakukan oleh Universitas Islam Indonesia, saat kejadian Tragedi Diksar Mapala UII. Kejadian tersebut merupakan krisis karena tidak diduga, terjadi secara mendadak, dan menimbulkan gangguan pada aktivitas dan citra organisasi. Hubungan media adalah salah satu aktivitas yang penting dalam manajemen krisis, karena media massa mampu mempengaruhi persepsi masyarakat terhadap satu organisasi dalam krisis. Dalam situasi krisis sendiri, persepsi dapat menjadi lebih kuat daripada fakta. Batasan hubungan media dalam tulisan ini adalah dalam aspek penyediaan informasi yang terdiri dari : (1) kualitas narasumber organisasi dan (2) cara organisasi dalam membantu liputan media. Data penelitian ini diperoleh dengan mewawancarai wartawan dari media di Yogyakarta yang meliput Diksar Mapala UII. Hasilnya menunjukkan bahwa media membutuhkan narasumber pimpinan tertinggi universitas. Informasi yang diperoleh dari humas universitas dirasa masih kurang cukup. Dalam hal upaya organisasi membantu aktivitas liputan, UII dinilai masih kurang cepat dan kurang terbuka dalam memberikan informasi. The purpose of this article is to analyse the media relations activities by Islamic University of Indonesia (UII), related to crisis "Tragedi Diksar Mapala UII". This incident lead to crisis because it is unpredictable, happen suddenly, disturb the organizational activities, and make the organization's image being at risk. Media relations is one important activites in crisis management. It is because mass media could affect the public perception toward an organization. In crisis situation, perception could be stronger than the fact. The limitation of media relations in this article are information subsidies. Information subsidies consist of : (1) the quality of news sources that provided by the organization, and (2) how organization facilitate the news gathering process by the media. The data for this article is being collected from interview with journalist from the mass media in Yogyakarta. The results are media want the top management of the universities as the news sources. The information that being provided by public relations is not enough. The university also lack of quickness and lack of openess.

Music Training and Nonmusical Abilities: Introduction

2011 ◽  
Vol 29 (2) ◽  
pp. 129-132 ◽  
Author(s):  
E. Glenn Schellenberg ◽  
Ellen Winner
Keyword(s):  
Cognitive Abilities ◽  
Scientific Inquiry ◽  
Music Perception ◽  
Music Training ◽  
The Public ◽  
The Past ◽  
Academic Benefits ◽  
The Us ◽  
The Media ◽  
New Research

the objective of this special issue of Music Perception, which includes contributions from researchers based in Canada, Germany, New Zealand, and the US, is to present the best new research on associations between music training and nonmusical abilities. Scholarly interest in associations between music training and nonmusical cognitive functioning has sparked much research over the past 15–20 years. The study of how far associations between music training and cognitive abilities extend, and whether such associations are more likely for some domains of cognition than for others, has theoretical relevance for issues of transfer, modularity, and plasticity. Unlike most other areas of scientific inquiry, there is parallel interest on the part of the public, the media, and educators who want to know if nonmusical intellectual and academic benefits are a welcome by-product of sending children to music lessons. Indeed, some educators and arts advocates justify music training in schools precisely because of these presumed and desired nonmusical associations.

“Nothing but Words”? Chronicling and Storytelling in Robert Coover's The Public Burning

2009 ◽  
Vol 44 (1) ◽  
pp. 171-186
Author(s):  
THEOPHILUS SAVVAS
Keyword(s):  
Political Culture ◽  
Atomic Bomb ◽  
Vice President ◽  
Narrative Methods ◽  
The Public ◽  
Richard Nixon ◽  
The Past ◽  
Third Person ◽  
The Media ◽  
American Society

Robert Coover's 1977 novel The Public Burning is a dramatic re-presentation of the last three days of the lives of Julius and Ethel Rosenberg. Dubbed the “atomic spies” by the media, the Rosenbergs were accused of passing on the “secret” of the atomic bomb to the Russians. The sensational trial provoked widespread attention for its seeming encapsulation of the fault lines in American society opened up by anticommunism and the emergent Cold War. Found guilty, they were the first American nationals to be executed for espionage. This paper analyses the different narrative methods that Coover employs to re-present the past. In particular I focus on Coover's juxtaposition of a third-person, seemingly omniscient, narrator with the first-person narratological voice of then Vice President Richard Nixon. I suggest that we can best understand this not simply as providing objective and subjective versions of the event, as some critics have claimed, but rather as a distinction between history as chronicle (or what I call a synchronic method of history), and history as storytelling (or diachrony). Through this The Public Burning becomes not just a satirical critique of the specific political culture of the time, I contend, but, more fundamentally, a general exploration of the difficulties of reconstituting past events into knowledge. It is here, perhaps, where the novel's continuing relevance for today lies.

“Tanked up Yobs” and “Self-Pity City”. Deconstructing the Myths of the Hillsborough Disaster

STADION ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 43 (1) ◽  
pp. 58-75
Author(s):  
Alan McDougall
Keyword(s):  
Public Discourse ◽  
British History ◽  
Public Realm ◽  
Grassroots Activism ◽  
The Public ◽  
The Past ◽  
Overwhelming Evidence ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Media ◽  
Government Legislation

On 15 April 1989, Liverpool FC played Nottingham Forest in an FA Cup semi-final at the Hillsborough Stadium in Sheffield in northern England. Catastrophic errors by the police and other organisations led to the deaths of 96 Liverpool supporters, crushed against the perimeter fences on the Leppings Lane terrace. Though the horrific facts of the disaster were quickly and widely known, they were lost beneath another narrative, promoted by the police, numerous politicians, and large sections of the media. This narrative blamed the disaster on “tanked up yobs”: drunk and aggressive Liverpool supporters, who turned up late and forced their way into the ground. Over the subsequent years and decades, as Hillsborough campaigners vainly sought justice for the disaster’s victims in a series of trials and inquests, the destructive allegation remained in the public realm. It was reinforced by establishment dismissal of Liverpool as a “self-pity city”, home to a community incapable of accepting official verdicts or of leaving the past in the past. This essay uncovers the history of the myths of the Hillsborough disaster. It first shows how these myths were established - how false narratives, with powerful backers, shifted responsibility for the disaster from the police to supporters, despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary. It then examines how these myths were embedded in public discourse - how Liverpool was demonised as an aggressively sentimental city where people refused to admit to “killing their own”. It finally analyses how these myths were overturned through research, media mobilisation, and grassroots activism, a process that culminated in the 2016 inquest verdict, which ruled that the 96 Hillsborough victims were unlawfully killed. In doing so, the essay shows how Hillsborough became a key event in modern British history, influencing everything from stadium design to government legislation.

Vigorous Physical Activity and All-Cause Mortality: A Story That Got Lost in Translation

2015 ◽  
Vol 12 (4) ◽  
pp. 445-446 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ding Ding ◽  
Klaus Gebel ◽  
Becky Freeman ◽  
Adrian E. Bauman
Keyword(s):  
Vigorous Physical Activity ◽  
Media Reporting ◽  
The Public ◽  
Health Related Research ◽  
Health Related ◽  
Research Findings ◽  
The Media ◽  
Media Reports ◽  
Lost In Translation ◽  
Published Research

Media reporting of published research findings can increase the profile and reach of new scientific findings. Dissemination is an important part of research, and media reporting can catalyze this process. In many areas, including health-related research, policymakers often rely on the media for information and guidance. Furthermore, media reports can influence the scientific community and clinicians.1·2 However, despite the potential beneficial role as a bridge between scientists and the public, misleading information can cause controversy, confusion, and even harm.3

scholarly journals Exploring serendipitous dialogue

2014 ◽  
Vol 13 (04) ◽  
pp. E ◽  
Author(s):  
Emma Weitkamp
Keyword(s):  
Citizen Science ◽  
Scientific Research ◽  
Science And Society ◽  
The Public ◽  
The Past ◽  
Research Areas

Over the past decades there has been an increasing recognition of the need to promote dialogue between science and society. Often this takes the form of formal processes, such as citizen’s juries, that are designed to allow the public to contribute their views on particular scientific research areas. But there are also many less formal mechanisms that promote a dialogue between science and society. This editorial considers science festivals and citizen science in this context and argues that we need a greater understanding of the potential impacts of these projects on the individuals involved, both scientists and the public.

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