Tuesday 16th July
Wednesday 17th July
Thursday 18th July
Friday 19th July
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Public Attitudes Towards Science and Technology 1 |
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| Convenor | Dr Nick Allum (University of Essex) |
Science directly or indirectly plays a part in citizens' everyday lives. Despite the ubiquity of science, and its obvious role in the historical advancement of modern societies, public attitudes are varied and, in some notable areas, are becoming more polarised. Climate change is now a partisan issue in the USA; stem cell research remains controversial in parts of Europe; civil nuclear power is once more a live debate in some countries. Considerable investments in social surveys measuring public attitudes to science have been made over the past 30 years in order to track opinions about these and many other topics. This session will bring together researchers examining these issues through survey analysis.
Papers are invited that use survey data to illuminate attitudinal patterns, make cross-cultural comparisons, to investigate trends over time, to propose new, or evaluate existing, theoretical explanations for attitude formation and change or present new methods for analysis. Substantive topics could include, but are not limited to, biomedicine, climate change, nanotechnology, nuclear energy, biotechnology, synthetic biology. Theoretical and empirical perspectives might include: the role of affect and cognition; information processing, media effects, political partisanship, values and trust.
Eurobarometer 2005 and 2010 operationalized 'myth of science', i.e. unrealistic propositions of its operations, and also the enculturation of science (science knowledge; EU32, N=64,000). The results show a negative relationship between knowledge and subscrbing to myths about science. Extrapolating the data to 2015 and beyond, shows that paradoxically this enlightenment effect weakens in countries with high enculturation of science (the 're-enchantment of science'). What to make of this observation?
The rationalisation and disenchantment of the world is a feature of secular modernity. Modern science has been at the forefront of providing a worldview, where all events and actions are to be explained exclusively in terms of causal mechanisms; 'from mythos to logos', as the story goes. However, this programme remains incomplete. Modern institutions need wishful thinking and counterfactual value-driven accounts to motivate participation, buttress authority and secure public deference and allegiance. The public performance of science seems unable to avoid this paradox of enchanting its operations of 'disenchanting the world'. 'From mythos to logos' is itself a wishful narrative of history.
It is speculated that the observed reversal of the enlightenment trend is correlated with intensified public communication of science from universities, research laboratories, and civil society. Intensified story telling about research, results is mythologizing these very operations. This might not be a paradox. Could it be that the enculturation of science requires enchantment, sine-qua-non?
Science and technology (S+T) are increasingly entering the public sphere as politically contested phenomena. In the USA, partisanship is now an important predictor of attitudes towards stem cell research, global warming, evolution and other areas scientific research. In this paper we develop this line of research to consider the influence of left/right political orientation and libertarian/authoritarian values on a particularly contentious area of research: biotechnology and genomics. Using data from the British Social Attitudes Survey, we test the hypothesis that conservative economic values are associated with support for genomics research while social conservatism constrains support and that both aspects of political values condition the way that citizens select and deploy information that amplifies conflict. We present the results of our analysis and derive some conclusions about how citizens make judgments about S+T that are consistent with their existing political predispositions.
This paper uses the International Social Survey Program studies from 1993, 2000, and 2010.
Environmental issues are not the top concern in any country. But among environmental issues, climate change is the top mention in 10 countries, second only to air pollution. However, climate change is seen more as a country-level problem than as a personal problem. Climate change is also not seen as the most dangerous environmental problem, ranked about average on dangerousness.
No international consensus on climate change prevails. East Asian and Scandinavian countries show more concern than ex-Socialist and developing countries. Generally, publics in richer nations have higher concern than people in poorer countries.
In 1993-2010, there were on average no large nor consistent trends in public concern over climate change. The greater mentioning of global warming from climate change as dangerous by the younger than older generations probably reflects cohort effects and if so, should increase concern over time.
A model associated with knowledge and attitude to science and technology in explaining paranormal belief was tested in this study. The sample of 1863 citizens draws from a population of Taiwanese citizens with an age between 18 to 65 years old based on the 2012 household registration data. The sampling method of probability proportional to size (PPS) was used. It was found that the mixed relationships between scientific literacy and paranormal belief possibly result from the various mediating effects of public attitudes to science.
Eurobarometer conducts surveys in regular intervals to assess European citizens' general attitudes towards science and technology. These surveys include different demographic variables as well as key variables to gain a deeper insight into Europeans' views on S&T. The findings of these surveys are analysed at both EU level and by individual country levels. Local level data are important since they are more easily amenable to panel data collection compared to national surveys. Moreover, multilevel data can be merged or modified in order to reduce standard errors, sample sizes and costs. The objective of this study is to present the findings of a local level survey on attitudes towards S&T. The survey is conducted at Basaksehir Municipality, a sub-municipality 25 km away from the centre of Istanbul. The municipality is interesting for science in society studies as it starts a Living-Lab project for testing new technologies and developments in real life situations. This presents a unique opportunity to track the effects of technological infrastructure change on public attitude towards S&T. Questionnaire includes a shorter version of Eurobarometer 2010 and various items related to ICT usage; demographic variables; religiosity and self-determined left-right position. Sample size=350. We will compare various descriptive values to European and national Turkey level results. We will analyse the effects of different independent variables such as religiosity and political position on key attitude variables. Lastly we will propose some methodological insights that can be useful for future analysis of multilevel data.