Building the Science News Agenda: The Permeability of Science Journalism to Public Relations

The current study examines the influence of press releases about scientific studies in terms of their impact on news coverage. Using an innovative approach that allowed for analysis of a large corpus of text and calculation of similarity scores, we were able to trace the uptake of press release mate...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Journalism & mass communication quarterly 2024-09, Vol.101 (3), p.637-656
Main Authors: Comfort, Suzannah Evans, Gruszczynski, Mike, Browning, Nicholas
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Consumers
Good news
Journalism
Journalists
Mass media
Media coverage
News media
Public relations
Release
Science
Subsidies
Uptake
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Summary:The current study examines the influence of press releases about scientific studies in terms of their impact on news coverage. Using an innovative approach that allowed for analysis of a large corpus of text and calculation of similarity scores, we were able to trace the uptake of press release materials into news media articles. In some cases, up to 65% of sentences in science news articles reflected high similarity to press release material—a potent indication of how powerful information subsidies can be. While our results contain some good news for public relations practitioners, they also carry a warning for consumers of journalism and for the public science agenda, which may be left vulnerable to bad actors undermining the trust that the public, and journalists, have in science. News organizations that had a history of producing award-winning science journalism were much less likely to draw on press release materials, indicating the importance of topic area expertise in producing independent science journalism.
ISSN:1077-6990
2161-430X
DOI:10.1177/10776990211047949