Across the media, and especially in the echo chambers that form much of social media, divisive messages about science have led some people to see scientists as a group that is “for” or “against” their political or religious convictions. This tendency is drawn out in a new study.
The increased rate of scepticism is happening despite scientists having diverse backgrounds, expertise and identities. This has been drawn out by the lead researcher Ariel Hasell, assistant professor of communication and media at the University of Michigan.
The research team used data to examine who holds these viewpoints and potential implications of threat perceptions. For this, a sample of 1,421 respondents participated in the Wave 1 survey, of which 975 also completed the Wave 2 survey.
The researchers found that the age, ethnicity, education and political affiliations of the subjects was important. The surveys involved questions about perceived threat from scientists, information gathering from news outlets and social media, and overall views about science.
Results suggest Republicans (the U.S. political party that is on the right-wing of the political divide) and evangelical-identifying individuals (who also tend to be of a conservative mindset) perceive a greater social threat arising from scientists. In turn this was based on people who identified with these types of right-wing views who generally happened to possess less accurate science beliefs. That is, their scientific education tended to be relatively poor.
In addition, such individuals were more likely to support excluding scientists from policymaking and for supporting retributive actions towards scientists. This was enhanced by viewing scientists as an opposing social group.
Underlying these tendencies was the perception that scientists posed threats to a given group’s political power, economic resources, or values and worldview.
Media bias was also a contributing factor. For news media exposure, results show that use of national television news and CNN were significantly associated with less threat perception, while use of Fox News was significantly associated with more threat perception. Other forms of news media exposure had no associations with threat perception.
It also stands that when individuals are personally unfamiliar with scientists, they are reliant upon the impressions they hear or see in media. This means that representation in news coverage is likely to impact how audiences perceive scientists.
Social media is also influential, not least when some people become over reliant upon following influencers for inspiration and advice. This too was significantly associated with more threat perception.
Hence the underlying concern for scientists and policymakers is that when people position science as something we should be for or against, believe or disbelieve, we lose sight of the fact that scientific research is a process.
The research appears in the Public Understanding of Science, titled “Threatening experts: Correlates of viewing scientists as a social threat.”
