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News & Views
Passive communicators: Chinese scientists’ interaction with the media
Hepeng Jia
a
, Lin Shi
b
, Dapeng Wang
c,
⇑
a
Institute of Public Communication, Sun Yat-sen University, Guangzhou 510006, China
b
School of Journalism and Communication, Tsinghua University, Beijing 100084, China
c
China Research Institute for Science Popularization, Beijing 100081, China
Examining the interaction of scientists with the media is a key
theme of science communication [1]. Scholars have surveyed sci-
entists’ relationship with the media in the United Kingdom, United
States, and other countries [2,3]. Unfortunately, no systematic
research has investigated how Chinese scientists deal with the
media.
Some common patterns emerged from previous research. For
example, although surveys found that scientists complained con-
tinuously about the media’s poor performance in reporting science
[4,5], four decades of empirical studies have revealed that many
Western scientists have maintained regular media contacts,
enjoyed their media representation, and accepted the influence
of the media on their research agenda [1,6]. The results may be
due to the increasing pressure that research institutions receive
to seek public visibility. Nonetheless, they indicate that Western
scientists are relatively positive in engaging the media.
Like their Western counterparts, Chinese scientists have also
placed great importance on science communication. A 2007
national survey on the basic status of Chinese scientists, engineers,
and doctors found that nearly half of the 30,000 respondents had
participated in at least one activity for the sake of science popular-
ization in the previous year [7]. But the survey also indicated that
talking with the media was the least popular format for science
communication. This is consistent with the result of an unpub-
lished survey in 2014 by Guokr.com, a well-known popular science
site in China. No study has explained the low desirability of Chi-
nese scientists to deal with the media, although Gao et al. [8]
reported that Chinese scientists generally do not consider science
communication as their duties, as this activity is not recognized
by their research institutions as a professional obligation.
The current survey studied the Chinese scientists’ viewpoint
toward the role of journalism in science communication and their
actual involvement with the media. In doing so, factors that influ-
enced the interaction of Chinese scientists with the media were
also examined.
To investigate the relationship between Chinese scientists and
the media, we commissioned Guokr.com to implement an online
survey in May 2016. The advertisement for the survey and the link
were posted in Guokr.com’s weekly E-newsletter that targeted
scientists (Guokr.com has several types of E-newsletter targeting
different audiences). A total of 548 scientists participated in the
survey, and 431 of them completed the entire questionnaire.
Although scientists who are audiences of Guokr.com are assumed
more supportive of science communication than their colleagues,
we do not think this sample lacks external validity for the follow-
ing reasons. First, scientists who support science communication
are more likely to contact with the media and have a better under-
standing of the role that media plays in science communication. In
this sense, our sample can better reflect the pursuit of typicality.
Second, since most Chinese scientists are not engaged actively in
regular public communication of science, it would be hard to
examine scientists’ typical media behaviors if we chose ordinary
scientists as our sample.
Among those completing the questionnaire, 67% are male and
85.8% hold a doctoral degree. A total of 85.7% of the respondents
work at public research institutes (PRIs) or universities, indicating
that our samples are primarily academic scientists. A 68.37% of the
surveyees aged from 36 to 55, and 84.7% of them hold an academic
title higher than associate professor. Because most Chinese univer-
sities or PRIs do not have a tenure system, associate professorship
is considered an ordinary academic title rather than a very senior
position as in Western countries.
The general demographic and professional characteristics of
Chinese scientists are not available. Some official organizations,
such as China Association for Science and Technology (CAST), per-
formed surveys on the general status of science and technology
professionals. But neither the original data nor statistical results
have been published. In addition, the CAST surveys target scien-
tists, doctors, engineers, and teachers, which makes the sample’s
professional characteristics not comparable to the current study.
The survey asked about participants’ interaction with journal-
ists and their views on the role of journalism in science communi-
cation. Factors that influenced the media behavior of Chinese
scientists, such as institutional support (and barriers) for science
communication, were also included. As completing the online sur-
vey took about 20 minutes and no incentive was provided to sur-
veyees, we assume that most respondents highly appreciated the
importance of science communication.
Echoing previous research, 52% of the surveyed scientists did
not have media contact in the past year, and only 19.1% had more
than three media contacts. In addition, receiving media interviews
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.scib.2018.03.001
2095-9273/Ó2018 Science China Press. Published by Elsevier B.V. and Science China Press. All rights reserved.
⇑
Corresponding author.
E-mail address: bigbirdwangmiao@aliyun.com (D. Wang).
Science Bulletin 63 (2018) 402–404
Contents lists available at ScienceDirect
Science Bulletin
journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/scib
was the least popular science communication activity listed by sur-
veyed scientists, and this accounted for only 8.6%. Other science
communication activities included blogging (14%), popular science
lectures (19.5%), public speeches (9.8%), publishing popular science
books (13.7%), and attending broadcast or TV science programs
(11%) (Fig. 1a). Although attending broadcast or TV science pro-
grams obviously involved the media, scientists distinguished this
activity from being interviewed by journalists.
Consistent with the low media contacts was the low desirability
to interact with the media. A total of 73.5% of surveyed scientists
did not contact the media to discuss important issues in their
own research area in the past year. We found that scientists’ desir-
ability to contact the media was associated significantly with sci-
entists’ media contacts (ß= 0.5, t= 4.35, P< 0.001). Only 9.4% of
scientists contacted media directly if they had achieved important
research results. By comparison, 44.6% of scientists waited for pub-
lic relations (PR) executives of their institutions to deal with the
publicity of their achievements.
Compared with Western scientists’ regular media contacts and
acceptance of the media influence [1,2,6], Chinese scientists’ media
behaviors are much more passive, even though both Western and
Chinese scientists complained about media. The passive media
behavior of Chinese scientists was accompanied by the underper-
formance of PR staffs or public information officers (PIOs) at their
institutions. Over 47% of scientists said that their PIOs had never
contacted them in the past year, while 26.4% and 21.4% said their
PIOs seldom or only occasionally contacted them (Fig. 1c). Those
moderately or often contacted by their PIOs only accounted for
4.6%.
Besides PR’s underperformance, scientists’ low evaluation of the
media’s role and their insufficient capacity to report science
seemed to be another major reason that contribute to the poor
connection between scientists and the media in China. Eighty-
three percent of the scientists ‘‘somewhat agreed with”, ‘‘agreed
with”, or ‘‘strongly agreed with” the statement that media cover-
age was often irrelevant to science. More than 56% of the surveyees
agreed with the statement that science journalists often neglected
important information in science, and more than 54% thought
science journalists reported science in a sensational way. As a
result, when asked what the most important science communica-
tion vehicle was in China, only 13.3% of the respondents rated
the media as a vehicle to popularize science, which was far below
their rating of scientists (41.7%) and professional science commu-
nication organizations (37.7%) for this purpose.
Scientists also questioned the capacity of science journalists to
report science accurately. More than 53.1% strongly disagreed that
citing news reporting was a reliable source, and 64.1% ‘‘strongly
disagreed” or ‘‘disagreed” that the media could make objective
judgements about scientific controversies.
Another important finding is that surveyed scientists generally
questioned the media’s real impact. Most scientists (59%) disbe-
lieved it was necessary to cite media reporting to prove the impor-
tance of one’s research areas, and 64% said media reporting was not
important to one’s academic reputation. In addition, 87.4% said
media interests were not important at all to one’s research deci-
sions (Fig. 1d).
In our survey, scientists stressed the negative role of the media.
When being asked why Chinese scientists were not active in
science communication, 18.1% of the surveyed said media’s sensa-
tional and highly hyped reporting had prevented scientists from
contacting the media (Fig. 1b). This factor ranked third in the listed
items explaining scientists’ inactiveness in science communication,
with the top two factors being the lack of policy incentives for sci-
entists to engage the public and scientists’ busy schedules.
Fig. 1. Interactions of Chinese scientists with the media. (a) The preferred ways that Chinese scientists communicated science (n= 548); (b) perceived barriers by Chinese
scientists to communicate science to the public (n= 549); (c) the levels at which Chinese scientists were contacted by their institutional PIOs over the previous year (n= 435);
(d) Chinese scientists’ judgment on the importance of media interest to their research (n= 523).
H. Jia et al./ Science Bulletin 63 (2018) 402–404 403
Due to the low interaction and scientists’ negative attitude
toward the media, Chinese scientist relied on their institutions’
PIOs in the cases they tried to reach the media, which were also
inactive as reflected by the surveyed scientists. Based on the find-
ings, we can safely conclude that compared with their relatively
active counterparts in the West, Chinese scientists were quite pas-
sive in their interaction with the media, even though as argued
above, our sample represented a more supportive community for
science communication than average Chinese scientists.
Although we cannot compare our results directly with those
studies conducted in the Western context due to different sample
characteristics [2–6], a consistent conclusion is that both Chinese
and Western scientists did not appreciate the media. But despite
their distrust of the media, Western scientists remained relatively
active in dealing with them, while Chinese scientists restrained
themselves from media contacts. It is very likely caused by the dif-
ferent institutional arrangements, which should be the focus for
further investigation.
This survey highlights the necessity to develop more incentives
to encourage scientists to interact with the media. For example,
scientists need to better understand the function and mechanism
of the media, popular science writing, how to reach and deal with
the media, and how to maintain regular media contacts. On the
other hand, training programs should be offered to journalists on
how to report science topics properly and how to understand the
differences between science and media. Frequent interactions,
such as media fellowship programs (encouraging young scientists
to work as intern journalists for a short time) and regular seminars
between scientists and journalists, should also be held. Science
communication projects have dramatically improved public scien-
tific literacy in China [9], and they are expected to further promote
scientists to communicate science to the public.
The public relations function of research institutions must also
be enhanced to help Chinese scientists better cope with the media.
One measure is to encourage PIOs to talk frequently with scientists
about their advances in research. Meanwhile, science communica-
tion efforts at research institutions should not be limited to science
media only. More members of mass media, including social media
platform-based new media such as public accounts on WeChat, can
be invited to contact scientists regularly to reflect the more diver-
sified nature of science communication in the digital era [10].On
the basis of this interaction, intermediary social organizations,
such as Science Media Center (SMC) which was initiated in the
United Kingdom and spread worldwide, should be established in
China as well. Organizations like SMC not only provide more news
releases to a wider media audience, but understand more deeply
the mutual demands and misunderstandings between scientists
and the media. Due to the crucial role both scientists and the media
play in science communication, we believe the effort to narrow the
science-media gap can eventually bring a robust mechanism for
more effective public engagement with science in China.
Conflict of interest
The authors declare that they have no conflict of interest.
References
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Hepeng Jia is a Ph.D. candidate in the Department of
Communication at Cornell University, USA. He is also a
guest research fellow at the School of Communication &
Design of Guangzhou, China-based Sun Yat-Sen
University. His research interests include science and
risk communication, sociology of science and science
journalism.
Dapeng Wang is an assistant professor at the Science &
Media Research Department, China Research Institute
for Science Popularization (CRISP). His research focuses
on the interaction between scientists and media, sci-
ence communication theory and practice, and new
media. He also coordinates CRISP’s project to link sci-
ence journals and mass media.
404 H. Jia et al. / Science Bulletin 63 (2018) 402–404
