Table 2 - uploaded by Wolfgang Wagner
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Main characteristics of datasets and results of analyses
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Contexts in source publication
Context 1
... from Austria and Great Britain were analysed by using ALCESTE while data from Sweden were analysed according to the grounded theory approach (Glaser & Strauss, 1967). Table 2 shows the number of respondents to the open question for each country, the number of responses analysed (for most countries, answers indicating "I don't know" were excluded from the ALCESTE analysis) and the number of responses being classified in a stable manner in the ALCESTE analysis. The stability of the results ranging from 70% to 85% stable classified statements can be considered as satisfying for all countries. ...
Context 2
... stability of the results ranging from 70% to 85% stable classified statements can be considered as satisfying for all countries. Table 2 furthermore indicates the number of interviews and focus groups conducted in each country as well as the stability coefficient for the ALCESTE analyses of the British and Austrian interview data. insert Table 2 here 1 Good but risky: may have good effects but is risky and dangerous, therefore must be applied properly, demand for control 2 Risky and Dangerous: biotechnology is unpredictable and therefore dangerous, fear of loss of control 3 Respondents repeat technologies mentioned in the preceeding question ("telecommunication", "solar energy", etc.) 4 Associations evoked by the terms "bio", "gene" and "technology" (mostly positive: e.g. ...
Context 3
... 2 furthermore indicates the number of interviews and focus groups conducted in each country as well as the stability coefficient for the ALCESTE analyses of the British and Austrian interview data. insert Table 2 here 1 Good but risky: may have good effects but is risky and dangerous, therefore must be applied properly, demand for control 2 Risky and Dangerous: biotechnology is unpredictable and therefore dangerous, fear of loss of control 3 Respondents repeat technologies mentioned in the preceeding question ("telecommunication", "solar energy", etc.) 4 Associations evoked by the terms "bio", "gene" and "technology" (mostly positive: e.g. ecologically beneficial or optimistic view of science) Numbers in parenthesis indicate for each country the percentage of responses being classified to a specific discourse printed: 23.09.2002 ...
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Citations
... The emerging images act like memes by spreading the gist of a representation and a simplified understanding of the technology. In genetic engineering, it was the idea of 'natural' tomatoes being 'corrupted by artificial genes' (Wagner et al., 2002a). In the case of AI, a simple web search reveals the present state of how the public imagines AI. ...
This study is about how lay persons perceive and represent artificial intelligence in general as well as its use in weaponised autonomous ground vehicles in the military context. We analysed the discourse of six focus groups in Estonia, using an automatic text analysis tool and complemented the results by a qualitative thematic content analysis. The findings show that representations of artificial intelligence-driven machines are anchored in the image of man. A cluster analysis revealed five dominant themes: artificial intelligence as programmed machines, artificial intelligence and the problem of control, artificial intelligence and its relation to human life, artificial intelligence used in wars and ethical problems in developing autonomous weaponised machines. The findings are discussed with regard to people's tendency to anthropomorphise robots despite their lack of emotions, which can be seen as a last resort when confronting an autonomous machine where the usual interpersonal understanding of intentions does not apply.
... A first case in point is ample research on the response of people worldwide against genetically modified organisms, particularly animals and humans. When confronting genetic engineering and its end-products, people's reaction has reflected utter rejection and deep concern, as if these new organisms fundamentally challenged Nature's order (Gaskell et al., 2000; Laros & Steenkamp, 2004; Macnaghten, 2004; Wagner et al., 2002a ). The ensuing discourses elaborate images and metaphors that frame the idea of genetic hybrids in frequently fantastic forms expressing a pronounced gut-feeling of disgust (Castro & Gomes, 2005; Nerlich, Clarke, & Dingwall, 2000; Wagner, Kronberger, & Seifert, 2002b). ...
... The present example is taken from an international research group investigating the perception of biotechnology in various European countries (Wagner et al. 2002). An open-ended question, in a Eurobarometer survey on representative samples from all member countries of the European Union, asked respondents to write down what comes to their mind when thinking of modern biotechnology. ...
Growing globalisation of the world draws attention to cultural differences between people from different countries or from different cultures within the countries. Notwithstanding the diversity of people's worldviews, current cross-cultural research still faces the challenge of how to avoid ethnocentrism; comparing Western-driven phenomena with like variables across countries without checking their conceptual equivalence clearly is highly problematic. In the present article we argue that simple comparison of measurements (in the quantitative domain) or of semantic interpretations (in the qualitative domain) across cultures easily leads to inadequate results. Questionnaire items or text produced in interviews or via open-ended questions have culturally laden meanings and cannot be mapped onto the same semantic metric. We call the culture-specific space and relationship between variables or meanings a 'cultural metric', that is a set of notions that are inter-related and that mutually specify each other's meaning. We illustrate the problems and their possible solutions with examples from quantitative and qualitative research. The suggested methods allow to respect the semantic space of notions in cultures and language groups and the resulting similarities or differences between cultures can be better understood and interpreted.
... Positive symbols can play an important role in the collective imaginary. Moreover, images do play an important role in mobilizing enthusiasms and fears see for example the studies on their impact in the case of biotechnology Wagner et al. (2002), and, more related to this study, on nanotechnology as in Landau, Groscurth, Wright and Condit (2008). Complementing a latent semantic analysis by taking into account the figurative dimension will therefore greatly enrich the depth of analysis. ...
This study analyzes nanotechnology’s anchoring and codification in the Spanish national press to determine the thematic contexts in which this technology has been discussed. Latent semantic analysis was applied to identify themes based on semantic clusters and their longitudinal evolution. This analysis was carried out on a corpus of more than 600 articles from the most prominent Spanish national newspapers and includes articles from 1997 to 2009. Findings indicate an overall positive coverage and dominant thematic clusters related to national policies, economic development, and business opportunities. Surprisingly, controversies surrounding nanotechnology are present in the early years of coverage but have become marginal over time, in contradiction to a general trend that emerged from previous studies on media representations of new technologies.
... The present example is taken from an international research group investigating the perception of biotechnology in various European countries (Wagner et al. 2002). An open-ended question, in a Eurobarometer survey on representative samples from all member countries of the European Union, asked respondents to write down what comes to their mind when thinking of modern biotechnology. ...
... Or perhaps you think that, even if agricultural biotechnology could alleviate problems associated with industrial agriculture, it is a rather unnatural way to do so. 43 Or perhaps you think that biotechnology is unnatural in a more metaphysical or farmers, handlers and processors have followed specified production standards, one of which is that they have not used GM crops. 49 This hybrid of FDA and USDA labeling policy does provide a right of exit from GM foods, at least for those highly-motivated consumers who take the trouble to learn the labeling system. ...
The title question is evaluated in light of three key sub-issues: consumer rights of exit with respect to consumption of GM crops, environmental risk from GM crops and the effectiveness of the scientific community in addressing non-technical issues that have been raised by GM crops. Three key theses are argued. U.S. labeling policy for GM crops provides only tenuous protection for a consumer's ethical right to eat a diet that conforms to religious, cultural or politically based values. Environmental risks, though real, have been overstated by critics of GM crops, who have ignored significant environmental risks from non-GM agricultural technologies. Although scientific bodies have done a credible job of addressing many technical issues on GM crops, their poor handling of human, social and other non-technical issues has tended to undermine public confidence in their willingness or ability to engage even the technical issues. As such, skepticism about GM crops is neither surprising nor entirely unjustified.
... The results were manifold and a few parts have been presented throughout this book. In general, the results shed light on representational core-processes in the interaction between media reporting and public imagination (Bauer, 2001;Bauer, Kohring, Allansdottir & Gutteling, 2001;Einsiedel et al., 2002;Gutteling et al., 2002;Wagner, Kronberger & Seifert, 2002;Wagner, Kronberger, Berg & Torgersen, forthcoming), the role of the cultural heritage for anchoring new representations (Nielsen & Berg, 2001;Wagner et al., forthcoming), the determinants of perceived risk, its representation and science Gaskell et al., 2004;Sturgis & Allum, 2004), the role of political discourse in shaping representations (Einsiedel, 2001;Torgersen & Hampel, 2001) and the form and structure of the representation Wagner, Kronberger, Allum et al., 2002). ...
... The results were manifold and a few parts have been presented throughout this book. In general, the results shed light on representational core-processes in the interaction between media reporting and public imagination (Bauer, 2001;Bauer, Kohring, Allansdottir & Gutteling, 2001;Einsiedel et al., 2002;Gutteling et al., 2002;Wagner, Kronberger & Seifert, 2002;Wagner, Kronberger, Berg & Torgersen, forthcoming), the role of the cultural heritage for anchoring new representations (Nielsen & Berg, 2001;Wagner et al., forthcoming), the determinants of perceived risk, its representation and science Gaskell et al., 2004;Sturgis & Allum, 2004), the role of political discourse in shaping representations (Einsiedel, 2001;Torgersen & Hampel, 2001) and the form and structure of the representation Wagner, Kronberger, Allum et al., 2002). ...
... Since metaphors as described earlier play a central role in the formation of social representations of S&T, the objective of this paper is to explore such representations evoked by the use of relevant metaphors in two of the most important and influential kinds of popular scientific texts, those of daily press articles and articles of popular scientific magazines. 2 Similar efforts have also been undertaken by other researchers in the past (Bucchi, 1998;Nelkin, 1994;Nelkin and Lindee, 1995;Liakopoulos, 2002;Wagner et al., 2002). These efforts, though, either concentrated on the social representations of a specific scientific discipline (usually biotechnology) or focused on only one evoked type of representation (e.g., science as cookery). ...
This paper aims to reveal the social representations about the nature and the evolution of Space-Science & Astronomy, Genetics & Biotechnology, Natural Sciences and Engineering & Informatics, through analyzing active (i.e., original and creative) metaphors found in 2303 technoscientific articles published in four Greek daily newspapers and two popular scientific magazines. The analysis showed that all metaphors concerning the nature of the four disciplinary fields can be clustered into four superordinate categories that juxtapose these fields to: (1) a construct; (2) a supernatural process; (3) an activity extending the frontiers of knowledge; (4) a dipole of promise and/or scare. The most frequently employed category is that representing technoscience as an activity extending the frontiers of knowledge. Furthermore, the evolution of the four disciplines is mainly represented as a violent process. Each discipline though, seems to be characterized by combinations of different categories of metaphors. Therefore each discipline evokes different social representations.
... Even if it were, the public may not be motivated to apprehend its intricacies. Yet such events are made part of everyday life by way of the media and, in the case of food-related risks, by the layperson's need to make choices concerning whether to consume the foodstuff in question (Wagner, 2002). Thus people are forced to engage with an understanding of such events. ...
The paper explores the social representation of the 2001 Hong Kong avian bird flu epidemic from the perspective of local women. Fifty women were asked to describe their first thoughts about the flu, and these were subsequently explored. Thematic analysis of the semi-structured interviews revealed that the first thoughts were characterized by: (a) the origin of the epidemic, (b) anchors for it, (c) emotions about it, and (d) images of it. Aspersion concerning the lack of hygiene of Mainland Chinese chicken rearers and chicken sellers in Hong Kong dominated the interviews. Other environmental factors were also stressed, as was regulation leniency and a drive to profit. Comparisons between old traditions and newer practices formed a central feature. The findings are discussed in terms of their continuity with western risk findings as well as their specific cultural nuances.
