This study seeks to undertake an analysis of the topic of 'science and the media' as it has been constituted in academic discourse since the end of the Second World War. It finds that concern has polarized in two distinct camps: The larger, participant in the traditional project of North American media studies, blames the press for what it perceives as a widespread and deleterious "scientific illiteracy" on the part of the laity. The more recent, indebted to critical developments in social theory, philosophy of science, and the study of mass communication, works to expose the assumptions on which press coverage of science has been based and the interests which have benefited. / The thesis argues that the adequacy of the dominant concern to its object of analysis is at best suspect, but that nevertheless its agitations have been chiefly responsible for the form which popular science has predominantly assumed.
Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:LACETR/oai:collectionscanada.gc.ca:QMM.75695 |
Date | January 1987 |
Creators | Dornan, Chris. |
Publisher | McGill University |
Source Sets | Library and Archives Canada ETDs Repository / Centre d'archives des thèses électroniques de Bibliothèque et Archives Canada |
Language | English |
Detected Language | English |
Type | Electronic Thesis or Dissertation |
Format | application/pdf |
Coverage | Doctor of Philosophy (Graduate Communications Program.) |
Rights | All items in eScholarship@McGill are protected by copyright with all rights reserved unless otherwise indicated. |
Relation | alephsysno: 000660147, proquestno: AAINL46056, Theses scanned by UMI/ProQuest. |
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