Proceedings of the Annual Meeting of the Association for Education in Journalism and Mass Communication (75Th, Montreal, Quebec, Canada, August 5-8, 1992). Part X: Health, Science
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DOCUMENT RESUME ED 349 617 CS 507 964 TITLE Proceedings of the Annual Meeting of the Association for Education in Journalism and Mass Communication (75th, Montreal, Quebec, Canada, August 5-8, 1992). Part X: Health, Science, and the Environment. INSTITUTION Association for Education in Journalism and Mass Communication. PUB DATE Aug 92 NOTE 217p.; For other sections of these proceedings, see CS 507 955-970. For 1991 Proceedings, see ED 340 045. Some papers may contain light type. PUB TYPE Collected Works Conference Proceedings (021) Historical Materials (060) EDRS PRICE MF01/PC09 Plus Postage. DESCRIPTORS Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome; *Audience Response; Cognitive Processes; Communication Research; Foreign Countries; Media Research; *News Reporting; Programing (Broadcast); Risk; Science History; Sexuality; Space Exploration; Television IDENTIFIERS *Environmental Reporting; Health Communication; Print Media; Rhetorical Strategies; Science News; *Science Writing ABSTRACT The Health, Science, and the Environment section of these proceedings contains the following seven papers: "Columbus, Mars, and the Changing Images and Ideologies of Exploration: A Critical Examination" (Lin Bin and August T. Horvath); "Prime Time TV Portrayals of Sex, 'Safe Sex' and AIDS: A Longitudinal Analysis" (Dennis T. Lowry and Jon A. Shidler); "Reading Risk: Public Response to Print Media Accounts of Technological Risk" (Susanna Hornig and others); "Strategies of Evasion in Early 17th Century French Scientific Communication" (Jane Thornton Tolbert); "Words and Pictures: Expert and Lay Rationality in Television News" (Lee Wilkins); "News from the Rain Forest: The Social Integration of Environmental Journalism" (Allen Palmer); and "The Science Newswriting Process: A Study of Science Writers' Cognitive Processing of Information" (Jocelyn Steinke). (SR) *********************************************************************** AepioaucLIons suppiiea by taktb are tne best that can be made x * from the original document. * *********************************************************************** PROCEEDINGS OF THE ANNUAL MEETING OF THE ASSOCIATION FOR EDUCATION IN JOURNALISM AND MASS COMMUNICATION (75th, Montreal, Quebec, Canada, August 5-8, 1992). Part X: Health, Science, and the Environment. "PERMISSION TO REPRODUCE THIS U.S. DEPARTMENT Of EDUCATION Office of Educational Research MATERIAL HAS BEEN GRANTED BY and Improvement EDUCATIONAL RESOURCESINFORMATION CENTER (ERIC) dThis document has been reproducedas received from the personor organization Originating it. O Minor changes have been reproduction Quality made to improve TO THE EDUCATIONAL RESOURCES Points of view or opinionsstated in this docu ment do not necessaniy representofficial INFORMATION CENTER (ERIC)." OERI position Or policy BEST COPY AVAILABLE 2 Columbus, Mars, and the Changing Images and Ideologies of Exploration: A Critical Examination Lin Bin August T. Horvath Doctoral Candidates Annenberg School for Communication University of Southern California University Park Los Angeles, CA90089-0281 213/740-6273 July, 1992 Running head: Images and Ideologies Submitted to the Qualitative StudiesDivision of 1992 annual meeting of the Association forEducation in Journalism and Mass Communication, Montreal,Canada. Images and Ideologies 2 Abstract The present paper critically examines the changing images of the Columbus Maritime Voyages and the Mission to Mars. The paper views these changes as the results of the changing ideology of technology and scientific exploration developed during the past few decades. Drawing from theories of imagery, representation, and symbolic interaction, the paper argues that changing ideology has altered the representational environment in which it is no longer possible to construct human exploratory voyages as terminal activities, rather than as instruments of commercial and nationalistic expansionism and the influence of powerful interests. The value of these ventures must be reassessed when new motivations and consequences become part of their public images. 4 Images and Ideologies 3 Columbus, Mars, and the Changing Images and Ideologies of Exploration: A Critical Examination Human space exploration in the 20th century has often been compared with the 15th and 16th-century maritime voyages of the Europeans to America and Asia (e.g. Boorstin, 1973, pp. 599-600; Collins, 1990, pp. 153-155; Oberg, 1982, p. 65). The National Aeronautics and Space Administration seeks to establish a continuity between the seafarers of antiquity and modern interplanetary robot probes named "Mariner," "Viking," and "Voyager." The prospect of landing people on Mars--the first truly new world within the potential grasp of spacefaring technology--especially calls forth comparisons with the voyages of Christopher Columbus (e.g. Collins, 1990). The 500th anniversary of the first Columbus voyage has occasioned a reexamination of popular imagery surrounding the Columbian expeditions and the subsequent activities of Europeans in the Americas. In particular, the notion that Renaissance voyages to the Americas were a terminally valued activity--representing the challenge of exploration or of technological enterprise for its own sake--is threatened by the realization that early intercontinental exploration was primarily instrumental to economic and political interests. In evaluating these adventures, the interests increasingly Images and Ideologies 4 seen to have motivated the early ocean crossings are now weighed with respect to the overall welfare of both the discovering and "discovered" societies. The present paper argues that a similar transformation may be taking place in current discussions of a human expedition to the planet Mars. In contrast to the orbital and lunar voyages of the 1960s, current human space exploration cannot justify itself on the basis of a drive for purely scientific discovery or an exhilarating technological challenge. Viewing changing ideology as the decisive factor in the transformation of public representations, the present analysis connects changing images of technology and of exploration to divergent interpretations of the exploratory voyages of both the Columbian and current eras. Images The comparison of space exploration to the sea voyages of the Renaissance, especially by proponents of the modern enterprise, is an appeal to popular images, or representations, of what is often called the Age of Discovery. Images, as conceptualized by Boulding (1961), are roughly the sum and organization of what persons believe--their "subjective knowledge"--about some referent. These subjective knowledge structures are built from experience, both direct and communicated by others. Images and Ideologies 5 Incoming messages about objects alter existing structures of knowledge about the objects, depending on their interaction with the individual's preexisting value systems. The image construct is generally similar to the social representations examined more recently by sociologists such as Moscovici (1984). Moscovici emphasizes the importance of communication in the construction of representations, which he defines as the set of an individual's beliefs about an object. Moscovici stresses the role of representations in perception, noting that people perceive and react to the representation, not the "objective" form, of an object. Representations provide categories for objects, allowing newly experienced items to be comprehended and incorporated within existing notions of how the world is organized. Boorstin (1961) offers yet another conception of image, defined somewhat more strictly than either Boulding's images or Moscovici's representations. For Boorstin, images are depictions of objects or events that are intentionally constructed for mass propagation.Boorstin connects the purposeful mass-construction of images largely with recent times and with the opportunities afforded by mass media technologies. Unlike Boulding and Moscovici, Boorstin assumes that there can be a perception of the trueworld undistorted by imagery--if we undertake to "disillusion ourselves" (Boorstin, 1961, p. 6). Images and Ideologies 6 Almost all current perspectives on imagery and representation owe a substantial but often unacknowledged debt to a handful of American scholars whose theories were later termed "symbolic interactionism." The most important of these scholars from the standpoint of the social psychology of perception, George Herbert Mead, advanced a theory of social interaction based on constructed representations of the self and of the "generalized other," or the community as it is imagined to interact with the self-representation (1956, p. 218). Although Mead included inanimate objects among the elements of the generalized other, he was primarily interested in social interaction and thus focused on other people as referents for this form of representation. John Dewey (1958), a philosopher associated with the symbolic interactionists, constructed a more elaborate analysis of "meanings," or perceptions of experience conditioned by prior knowledge. Symbolic interactionism has matured into a school of social psychology (Cardwell, 1971) and has inspired traditions such as "social construction" theories of scientific and other: knowledge (Berger & Luckman, 1966). A definiticn of "image" akin to those of Boulding and Moscovici is adopted for the present purpose of analyzing images of Columbus and of flight to Mars. Recognizing, with Boorstin, that an image is a definition or interpretation 8 Images and