How ecological science is portrayed in mass media

Improving science literacy in the general public has become increasingly important to ecologists. Although many scientists are involved in outreach, most of the public depends on mass media sources to learn about original scientific research. In this study, we explore how ecological findings are portrayed in the mass media. To do so, we survey media coverage of scientific articles published in the journal Ecology over the past decade. We find that relatively few scientific articles—less than 2% of the total published papers—receive any media coverage. Newspapers constitute the primary medium for ecological findings, followed closely by newswire, and distantly by newsletters, magazines, and online web publications; no ecological findings are reported in television or radio during the timeframe we examined. We also examine which components of scientific publications are covered in news stories, focusing on five categories: theory, methods, results, discussion, and background science not coming directly from the scientific paper. Considerable coverage in media stories (about one-fourth of media story content) focuses on the results of the paper; interestingly, just over a third of media story content covers discussion material, followed closely by theory at 17%. We conclude that although relatively few Ecology articles are covered in the mass media, those that are tend to focus on the implications of scientific research and on actual scientific findings. Finally, Ecology articles covered in mainstream media were not cited more or less frequently by scientists than those not covered in mainstream media. That is, journalists appear to feature an average spectrum of academic work, rather than articles that ultimately become most highly cited in the ecological field.


INTRODUCTION
Although scientists publish thousands of peerreviewed journal articles each year, only a small percentage of those articles find an audience outside of academia (Suleski and Ibaraki 2010). In fact, few scientists communicate their research to the public beyond publication in academic journals and conferences. This largely leaves journalists with the responsibility of communicating scientific findings to the general public.
Ideally, the public will become informed about research in a way that better equips them to make decisions regarding ecological issues. An additional goal is to expose the public to the most important scientific discoveries. Yet, journalists often lack scientific backgrounds and have no formal training to evaluate the merit of scientific research. This creates an interesting situation where non-scientists largely control how the general public receives news concerning scientific discoveries. Moreover, the influence of journalists as science gatekeepers has increased over the past few decades because the amount of scientific research published in academic journals has far outpaced the increase in science news coverage (Pellechia 1997, National Science Board 2010, Suleski and Ibaraki 2010. Increasingly, science organizations (including universities, professional scientific societies, and national science agencies) work to communicate their research to the public (Pace et al. 2010). Many groups employ public information officers to draw attention to the findings of their researchers (DiBella et al. 1991). Indeed, it is not uncommon for these public information officers to write news releases with the hope that mainstream media sources will publish them more broadly. Given this model, public information officers and journalists frequently stand as intermediaries between scientists and the public.
Unfortunately, despite efforts on the part of journalists and scientists, the relationship between these two groups is often strained. This may be due to several factors. For example, there is a popular perception that scientific findings often are not accurately communicated to the general public, if they are communicated at all (Dunwoody and Scott 1982, Hartz and Chappell 1997, Maillé et al. 2010. In fact, both journalists and scientists have suggested that negligent news media are one reason public support for science has dwindled (Hartz and Chappell 1997). Yet despite such misgivings, scientists have largely left to journalists the task of publicizing their findings. This is particularly true in the field of ecology. It is unclear how well journalists cover ecological research, and to what extent ecological findings make it into the mass media for public consumption.
Increasingly, journalists and scientists have attempted to communicate across the chasm that often separates them. There is an emerging recognition by both parties that they depend on each other. Journalists depend on scientists for content. Scientists depend on journalists to give their research a broader audience. Recently, two books targeted at scientists attempt to demystify news media and offer practical advice for engaging a broader audience through traditional and emerging media (Baron 2010, Tyson 2010. Additionally, journalism and science organizations have created forums and workshops to promote better communication. For example, the Aldo Leopold Leadership Program, among other efforts, trains environmental researchers to communicate with media organizations. Additionally, associations such as the National Association of Science Writers and the Society of Environmental Journalists promote quality news coverage of science issues. In this study, we examined the frequency and nature of news coverage of articles published in the journal Ecology over the past decade. We evaluated the assumption that most ecological science findings are not making it into mass media. We also explored which types of media are most likely to cover ecological research and which components of scientific research are generally covered in media stories. Specifically, we asked four questions. (1) What proportion of published ecological research is picked up in the mainstream media, and is this coverage increasing, decreasing, or static? (2) Which medium is most likely to cover primary ecological findings?
(3) Which components of published work are most commonly highlighted in media coverage? (4) Do ecological studies covered by media have a higher scientific impact than ecological studies not reported in the media?

METHODS
To answer these questions we evaluated scientific papers published in the journal Ecology. We recognize that several other ecological journals publish papers that receive media coverage; however, we chose Ecology as an indicator because of its prominent status as a flagship journal in the field. We examined papers generated over 10 years, examining every other issue each year beginning with 2000 and ending with 2010. This gave us a total sample size of 1,513 papers. To determine the extent to which these ecological studies were covered in the media, we searched the Lexis-Nexis news archive. This digital archive indexes news stories published in multiple media, including newspapers, television and radio news, newswires, newsletters, and online sources. Lexis-Nexis is one of the most commonly used archives in mass communication research. We recognize that other media forms exist that might not be included in this database. However, our goal was to identify coverage of v www.esajournals.org ecological research in media most likely to reach the general public.
We searched this archive using set terms in different combinations. The terms included: author name(s), institutional affiliation(s), and the name of the journal Ecology. The search was repeated for each author on multi-authored articles. The combinations of our searches were designed to be as exhaustive as possible, but constrained to link our search terms to the academic journal. This allowed us to avoid searches of the database that were too general to be informative. We also scored the number of times per year that each Ecology paper was cited in other scientific publications, a term referred to as the ''impact factor''; these data were taken from the IBI Web of Science database. We used this impact factor as a measure of scientific importance of each published paper.
We summarized our data in four ways to answer the questions posed above. First, we report the number of Ecology articles each year that were covered in the mainstream media, revealing the proportion of articles published and changes in these proportions over time. Second, of those Ecology articles covered in mainstream media, we report the relative frequency of different media types. Third, we report which parts of the Ecology articles are actually included in the media stories, and in what proportions. We did this to determine the extent to which media stories reference particular components of the Ecology article. For this analysis, the components included: theory, methods, results, discussion, other science background content, and other filler material. We counted the total number of lines in the media story composed of each of these six categories and then divided each of these by the total lines in the article. We generated average values for each category across all media stories, and report these values along with standard errors for each mean. Finally, we asked if Ecology articles picked up by mainstream media had a higher or lower average impact factor than Ecology articles not covered by media. To do so, we conducted an analysis of covariance (GLM in program SYSTAT 13), with media coverage (covered or not) as a main effect in the model. We included year of publication as a covariate to account for the fact that older articles are likely to have a higher impact factor, simply because they have been around longer to be cited.

RESULTS
Few ecology articles in our survey were covered by mainstream media. We found that only 1.7% (26 out of 1,513) of the Ecology papers we examined were referenced in media sources in the Lexis-Nexis index. Popular media coverage of ecological research varied over the ten years examined in this study, with a low of 0% of papers receiving coverage in 2000 and 2007 and a high of 5.4% of papers receiving coverage in 2003 (Fig. 1). From the 26 Ecology papers covered, 39 news stories were written. Media most likely to include ecological research content were Newspapers (n ¼ 19) and Newswires (n ¼ 15). Least likely were Radio (n ¼ 0) and Television (n ¼ 0). Intermediate to these were Magazines (n ¼ 1), Online Publications (n ¼ 1), and Newsletters (n ¼ 3). The elements of research most commonly referenced in media stories were the discussion (33.5% of story content), followed by results (24.5%) and theory (17.1%); the least commonly referenced content was background science content (5.1%), with methods (6.2%) and other content (13.6%) slightly higher (Fig. 2). Finally, we found that average citation index for journal articles covered in media stories did not differ from the impact factor of articles not covered by v www.esajournals.org media (F 1,1502 ¼ 1.39; P ¼ 0.237; Fig. 3). Year of publication was a significant covariate in explaining the number of times a paper had been cited (F 9,1502 ¼ 31.1; P , 0.001), an unsurprising finding given that older papers have had more time to be cited by other scientists and indeed were cited more frequently than more recently published papers.

Ecological research is uncommon in mass media
The most striking result from our study is how infrequently ecological research is represented in mainstream media. Of the 1,513 papers we examined that were published over a 10-year period, only 26 received media coverage. Why are ecological science findings so unlikely to reach the public through traditional media sources? We suggest that two factors are likely at play. First, for a journal article to receive news media exposure, the research must capture the attention of a journalist. Although institutional public information officers work hard to promote the academic accomplishments of their scientists by writing news releases about new ecological discoveries, journalists make the final decision about what content to publish. So the more basic question centers on what limits journalists from covering ecological science.
Some have argued that journalists in general lack the expertise to write science stories or to interpret scientific research, so consequently they shy away from this content (Ward 1992). Although the training of science journalists is varied, they generally don't have the same expertise as those who are producing the research. Others contend that staff cutbacks in media organizations have reduced the breadth of stories that can be written, and that science coverage is often first to be cut (Brumfiel 2009). Poor science literacy in the general public might also create a disincentive for media to include content that might not be understood or desired v www.esajournals.org by the public, which in turn could affect readership and circulation. Whatever the case, it is clear that primary ecological research findings are not finding an audience beyond those who read academic journals. Clearly, if ecologists hope to reach the public through traditional media sources, then journalists will play a critical role in communicating ecological science.
A more provocative explanation for why ecological science is poorly represented in the media might be that ecologists have few incentives to communicate their work to the public. In most instances, the currency of success for academic ecologists is not general public exposure, but scientific notoriety. Such notoriety typically comes from the quality and quantity of published work, successful grantsmanship, and the influence of one's ideas among academic peers, none of which requires interaction with the public at large. In fact, many institutions count public outreach as a form of academic citizenship, subordinate to scholarship and teaching. However, ecologists increasingly recognize that failure to communicate science to the public can be a costly mistake, with negative consequences to the integrity of ecological processes and biological diversity, and possibly risks to government-funded research (Hartz and Chappell 1997).

News value versus scientific importance
Journalists and ecologists often have different motives for communicating with the public. Journalists try to produce stories with high news value-stories that include elements such as controversy, unusualness, timeliness, humaninterest, relevance and proximity to the audience, and often focus on prominent people. In contrast, ecologists want to convey discoveries of scientific importance, defined by the extent to which their research results evaluate hypotheses and bring forth new understanding. Often, these two motives do not align. In fact many scientists express concern that journalists only want to focus on sensational findings, and that they often fail to report the most relevant aspects of scientific work. In our study, we examined the frequency with which different components of ecological publications were covered in media stories. Interestingly, the predominant type of content covered by the media was material from the discussion section of published papers; this section is typically where academic scientists contextualize their finding and frequently speculate about the implications of their work. Hence journalists appear to be drawn to this more speculative content. However, a surprisingly high percentage of media news content actually does focus on research results. This suggests that journalists do indeed center their stories on ecological discoveries, and not solely on specu- v www.esajournals.org lation or unsupported elements of research papers. Consequently, ecologists should feel a certain degree of confidence that most journalists are focusing on what most scientists consider important. Finally, some have criticized journalists for not giving more attention to methods of scientific research, arguing that knowledge of methods is necessary for people to make educated evaluations of their findings (Pellechia 1997, Maillé et al. 2010. Our findings bear out this concern, with an average of 6.2% of media story content dedicated to methodology. Interestingly, the ecological topics covered by the media were quite varied. Research covered ranged from environmental studies on conservation, climate change, and invasive species to more traditional ecological studies on food webs, foraging, animal movement, and disease ecology. However, there did not appear to be a strong trend favoring media coverage for certain kinds of ecological research over others. We posed a fundamental question in this study as to whether or not journalists choose to cover ecological studies that have the highest scientific impact. A publication's citation count (the number of times it is cited in other scientific publications) is one measure of its importance to the scientific community. We found that Ecology articles covered in mainstream media had statistically indistinguishable citation counts to those not covered in mainstream media over the same time period. In other words, journalists do not appear to be particularly adept at forecasting which papers will be of greatest importance to the scientific community; neither are they particularly poor at this. This suggests that ecological articles with high news value (i.e., those actually covered in mass media) have only average scientific value. Identifying ways to help journalists more frequently cover scientific research with high scientific impact would be useful, especially if it results in increased understanding in the public of how science is done.
There are many ways that ecologists could better engage the public in reporting their results. Although these suggestions aren't all new, nor do they constitute an exhaustive list of possibilities, they are ways that ecologists can begin to heed the call to engage with non-scientific audiences to increase public understanding (Pace et al. 2010).
First, ecologists could proactively work with public information officers to influence the content that is released to the public through traditional media outlets. Second, they should engage with new media. Some have speculated that, with the proliferation of science blogs, Twitter feeds, and other communication platforms that perhaps more research will move beyond the pages of academic journals. In the fragmented world of online information, the audience for scientific blogs is unlikely to capture a large portion of the mainstream audience that is reached by traditional mass media-the audience that is the focus of this study. However, blogs and bloggers are often sources for journalists (Brumfiel 2009, Tyson 2010. Third, ecologists could engage the public by writing op-ed stories for news organizations and making themselves available for interviews about their work. Fourth, the culture of academic institutions must change so that public outreach is included in significant ways in rank and promotion decisions. Collectively, these efforts could increase both the quantity and the quality of ecology research that reaches the public.

Conclusion
Our survey shows that ecological science is rarely covered in mainstream media and that this trend is not changing over time. Traditional media sources, such as newspapers and newsletters, provide the most common outlet for ecology to the general public. Journalists who do write stories on ecological research tend to focus their articles on discussion content and results; however, they do not have a particularly good track record of identifying ecological studies that are of greatest scientific merit, as defined by the scientific community. It is not clear how ecological science will be portrayed in the mass media in the future. The Internet provides an opportunity for ecologists and their sponsoring organizations to interface directly with the general public, leaving journalists out as middlemen. However, this does not appear to be an emerging trend. Continued collaboration between ecologists and journalists, with improved communication, is the most likely means for the public to understand the value and importance of ecological research.