Popularizing sciences by the media?

In the debate of science communication public illiteracy is often held responsible for the low levels of trust in science these days. Therefore to revitalize the public’s trust in science, education by the media is seen as a crucial factor. In this paper this simplistic idea of science education is problematized as being too focused on an assumed knowledge deficiency of the public and the possibility to solve this by a unilateral process of science communication. This obscures the often ambiguous characteristics of media messages and how such media messages are culturally negotiated by the public. To overcome these shortcomings this study investigates how different scientific debates (controversial/harmonious) affect trust in science and how this effect is moderated by the cultural predispositions ‘science views’, ‘anti-elitism’ and ‘anomia’. In addition it is tested whether and how these interactions could explain the relationship between education (level and field) and trust in science. Testing the assumptions by means of a self-conducted vignette survey experiment it turned out that framing effects exist, though they depend on field of study and science views. Furthermore, none of the cultural variables could explain the relationship between education and trust in science. Though in the end it becomes clear that despite the moderate results science communication is nevertheless more complex than the Science Deficit Model assumes. The vignette experiment appears to be a good way to illustrate this.