Deficit model of science communication
The original term 'deficit model' was believed to be [3] coined in the 1980s, [4] and sometimes attributed to the work of Jon D. Miller, though his widely cited work on scientific literacy does not employ the term. [1] The deficit model sees the general population as the receiver of information and scientific knowledge. The information they receive, through whatever medium, has been prearranged according to what the distributors believe to be in the public's interest. Due to the recent growth of scientific research and subsequent discoveries, the deficit model suggests that this has led to a decrease in interest surrounding certain areas of science. This may be a result of the public feeling overwhelmed with information and disengaging, as it appears too much to take in.
There are two aspects to the deficit model. The first is the idea that public uncertainty and skepticism towards modern science, including environmental issues and technology, is caused primarily by a lack of sufficient knowledge about science and related subjects. The second aspect relates to the idea that by providing adequate information to overcome this lack of knowledge, also known as a 'knowledge deficit', the general public opinion will change based on the information being reliable and accurate. [5]
Supporters of the deficit model in science communication argue that a better-informed public would increase their support for scientific exploration and technologies. In the deficit model, scientists assume that there is a knowledge deficit that can be 'fixed' by giving the public more information: scientists often assume that "given the facts (whatever they are), the public will happily support new technologies." [6]
Controversy of the deficit model
The deficit model of scientific understanding perceives the public to be "blank slates" where their knowledge of scientific discourse and research is almost non-existent. [7] The knowledge deficit is then informed by a reliable, knowledgeable, and hierarchical scientific community. But the increase in new information systems, such as the Internet and their ease of accessibility, has led to a greater cumulative knowledge of scientific research and the public's understanding.
However, critics state that the deficit model can also produce an unintended cumulative advantage system: growing inequality between and within the knowledge-attitude-practice (KAP) gap of individuals and groups due to a wide variety of possible moderators. Over time, these effects can exacerbate gaps between individuals’ and groups’ levels of KAP. [8] With this in mind, this can also be a good thing in terms of the members of the public that can actively increase their own knowledge base, decrease the knowledge deficit and assess the truth and validity of what mass media outlets and governments are telling them. This should enhance and increase the relationship between the passive "blank slates" of the public, with the minority of the population who hold the 'knowledge surplus'.
The deficit model, however, has been discredited by a wealth of literature that shows that simply giving more information to people does not necessarily change their views. [9] This is in part due to people wanting to feel that they have had their say (and have been heard) in any decision-making process and people making decisions based on a host of factors. These factors include ethical, political, and religious beliefs, in addition to culture, history, and personal experience.
Put another way, people's sense of risk extends beyond the purely scientific considerations of conventional risk analysis, and the deficit model marginalizes these 'externalities'. It is now widely accepted that the best alternative to deficit model thinking is to genuinely engage with the public and take these externalities into account. [10]
Examples of externalities
Externalities can influence one’s views and behaviors towards science and technology. For example, a survey of US public in 2004 found that religiosity correlates with support of nanotechnology. [11] Additionally, in climate communication, even though today the majority of people worldwide believe climate change is a global emergency, [12] climate action has been impeded by other factors, such as political opposition, corruption and oil company interest. [13]
It has been also observed that sociodemographic factors such as education and age affect individuals' use of and access to communication channels; individuals' trust in and selection of health information from the program content and their changing health behaviors (as a result of the health information) are related to both their perception of the mass communication process and to sociodemographic factors but are more strongly related to the former. [14]
With the challenges to the deficit model in science communication in health, caution is advised with the increasing role of technology and social media, and how these may affect the legitimacy of healthcare information flows away from the healthcare professional. [15]
Furthermore, science communicators, particularly those seeking to address unsubstantiated beliefs, to look for alternative methods of persuasion. A 2019 study, for example, showed that exposure to the stories of an individual converted from opposing to supporting genetically modified organisms led to more positive attitudes toward GMOs. [16]
Evidence for a deficit affecting opinion
A 2008 meta-analysis of 193 studies sought to interpret the link between science knowledge and attitude towards science. [17] The studies included were taken using nonuniform methods across the world between 1989 and 2004 to provide a cross-cultural analysis. Broad and specific science knowledge and attitude categories were correlated. General science and general biology knowledge was gauged using questions similar to those by the National Science Foundation used to capture "civil scientific literacy". [1] Data on general science and biology knowledge was then compared with attitudes towards general science, nuclear power, genetic medicine, genetically modified food, and environmental science. From the raw data, it was found that a small positive correlation exists between general science knowledge and attitude towards science, indicating that increased scientific knowledge is related to a favorable attitude towards a science topic and that this was not related to the socioeconomic or technological status of a country, but rather the number of individuals enrolled in tertiary education. However, some studies have found that high levels of science knowledge may indicate highly positive and highly negative attitudes towards specific topics such as agriculture biotechnology. [18] Thus knowledge may be a predictor of the attitude strength and not necessarily if the attitude is positive or negative.
Evidence against the deficit model
While knowledge may influence attitude strengths, other studies have shown that merely increasing knowledge does not effectively augment public trust in science. [19] In addition to scientific knowledge, the public uses other values (e.g. religion) to form heuristics and make decisions about scientific technology. These same values may cloud responses to questions probing the public's scientific understanding, an example being evolution. On the National Science Foundation Indicators, less than half (~45%) of Americans agreed that humans evolved from other species. This is much lower than reports from other countries and was interpreted as a deficit in scientific literacy. However, when a qualifier was added ("according to the theory of evolution..."), 72% of Americans correctly answered that humans evolved from other species. [20] Therefore, knowledge alone does not explain public opinions with regard to science. Scientists must take other values and heuristics into account when communicating with the public in order to maintain trust and deference. In fact, some have called for more democratic accountability for bioethicists and scientists, meaning public values would feedback onto the progression/acceptance of scientific technology. [21] Emerging evidence suggests that this public/science collaboration may even be rewarding for researchers: 82% of faculty surveyed in a 2019 study agreed that getting "food for thought" from their public audiences was a positive outcome from public engagement activities. [22] As attention among the academics starts shifting back towards an emphasis on public engagement, organizations like the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) have therefore called for "intentional, meaningful interactions that provide opportunities for mutual learning between scientists and members of the public".
Mass media representations, ranging from news to entertainment, are critical links between the everyday realities of how people experience certain issues and the ways in which these are discussed at a distance between science, policy, and public actors. [5] Numerous studies show that the public frequently learns about science and more specifically issues such as climate change from the mass media. Heuristics (see low-information rationality and cognitive miser) also play a role in decision-making where the way.
The actual processes behind the communication and dissemination of information from experts to the public may be far more complex and deep-running than the deficit model suggests. In mass communication, the communicator (source) is always a part of an organized group and is most often a member of an institution that has functions other than communication. A receiver is always an individual; however, receivers are often seen by communicator organizations as members of a group that share some general characteristics. The channel includes large-scale technologically based distribution devices and systems. [23]
'Spinning', Heuristics, and Framing
There is perceived to be a trend within the world's media to commit to report the full facts, Factual reporting has given way to a more obvious, less reliable method to concentrate coverage on interpretations of the facts. This so-called 'spin' [24] (see Frank Luntz) is reported by the world's press under a combination of commercial and political pressure. In other words, the media provides the public with cognitive shortcuts or heuristics to quickly digest new information. The way message is framed may influence one’s attitudes. [25] The subjects of anthropogenic global warming and climate change is repeatedly exemplified. However, in all cases it is becoming increasingly difficult to separate out the factual basis of what is being reported from the 'spin' that is exerted on the way a story is reported and presented. [6]
Framing can be used to reduce the complexity of an issue, or to persuade audiences, and can play into the underlying religious beliefs, moral values, prior knowledge, and even trust in scientists or political individuals. [26] Further, the transmission of scientific ideas and technological adoption may be strongly linked to the passage of information between easily influenced individuals, [27] versus the widely accepted "two-step flow" theory where a few opinion leaders acted as intermediaries between mass media and the general public. [28] Decreasing the knowledge deficit is a complicated task, but if we know how the general public thinks, or how they go about learning and interpreting new information, we can better communicate our message to them in the most unbiased, objective way possible. [25]
Controversy is a state of prolonged public dispute or debate, usually concerning a matter of conflicting opinion or point of view. The word was coined from the Latin controversia, as a composite of controversus – "turned in an opposite direction".
Development communication refers to the use of communication to facilitate social development. Development communication engages stakeholders and policy makers, establishes conducive environments, assesses risks and opportunities and promotes information exchange to create positive social change via sustainable development. Development communication techniques include information dissemination and education, behavior change, social marketing, social mobilization, media advocacy, communication for social change, and community participation.
Credibility comprises the objective and subjective components of the believability of a source or message. Credibility dates back to Aristotle theory of Rhetoric. Aristotle defines rhetoric as the ability to see what is possibly persuasive in every situation. He divided the means of persuasion into three categories, namely Ethos, Pathos, and Logos, which he believed have the capacity to influence the receiver of a message. According to Aristotle, the term "Ethos" deals with the character of the speaker. The intent of the speaker is to appear credible. In fact, the speaker's ethos is a rhetorical strategy employed by an orator whose purpose is to "inspire trust in his audience." Credibility has two key components: trustworthiness and expertise, which both have objective and subjective components. Trustworthiness is based more on subjective factors, but can include objective measurements such as established reliability. Expertise can be similarly subjectively perceived, but also includes relatively objective characteristics of the source or message. Secondary components of credibility include source dynamism (charisma) and physical attractiveness.
Public awareness of science (PAwS) is everything relating to the awareness, attitudes, behaviors, opinions, and activities that comprise the relations between the general public or lay society as a whole to scientific knowledge and organization. This concept is also known as public understanding of science (PUS), or more recently, public engagement with science and technology (PEST). It is a comparatively new approach to the task of exploring the multitude of relations and linkages science, technology, and innovation have among the general public. While early work in the discipline focused on increasing or augmenting the public's knowledge of scientific topics, in line with the information deficit model of science communication, the deficit model has largely been abandoned by science communication researchers. Instead, there is an increasing emphasis on understanding how the public chooses to use scientific knowledge and on the development of interfaces to mediate between expert and lay understandings of an issue. Newer frameworks of communicating science include the dialogue and the participation models. The dialogue model aims to create spaces for conversations between scientists and non-scientists to occur while the participation model aims to include non-scientists in the process of science.
In media studies, mass communication, media psychology, communication theory, and sociology, media influence and themedia effect are topics relating to mass media and media culture's effects on individuals' or audiences' thoughts, attitudes, and behaviors. Through written, televised, or spoken channels, mass media reach large audiences. Mass media's role in shaping modern culture is a central issue for the study of culture.
Risk perception is the subjective judgement that people make about the characteristics and severity of a risk. Risk perceptions often differ from statistical assessments of risk since are affected by a wide range of affective, cognitive, contextual, and individual factors. Several theories have been proposed to explain why different people make different estimates of the dangerousness of risks. Three major families of theory have been developed: psychology approaches, anthropology/sociology approaches and interdisciplinary approaches.
Science journalism conveys reporting about science to the public. The field typically involves interactions between scientists, journalists and the public.
Digital literacy is an individual's ability to find, evaluate, and communicate information using typing or digital media platforms. It is a combination of both technical and cognitive abilities in using information and communication technologies to create, evaluate, and share information.
Environmental communication is "the dissemination of information and the implementation of communication practices that are related to the environment. In the beginning, environmental communication was a narrow area of communication; however, nowadays, it is a broad field that includes research and practices regarding how different actors interact with regard to topics related to the environment and how cultural products influence society toward environmental issues".
Health literacy is the ability to obtain, read, understand, and use healthcare information in order to make appropriate health decisions and follow instructions for treatment. There are multiple definitions of health literacy, in part, because health literacy involves both the context in which health literacy demands are made and the skills that people bring to that situation.
Public engagement or public participation is a term that has recently been used to describe "the practice of involving members of the public in the agenda-setting, decision-making, and policy-forming activities of organizations/institutions responsible for policy development." It is focused on the participatory actions of the public to aid in policy making based in their values.
Scientific literacy or science literacy encompasses written, numerical, and digital literacy as they pertain to understanding science, its methodology, observations, and theories. Scientific literacy is chiefly concerned with an understanding of the scientific method, units and methods of measurement, empiricism and understanding of statistics in particular correlations and qualitative versus quantitative observations and aggregate statistics, as well as a basic understanding of core scientific fields, such as physics, chemistry, biology, ecology, geology and computation.
Communicology is the scholarly and academic study of how people create and use messages to affect the social environment. Communicology is an academic discipline that distinguishes itself from the broader field of human communication with its exclusive use of scientific methods to study communicative phenomena. The goals of these scientific methods are to create and extend theory-based knowledge about the processes and outcomes of communication. Practitioners in the communicology discipline employ empirical and deductive research methods, such as cross-sectional and longitudinal surveys, experiments, meta-analyses, and content analyses, to test theoretically-derived hypotheses. Correlational and causal relationships between communication variables are tested in these studies.
The value-action gap is the space that occurs when the values or attitudes of an individual do not correlate to their actions. More generally, it is the difference between what people say and what people do. The phrase is associated with environmental geography, relating to attitudes and behaviors surrounding environmental issues. Numerous studies have reported an increase in global environmental concern, but have shown that environmental engagement is not adjusting in accordance.
In psychology, the human mind is considered to be a cognitive miser due to the tendency of humans to think and solve problems in simpler and less effortful ways rather than in more sophisticated and effortful ways, regardless of intelligence. Just as a miser seeks to avoid spending money, the human mind often seeks to avoid spending cognitive effort. The cognitive miser theory is an umbrella theory of cognition that brings together previous research on heuristics and attributional biases to explain when and why people are cognitive misers.
Science communication encompasses a wide range of activities that connect science and society. Common goals of science communication include informing non-experts about scientific findings, raising the public awareness of and interest in science, influencing people's attitudes and behaviors, informing public policy, and engaging with diverse communities to address societal problems. The term "science communication" generally refers to settings in which audiences are not experts on the scientific topic being discussed (outreach), though some authors categorize expert-to-expert communication as a type of science communication. Examples of outreach include science journalism and health communication. Since science has political, moral, and legal implications, science communication can help bridge gaps between different stakeholders in public policy, industry, and civil society.
Health communication is the study and practice of communicating promotional health information, such as in public health campaigns, health education, and between doctor and patient. The purpose of disseminating health information is to influence personal health choices by improving health literacy. Health communication is a unique niche in healthcare that allows professionals to use communication strategies to inform and influence decisions and actions of the public to improve health.
In social psychology, the Yale attitude change approach is the study of the conditions under which people are most likely to change their attitudes in response to persuasive messages. This approach to persuasive communications was first studied by Carl Hovland and his colleagues at Yale University during World War II. The basic model of this approach can be described as "who said what to whom": the source of the communication, the nature of the communication and the nature of the audience. According to this approach, many factors affect each component of a persuasive communication. The credibility and attractiveness of the communicator (source), the quality and sincerity of the message, and the attention, intelligence and age of the audience can influence an audience's attitude change with a persuasive communication. Independent variables include the source, message, medium and audience, with the dependent variable the effect of the persuasion.
The gateway belief model (GBM) suggests that public perception of the degree of expert or scientific consensus on an issue functions as a so-called "gateway" cognition. Perception of scientific agreement is suggested to be a key step towards acceptance of related beliefs. Increasing the perception that there is normative agreement within the scientific community can increase individual support for an issue. A perception of disagreement may decrease support for an issue.
Climate communication or climate change communication is a field of environmental communication and science communication focused on the causes, nature and effects of anthropogenic climate change.
