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Public Perceptions and Mass Media in the Biotechnology

Controversy

Article  in  International Journal of Public Opinion Research · March 2005

DOI: 10.1093/ijpor/edh054 · Source: OAI

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International Journal of Public Opinion Research Vol.  No.  © World Association for Public Opinion Research
; all rights reserved
doi:./ijpor/edh

SECTION: BIOTECHNOLOGY AND

MEDIA EFFECTS
This section contains four articles that report results from an international
research project. The first article, by one of the project’s coordinators, Martin
W. Bauer, describes the intentions and procedures of the overall project and
those of the ‘mass media’ subgroup in detail. It is to be read as an introduction to
the section.
HPP

PUBLIC PERCEPTIONS AND MASS

MEDIA IN THE BIOTECHNOLOGY
CONTROVERSY

Martin W. Bauer

A B ST RA C T
Biotechnology is a strategic technology of the twenty-first century. In the s this
modern technology entered the stage of acute political controversy across Europe. In
many societies, the public sphere plays an increasingly important role in the develop-
ment of a new technology. In this debate the role of the mass media is more often subject
to polemics than empirical analysis. This section of the special issue of IJPOR puts
three hypotheses, which specify the influence of mass media on public perceptions, to
empirical test on the topic of modern biotechnology and genetic engineering. These are
the quantity of coverage, knowledge gap, and cultivation hypotheses. Our project data-
base, which comprises an analysis of media coverage of biotechnology from  to
 and surveys of public perceptions of biotechnology in  and  across 
European countries, offers important observations on the dynamics of this controversy
across Europe and allows us to examine the evidence for media effects in a comparative
and longitudinal design.

The author’s thanks go to reviewers for constructive comments on an earlier version of this introduction, and
in particular to Morag Brocklehurst, project manager of LSES, for her indefatiguable efforts to improve the
writing of the authors of this special issue who all struggle with an acquired tongue.
This article was first submitted to IJPOR February , , along with the others in this section. The final
versions were received and accepted for publication in October .
 INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF PUBLIC OPINION RESEARCH

Biotechnology is one of those technological developments which policy makers

and research and development (R&D) managers recognize as strategic for the
twenty-first century. In this way, it must be likened to technologies such as
nuclear power, missile technology and space exploration, and information tech-
nology and computing, or more recently nanotechnology. Modern biotechnology
is commonly seen to have started in  with the first patent on recombinant
DNA techniques offering the prospect for the purposeful design of organisms
and the promise of commercial benefits. In the following years, a number of sci-
entists working at this frontier called for a voluntary moratorium, in the ‘Berg
letter’ (Berg et al., ), to explore the safety implications of these new tech-
niques. Since then, the age of genetic engineering has been dawning. However,
the wider European public took little notice of it until the mid-s, when
inconsistencies in European and national regulations (Cantley, ; Torgerson
et al., ) provided opportunities for civil society to interfere. Some European
countries—Denmark, Germany, the Netherlands and Switzerland—saw earlier local
debates on biotechnology (see Seifert, , for an overview; Kepplinger, Ehmig
& Ahlheim, , for Germany). But the arrival of genetically modified soya in
Europe in autumn  and the presentation of Dolly, the cloned sheep, in
February  to the world media changed the landscape of public debates
across Europe (see Lassen, Allansdottir, Liakopoulos, Mortensen, & Olofsson,
; Einsiedel et al., ). Both events enhanced the public controversy over
biotechnology. Genetically modified crops raised the issues of unintended
gene drift and food safety, of labelling genetically modified food, and of its
traceability from ‘farm to fork’. Dolly the sheep raised questions on the ethics
of human cloning both in reproduction or in therapy, culminating in the
present debates over stem cell research. Furthermore, the Human Genome
Project opened the ways for new types of medicines and genetic diagnoses; the
latter raising issues of privacy and consent. How should this information be
used in decisions over reproduction, insurance, employment, or bank credit?
Many of these issues were linked with other concerns such as BSE and Euro-
pean integration in many countries. From  to  Europe witnessed a de
facto moratorium over the commercialization of genetically modified crops and
foods and a re-organization of the regulatory frameworks of biotechnology both
at the national and European levels (Grabner, Hampel, Lindsey, & Torgersen,
), and the late s saw a veritable ‘culture clash’ in several countries
over the ethical issues arising from stem cell cloning and embryo research.
Social scientists and historians regard technology as the outcome of and input
into social processes. In our research on biotechnology and the public, we developed
the concept of the ‘technology movement’ (Bauer & Gaskell, , ; Bauer,
). A technology considered as a social movement has several characteristics.
First, technological projects need to mobilize support, be that state funding and
venture capital, qualified researchers, or public goodwill. Secondly, imagination,
 PUBLIC PERCEPTIONS AND MASS MEDIA 
future scenarios and reasoned arguments variably underpin this support in society.
Thirdly, a technology movement comprises a multitude of projects that do not
necessarily share the same fixed goal. There is no historical necessity for any
project; the future is open. Fourthly, the various actors of this movement, some
with a past, others without a history of engagement, encounter a public sphere
where they are re-presented in ways that inform attitudinal judgments and pub-
lic perceptions of this new technology. Finally, far from being a conspiratorial
system with a unified and secret command, a technology movement is integrated
by conflicts among actors who compete, for example, over public attention or
regulatory arrangements. What links this network of actors is the common refer-
ence to biotechnology for the good or bad of society and humanity. Observing a
base technology in the making shows that most things are fluid most of the time:
the knowledge base, the actors involved, the regulatory framework, media atten-
tion and framing, the ethics and moral boundaries, public perceptions, and the
markets. The questions arise: which of these factors are driving and which are
driven, and when?

THE PAPERS THAT FOLLOW

In what follows, three papers will examine the evidence for three specific
hypotheses on the effects of mass media on public perceptions. They will use the
same database comprising an analysis of media coverage and public perceptions.
Jan Gutteling (University of Twente) will put Mazur’s quantity of coverage
hypothesis to the test. He will consider the changing intensity of newspaper coverage
during the s in relation to the changes of attitudes across Europe, controlling
for media exposure (Gutteling, ). Heinz Bonfadelli (University of Zurich)
examines whether knowledge gaps between groups of different educational levels
were increasing during the s, and whether this was moderated by the intensity
of media coverage in the different countries. He will relate measures of knowledge
of biotechnology and genetic engineering with socio-demographic variables and
the intensity of newspaper coverage in each country (Bonfadelli, ). Martin
W. Bauer (London School of Economics) looks at the part played by the elite
press in bringing about the red/green distinction in the biotechnology debate,
adopting a cultivation approach and some innovative extensions of it. By the end
of the s distinguishing red from green has become a commonplace in the dis-
cussion of biotechnolgy. Bauer will link the red/green contrast in media coverage
with that in public perception, and investigate whether reading elite newspapers
mediates this link in different contexts and over time (Bauer, ).
The overall purpose of this section in the special issue is twofold: First, to
show how public opinion of biotechnology developed across Europe during the
s; and secondly to do this in the light of three classical hypotheses on media
effects. In this way we are able to characterize these debates over biotechnology
 INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF PUBLIC OPINION RESEARCH

in different contexts, and at the same time examine the empirical evidence regarding
media effects from a comparative perspective. Our comparison is likely to demon-
strate the need to re-specify these hypotheses for different stages of a public contro-
versy over a new technology. These three papers arise from a discussion group
within an international research project on ‘biotechnology and the public’. I will
briefly introduce this research project in the remainder of this introductory article.

T H E P UB L I C S PH E R E O F T E C HN O L O G Y : A R E S E A R CH
H E U R I ST I C
Our internationally co-ordinated research effort focuses on the public sphere as
an arena for the public representation of technology. The public sphere is an
important concept in modern politics with a long history (e.g. Habermas, ).
Its features are elusive and conceptualized controversially. For our empirical
research our project operated with a heuristic of the public sphere that is
depicted schematically in Figure .
The circle at the centre of Figure  marks the social movement that refers to
and identifies with ‘biotechnology’, either for or against it, unconditionally or
conditionally. This actor-network is constrained by, in the double sense of enabled
and resisted by, the structures and processes of the public sphere: the regulatory
framework, the mass mediation, and the conversations and perceptions of every-
day life. From the point of view of the technology movement, the public often
appears as a form of resistance. Industrial actors refer to legal regulation as the
first and public opinion as the second hurdle on the way towards a biotech society.
What is the contribution of public resistance to the trajectory of biotechnology?
This is a key empirical question (see Bauer, , ).
We conceive of the public sphere as a communication system (e.g. Neidhardt,
) where interested actors mobilize attention in public arenas: in the arenas of
regulation and policy making, in the outlets of the mass media and in the locations

FIGURE  Heuristic for researching the public sphere of technology

Public opinion
[informal] [formal]

Mass
Perception mediation
Biotech
actors

Policy & Regulation

Government
 PUBLIC PERCEPTIONS AND MASS MEDIA 
of everyday conversations and perceptions. The public sphere is a constraint that
at times ignores, encourages, or resists the activities of the technology movement.
It is divided into government and administration on the one hand and public
opinion on the other. Public opinion comprises two arenas, that of mass media
and of everyday conversations and perceptions. Media and everyday conversations
differ in their cycle of attention as well as contents most of the time. These two
arenas of public opinion operate according to different rules and are only loosely
coupled. On most topics they are far apart, on others they resonate, thus amplify
and synchronize public attention. It is not determined which side provides the
impulse for resonance. The ‘resonance’ that arises from a temporary coupling of
mass media contents and public perceptions is public opinion that can be
observed. A resonating public opinion not only selects issues from a multitude of
alternatives, reflected in the fluctuating salience of biotechnology in the mass
media, but also re-presents these selected issues in a particular light of framing,
argumentation and imagery that inform attitudes to biotechnology. While con-
versations and mass media are relatively autonomous, mass media may nevertheless
influence public perception through the timing of attention, the distribution of
awareness and knowledge, the directing of attitudes, and the framing of the contents
of conversation, the contingencies of which are a matter of empirical enquiry. The
salience and the representation of the issue have to be distinguished in each arena.
The papers in this section of the special issue explore the dynamics of public
opinion arising from the asymmetrical interplay of mass media and public per-
ceptions (represented by the thick right–left arrow in Figure ). Public opinion is
both process and outcome that must be observed in both arenas and over time,
where actors promote particular visions of the future, be they of great prospects
or of doom, or of some cautious ‘third way’, to a more or less attentive public.
The three-arena heuristic structured the way our project was organized in
practice and thus made several contributions. It guided the process of comparative
data collection and safeguarded us against reductionism with respect to public
opinion by suggesting a network of mid-range hypotheses on the links between
public perceptions, mass media coverage, and policy making.

A B LUE -PRINT FOR COMPARATIVE DATA C OLLECTION

The model suggests multiple empirical foci with different methodologies: policy
documents and actor interviews on policy making, analysis of mass media coverage,
and surveys and focus group research on public perceptions. We analyzed the mass
media coverage in the elite press from  to , and monitored public per-
ceptions in partially comparable surveys in  and in ,1 complemented by

1
A fifth Eurobarometer survey on biotechnology, after those of , , , , has been conducted
at the end of , but is not considered here.
 INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF PUBLIC OPINION RESEARCH

focus group research in most of the participating countries. Overlapping groups of

researchers formed around these tasks. These overlaps were operationally very sig-
nificant as members were reminded that they were contributing to a picture where
neither policy making nor mass media coverage nor public perceptions were
events in isolation. Taken from different vantage points, each of these is either
input, output, or mediator variable.
The public sphere continues to be anchored locally. The unit of analysis
remains the national public sphere. Our project probes all three arenas and con-
structs local dynamic maps depicting the divergence and convergence in policy
making, mass media coverage, and public perceptions over time (see the national
profiles for – in Durant, Bauer, & Gaskell, , and for – in
Gaskell & Bauer, ).

A SAFEGUARD AGAINST U NDUE R EDUCTIONISM

The heuristic model serves as a safeguard against reductionism with regard to
public opinion. There is a tendency to equate ‘public opinion’ with the results of
opinion polls. This deplorable operationalism—public opinion is what opinion polls
measure—is quasi common sense in many fields of activity, not least among special-
ists. Safeguards are needed against this ‘social-psychological liquidation of public
opinion’ (Habermas, ).2 Public opinion surveys provide temporary, ideally
representative measurements of public perceptions. As published observations, they
become important inputs to the public opinion process. Such measurements,
undertaken publicly and privately, become part of the discourse, and guide the next
steps of interested parties and influence future observations of public perception.
To avoid reduction, we split public opinion into ‘media coverage’ and ‘public
perceptions’. For many actors, mass media are de facto the window to public
opinion. The analysis of mass media contributes to our research in two ways.
First, it shows by proxy what many actors, who for example read newspapers,
deem to be ‘public opinion’ at the time. Politicians and business people read
newspapers to keep in touch with public opinion. Media analysis therefore creates
an index of public opinion as perceived by some actors. Second, the mass media
circulate images and arguments widely and thereby inform public perceptions.
They anticipate particular representations of biotechnology: present media cov-
erage may be the future public perception. Our heuristic of the public sphere of
biotechnology allows us to sustain a notion of complex interactions between policy
making, mass media coverage, and public perceptions.

2
The present author is a social psychologist by training and disciplinary orientation. Habermas’s diagnosis
of the ‘social psychological liquidation of public opinion’ continues to pose a theoretical and empirical
challenge particularly close to home.
 PUBLIC PERCEPTIONS AND MASS MEDIA 
P UB LI C O PI NI O N : P UB L I C P E R C E PT I O N S A N D M AS S
M E D IA
Following Luhmann () we must assume that coupling and resonance3 of
communication are highly unlikely events, and that the search for constraints
which make this more likely is foremost an empirical matter. The purpose of the
papers that follow is to assess, through three specific hypotheses, the coupling
between mass media coverage and public perceptions of biotechnology during
the s across Europe.
The specification and empirical falsification of media effects is a time-honored
quest of the social sciences (Bryant & Zillmann, ). This quest oscillates
between exaggeration and underestimation of the powers of the mass media.
Belief in the powers of propaganda took a blow when Lazarsfeld and others
showed, during and after World War II, that the political influence of the mass
media was minimal. They demonstrated that the mass media reinforced existing
views rather than changed people’s views, and that this process was mediated by
opinion leaders. The audience has considerable autonomy (Katz, ; Bauer,
; Livingstone, ). The pendulum of belief in media effects reversed dur-
ing the s, when hypotheses such as vicarious learning, spiral of silence,
agenda-setting, and cultivation spawned a revival of research into strong influ-
ences of media coverage on public perceptions. The research literature distin-
guishes different paradigms: large-scale field studies mainly in the context of
political campaigning and comparing media coverage, attitudes and voting inten-
tions. In experimental laboratory studies the researcher manipulates messages
and records the audiences’ reactions and reconstructions. Ethnographic research
investigates how people attend to and interpret media contents in natural set-
tings of consumption, such as watching soap operas, news programmes, or using
the Internet. The results of all these efforts to pin down the media effects on
audiences are non-conclusive, in particular with regard to the direction of causality:
are the media changing their audience—the socialization effect—or are the
media confirming or attracting already changing audiences—the reinforcement
or selection effect. This leads to opposite conclusions among the researchers.
Some people abandon the question of media effects altogether and suggest dif-
ferent research questions, while others argue for better data and more conclusive
study designs (see Livingstone, ).

3
The notion of resonance is used here metaphorically, but with implications for the notion of causality that
is suggested. Resonance is an amplification that occurs when a source system activates a target system through
coupling. The resulting level of activity of the target depends on the match between the target’s natural
oscillation and the current oscillation of the source. The amplitude is maximal when both oscillations match;
above or below match the resonance will gradually be lower. This analogy suggests that mass media can only
cause public perceptions under certain circumstances: when there exists a disposition for certain contents in
public perception.
 INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF PUBLIC OPINION RESEARCH

Beliefs in the powers of the mass media are modern myths. Visions of dangerous
or beneficial mass media become weapons of political polemic and are necessary
for sense making, and they circulate because they simply make good stories to tell
and retell (Schoenbach, ). This leads to the age-old mistake of displacement:
people kill the messenger when their anger cannot reach the source of frustration.
Moral panics have arisen, ever since the invention of the printing press, over the
mass media’s corrupting role of the moral fabric of society (Starker, ).
Myths are also the basis of arm-chair ‘Kulturkritik’ suspecting a hegemonic force
that blinds us all with a smokescreen of ideology over the ‘real’ state of affairs.
On the other hand, there are many good reasons why mass media are not effective
causal agents (e.g. Gans, ): Effects arise from particular contents in context
not from the mass media per se; they are limited by the passivity of news producers,
the amount of news information available, and the intentions of the audiences.
Such constraints on the reception process remain a variable. This all suggest a
modicum of caution. The empirically minded researcher steers a ‘third way’
between the moral panic over and the denial of mass media powers by defining
and testing specific hypotheses.
In relation to our issue, the emergence of modern biotechnology in the European
public during the s, both the intensity of public attention, its public salience,
and the structures of public representation of biotechnology must be observed
simultaneously. In the mass media this is achieved by content analysis, and in
public perceptions with the methodology of representative attitude surveys. The
question is how and when do mass media and public perceptions couple and resonate,
if at all? We will explore three specific mid-range hypotheses using a matched
design of large-scale surveys and longitudinal media analysis focused on biotech-
nology in s Europe:
. The quantity of coverage hypothesis suggests that, independent of good or
bad news, with increasing amounts of mass media attention to technology,
the public moves towards negative attitudes to the technology, and thus
demonstrates a ‘conservative bias’. This idea is commonly attributed to
Mazur ().
. The knowledge gap hypothesis explores the effect of increased media coverage
of biotechnology on the distribution of knowledge about biotechnology.
The highly educated will profit more from the increased information flow
than the less educated, thereby increasing the knowledge gap. However
public controversy around biotechnology will widen the access to information
and mitigate against this increasing knowledge gap on biotechnology. This
idea is commonly attributed to Tichenor, Donohue, and Olien ().
. Cultivation analysis of mass media coverage explores the effects of consistent
news content of biotechnology over a longer period. It is argued that those
more exposed to the mass media coverage will adopt the mass media view
 PUBLIC PERCEPTIONS AND MASS MEDIA 
of biotechnology. This is demonstrated by controlled co-variance between
public perceptions and media exposure. This research programme is com-
monly attributed to Gerbner ().
We are in a position to put these hypotheses to the test using a unique database
that comprises longitudinal analysis of the elite press coverage in conjunction
with specific surveys of public perceptions of biotechnology across  European
countries: Austria, Britain,4 Denmark, France, Finland, Germany, Greece, Italy,
the Netherlands, Portugal, Sweden, and Switzerland. Over the last  years, this
database was collated by an international network of social scientists, ‘Life Sci-
ences in European Society’ (for details see ‘Life Sciences’, n.d.; Durant et al.,
; Gaskell & Bauer, ; Bauer & Gaskell, ; Bauer & Howard, ).

METHODS
ANALYSIS OF THE NATIONAL ELITE PRESS,  TO 
The database includes an analysis of the national elite press for the years  to
 in the  countries. The project design, longitudinal and comparative,
made it advisable to focus on a single source in each country: the opinion leading
press. In each country the function opinion leading is operationalized by one or
two quality press outlets from which the biotechnology coverage is sampled and
subjected to comparative content analysis. One of the criteria used to identify
‘opinion leaders’ was the newspapers that other journalists read. An opinion
leader is both a social fact and a position newspapers strive towards. It is there-
fore controversial to decide which newspaper might serve this function. We
judged on the basis of the available evidence, local expertise, and considering the
implication of the fact that our analysis covered  years of news. For example in
Britain the official ‘newspaper of record’ of the British Library was The Times
until , and since then the Independent. Hence, the sampling strategy in Brit-
ain followed The Times until , and thereafter the Independent. Comparing
the frequency of references to biotechnology across several broadsheet papers
showed a high correlation. The second columns of Tables  and  list the opinion
leading newspapers included in the analysis.
The analysis of the press coverage includes two notions: an index of intensity
and an analysis of contents. To measure intensity, all references to biotechnology
or genetic engineering were identified. Electronic resources are available for
most national elite newspapers from the mid s or early s onwards. Key-
word search offers an efficient and effective count of such references. For the

4
Properly the United Kingdom, that is including Northern Ireland. An argument can be made that the
London based national elite papers are not functionally equivalent in Scotland, Wales or Northern Ireland,
where the political cultures are somewhat different. But because I am not studying regional dynamics, I assume
homogenous patterns within the UK as in every other country in the study.
 

TABLE  Newspaper coding in Eurobarometer 

Country Opinion leader Other elite (examples) Popular (examples) Other: not popular, not elite
(as analyzed)
Austria Presse, Profil Salzburger Nachrichten, Täglich Alles, Kurier Local papers, magazines
Der Standard
Britain Times (<), Guardian, Telegraph Sun, Mirror, Mail Local papers, magazines
Independent
Denmark Information, Politiken Jyllands Posten, Ekstra Bladet, Local papers, magazines
Berlingske Tidende Se og Hir
France Le Monde Figaro, Humanité Local papers, magazines
Finland Savon Sanomat Kaleva, Ilta Sanomat, Iltalehti Local papers, magazines
Helsingen Sanomat
Germany FAZ, Spiegel Focus Super Illu, Bild Local papers, magazines
Greece Kathimerini, Ethnos, Bima Avriani, Local papers, magazines
Eleftherotypia Eleftheros Typos
Italy Corriere della Sera Stampa, Repubblica Corriere dello Sport, Local papers, magazines
Tutto Sport
Netherlands De Volkskrant NRC Handelsblad, Telegraaf, Local papers, magazines
Elsevier Algemeen Dagblad
Portugal Publico Diario noticias, Record Local papers, magazines
Correio de Manhã
Sweden Dagens Nyheder Svenska Dagbladet, Afton Bladet Local papers, magazines
Arbetet
Switzerland Neue Zürcher Zeitung Tages-Anzeiger, -Heures Blick Local papers, magazines
Question wording, open format: ‘Which newspaper or magazine, if any, do you read at least once a week?’ (Maximum five mentions; only first mention considered).
INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF PUBLIC OPINION RESEARCH
TABLE  Newspaper coding in Eurobarometer 
Country Opinion leader (as analyzed) Other elite (examples) Popular (examples) Other: not in
main list of ten
Austria Presse, Profil Salzburger Nachrichten, Der Standard Kronen Zeitung, Kurier Others
Britain Times (<), Independent Guardian, Telegraph Sun, Mirror Others
Denmark Information, Politiken Jyllands Posten Ekstra Bladet Others
France Le Monde Figaro, Liberation Others
Finland Savon Sanomat Kauppalehti, Helsingen Sanomat Ilta Sanomat, Iltalehti Others
Germany FAZ, Spiegel Frankfurter Rundschau, Focus Bild Others
Greece Kathimerini, Eleftherotypia Nea, Apogevmatini Avriani Others
Italy Corriere della Sera Stampa, Repubblica Quotidiani sportivi Others
Netherlands De Volkskrant NRC Handelsblad, Trouw Telegraaf, Algemeen Dagblad Others
Portugal Publico Diario noticias Others
Sweden Dagens Nyheder Svenska Dagbladet, Goteborgs-Posten Afton Bladet Others
Switzerland Neue Zürcher Zeitung Tages-Anzeiger,  Heures Blick Others
PUBLIC PERCEPTIONS AND MASS MEDIA

Question wording, closed format: ‘Which, if any, of the following newspapers or magazines have you read most regularly in the past month?’ (Only one mention).

 INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF PUBLIC OPINION RESEARCH

FIGURE  Aggregate intensity of coverage of biotechnology

7000

Twelve opinion leading newspapers across 12 countries, annual frequencies of

references to ‘DNA, gene, genetic, genome, biotechnology, cloning, stem cell’.
6000 The line shows the 3-year moving average.

5000
Yearly number of references

4000

3000

2000

1000

0
73 74 75 76 77 78 79 80 81 82 83 84 85 86 87 88 89 90 91 92 93 94 95 96 97 98 99

period before that time, manual counting based on sampling of newspaper issues
was undertaken. ‘Biotechnology’ was an emerging technology over that period,
and included a changing vocabulary of designation. We used search words such
as ‘DNA’, ‘genes’ and ‘genetics’, ‘genome’, ‘cloning’, ‘stem cell’, and ‘biotech-
nology’, and their semantic equivalents in the different languages and countries.
The index of intensity of coverage is based on a complete annual count of all ref-
erences to biotechnology in a single newspaper. This provides a measure of the
changing public salience over the period. Sampling frames and procedures and
the keywords used in different contexts is documented in Bauer () and
Bauer and Howard (). Figure  shows the aggregate intensity of the press
coverage in all  countries between  and . It shows increasing public
salience in the late s, the dip and plateau in the early s, and the ‘explo-
sion’ of coverage after .
To code the contents of this mass of coverage a stratified probability sample of
biotechnology articles was constructed to cover the  countries and the period
 to .5 This database has a total size in excess of n = ,. Articles were
coded with a specifically developed coding frame comprising  different variables.

5
The datebase has recently been updated to . The database also includes comparable data from Canada,
USA, Japan, Norway, Brazil, and Poland, which are not included in the present analyses (see Bauer & Howard,
).
 PUBLIC PERCEPTIONS AND MASS MEDIA 
Variables included the identification of articles by newspaper and dates, etc.;
markers of attention structure such as size, news format, position within the
newspaper issue, etc.; authors, themes, actors, and location of biotechnology
events; other content features such as controversy, risk and benefits arguments,
overall framing, and evaluation of biotechnology. Pilot work in the development
stage ensured a reliable coding process both within and across the different local
teams. Results have previously been published in Bauer, Kohring, Gutteling, &
Allansdottir (), and Gutteling et al. (). The methodology of the press
analysis is well documented (Gaskell & Bauer, ; Durant et al., ; Bauer &
Howard, ).

ANALYSIS OF PUBLIC P ERCEPTIONS ,  AND 

The analysis of public perceptions is based on two Eurobarometer surveys: .
of autumn  and . of autumn . Eurobarometer surveys are based on a
multi-stage probability sample of , face-to-face interviews conducted during
the same period in each country.6 In Germany separate samples were con-
structed for East and West, and in the UK for Britain and Northern Ireland. In
both contexts, weighting is applied to reduce the sample to the standard of ,.
The resulting sample represents Europe in terms of the metropolitan, urban, and
rural population according to EUROSTAT-NUTS areas (for a detailed
description of Eurobarometer see ‘Methodology’, n.d.). Four countries—Ireland,
Spain, Luxembourg, and Belgium—are excluded from our present analysis because
we did not conduct a matching press analysis in these countries. The project
database also includes data for the USA, Canada, Japan, Brazil, and Norway; these
are, however, not part of the present analyses.
Of the various questions included in the surveys, the analyses presented will
make use only of the subset of items as listed in the Appendix. These are: attitudes
to four applications of biotechnology, textbook knowledge of biotechnology, news-
paper readership, message discrimination and prior engagement with biotechnology,
and socio-demographic information such as level of education, country, age, and
sex. Results of both surveys have previously been explored (e.g. BEPCAG, ;
Durant et al., ; Gaskell & Bauer, ; Bauer & Gaskell, ).

MEASURING M EDIA EXPOSURE IN  AND 

A key variable for the analysis of media effects is media exposure. In field studies,
media exposure is the quasi-experimental independent variable, used to trace the
‘causal’ effect by contrasting groups with different kinds of exposure. In Eurobarometer

6
In Switzerland the field work was conducted in early  and early ; we will refer to these also as 
and .
 INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF PUBLIC OPINION RESEARCH

. and ., newspaper readership was assessed slightly differently. In  an
open format was used: ‘Which newspaper or magazine, if any, do you read at
least once a week?’ Respondents gave as many as five different newspapers, most
gave one or two. Responses were later coded according to a list that corresponds
to the one used in . In  a similar question was asked, but in a closed for-
mat, ‘Which, if any, of the following newspapers or magazines have you read
most regularly in the past month?’ Respondents were then shown a card with a
list of the  most important newspapers or news magazines in each country.
The final code combines the values of  and those of  into a comparable
frame of ‘readership’ with five values: readers of the ‘opinion leader’ as
included in the press analysis, of other elite papers, of popular papers, other
local papers, and non-readers. The contrast between types of readers, or that
between elite readers and non-readers, will be a key independent variable for
the analysis of media effects on public perceptions of biotechnology during
the s.
The variation in measures of media exposure in Eurobarometer is unfortunate.
Both items refer to a vague time frame ‘at least once a week’ or ‘regularly in the
last month’. They constitute weak measures of real readership of newspapers or
magazines (Brown, ). The unaided recall of the open format is likely to pro-
duce lower exposures than the closed format, as respondents are more likely to
say they do not know because of a lack of memory. The closed format is likely to
overestimate monthly readership by probing and suggesting particular items.
Monthly readership is likely to be higher than weekly readership. And both
items are likely to overestimate readership and to underestimate non-readers, as
most readers will easily remember a ‘vaguely recent’ encounter with a newspaper.
However, we note that our purpose is not to estimate levels of readership, but to
relate readership to other variables. The unreliability of the readership estimates
is unlikely to affect our analyses at its core. The main purpose of the present ana-
lysis is to contrast different types of readers, and for this purpose the measures of
newspaper exposure of  and  are sufficiently similar to function as
equivalents.

A PP E N DI X : C O M PA R AB L E V A R I A B L E S I N T H E T W O
S U RV E Y I N S T R UM E N T S
Country: Question  in Eurobarometers . () and . ().
Optimism/Pessimism: ‘Science and technology change the way we live. I am going
to read out a list of areas in which new technologies are currently developing. For
each of these areas do you think it will improve our way of life in the next 
years, it will have no effect, or it will make things worse.’ Area item: Biotechnology,
genetic engineering. Q  in . (), Q  in . ().
 PUBLIC PERCEPTIONS AND MASS MEDIA 
Attitudes: ‘Could you please tell me whether you definitely agree, tend to agree,
tend to disagree or definitely disagree that this application is . . .’ Don’t know is
possible. Four applications compared on: usefulness for society; risky for society;
morally acceptable; should be encouraged. -point Likert scales. Applications:
Genetically modified food (‘Use of modern biotechnology in the production of
foods, for example to make them higher in protein, keep longer or change taste’);
Genetically modified crops (‘Taking genes from plant species and transferring
them into crop plants, to make them more resistant to insect pests’); New medicines
(‘Introducing human genes into bacteria to produce medicines and vaccines, for
example to produce insulin for diabetis’); Genetic tests (‘Using genetic testing to
detect diseases we might have inherited from our parents such as cystic fibrosis’).
Q  in . (), Q  in . ().
Textbook knowledge: ‘Here are some statements. For each of them, please tell me
whether you think it is true or false. If you don’t know, say so and we will skip to
the next statement.’ Nine items. True/False/Don’t know. Q  in . (),
Q  in . ().
Message discrimination: ‘Over the last three months, (Before this interview, over
the last three months,) have you heard or read about issues involving modern bio-
technology?’ If yes, ‘where was it?’ Q  in . (): No; Yes, in newspapers;
Yes, in magazines; Yes, on television; Yes, on radio; Yes, but not remembered.
Q a in . (), as a potential filter put before each attitudes question Q .
Prior engagement with biotechnology: ‘Before today, had you ever talked about
modern biotechnology with anyone?’ No, never; Yes, frequently; Yes, occasionally;
Yes, once or twice; Don’t know. Q  in . (), Q  in . ().
Newspaper readership: Q  (open) in . (): ‘Which newspaper or maga-
zine, if any, do you read at least once a week?’ Open responses, maximum .
Q  (closed) in . (): ‘Which, if any, of the following newspapers or
magazines have you read most regularly in the past month?’ Prompt, list of 
newspapers.
Religiosity: ‘Would you describe yourself as . . .’ Extremely religious; Very reli-
gious; Somewhat religious; Neither/nor; Somewhat non-religious; Very non-
religious; Extremely non-religious; Agnostic; Atheistic; Don’t know. Q a in
. (), Q  in . ().
Age: ‘How old are you?’ Q  in . () and in . ().
Sex: Male/Female. Q  in . () and . ().
Level of education: ‘How old were you when you left full-time education?’ Re-
coded into three levels: high, middle, low. Q  in . () and in .
().
 INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF PUBLIC OPINION RESEARCH

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BIOGRAPHICAL NOTE
Martin W. Bauer is a faculty member of the London School of Economic’s Social Psy-
chology Department and the Methodology Institute, and associated to the LSE BIOS
centre. He directs the LSE’s post-graduate programme in ‘Social and Public Communi-
cation’ and researches the functions of resistance in social processes, public representations
of science and technology, and the dynamics of technological controversies. He published
Resistance to new technology—nuclear power, information technology, biotechnology (,
Cambridge University Press), and theoretical and empirical papers on science-in-society
in a comparative perspective. Research reported in this paper was partially funded by EU
concerted actions and a DG research grant: QLG-CT-–.
Address correspondence to Martin W. Bauer, London School of Economics, Institute of
Social Psychology, Houghton Street, London WCA AE, United Kingdom, e-mail:
M.Bauer@lse.ac.uk

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