Please check out this working paper I wrote… “Framing, Exploring and Understanding Online Anti-Technology Advocacy Networks (working title)” (January 2010). I experiment with the webcrawler tool “Issuecrawler” to explore online advocacy networks around this issues of ‘terminator technology’ (or gene use restriction technologies) and ‘synthetic biology’.
Thanks to Dr. Edna Einseidel for her support of this work (through funding from Genome Canada GE3LS).
“Information tells, but a story sells” I like this quote. #Science can ‘tell’ but the naysayers have an incredible capacity to ‘sell a story’. Creates a #communication chasm between good solid reliable information and hype…and, ultimately, imbalanced perceptions….
Fictional framing and #attitudes (Mulligan and Habel 2009). This is an interesting article exploring the influence of entertainment #media (movies, TV etc) on attitudes towards real-world #issues. #Celebrities, their works (entertainment and not-for-profit connections) have a significant influence on consumer attitudes. I think that it would be good to apply this to the case of GMOs. http://opensiuc.lib.siu.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1001&context=ps_wp
“The world, we are told, is in the midst of a revolution. The new tools of #social #media have reinvented social #activism…” But according to Malcolm #Gladwell in his article in The New Yorker it will not lead to revolutionary action. “…[Social media] is simply a form of organizing which favors the weak-tie connections that give us access to information over the strong-tie connections that help us persevere in the face of danger. It shifts our energies from organizations that promote strategic and disciplined activity and toward those which promote resilience and adaptability. It makes it easier for activists to express themselves, and harder for that expression to have any impact.” “Social media can’t provide what social change has always required.”Read more http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2010/10/04/101004fa_fact_gladwell?currentP…