Measuring Negative Occurances of Nanotechnology in the Media

Our research studies how the media reports on scientific subjects, specifically the subject of nanotechnology. Because the general public often has limited knowledge of nanotechnology, the media can have a great deal of influence on people’s attitudes and actions. Media research often uses the frequency of news stories on a topic of interest to draw inferences about agenda setting and media attention. In our study, we used a web-based tool called the Googler in order to search Google News for nanotechnology related news stories. Due to the recent surge in news stories on nanotechnology, we narrowed our search by looking at only negative stories. Stories were then recorded in a database for further study. This project was a part of a multiyear study to measure news events on an ongoing basis. Preliminary results show that the media coverage on nanotechnology is punctuated by distinct news events.