TY - JOUR

T1 - Mass-Mediated Expertise as Informal Policy Advice

AU - Petersen, Imme

AU - Heinrichs, Harald

AU - Peters, Hans Peter

N1 - Special Issue: Scientific expertise between uncertainty and ambiguity

PY - 2010/11/1

Y1 - 2010/11/1

N2 - Scientific policy advice is usually perceived as a formalized advisory process within political institutions. Politics has benefited from this arrangement because the science-based rationalization of policy has contributed to its legitimacy. However, in Western democratic societies, scientific expertise that is routinely mobilized to legitimate political positions has increasingly lost its power due to controversial expertise in the public sphere in particular within the mass media. As a consequence of the medialization of science, political decision makers are increasingly confronted with mass-mediated expertise. Empirical results of a qualitative survey among decision makers in the German political and administrative system, presented in this article, support the hypothesis that mass-mediated expertise has a significant impact on policy processes. Five functions of media coverage on science-based issues for policy making were identified. Mass-mediated expertise has therefore altered the established relations between scientific policy advisors and political decision makers and can be seen as informal policy advice complementing institutionalized advisory arrangements.

AB - Scientific policy advice is usually perceived as a formalized advisory process within political institutions. Politics has benefited from this arrangement because the science-based rationalization of policy has contributed to its legitimacy. However, in Western democratic societies, scientific expertise that is routinely mobilized to legitimate political positions has increasingly lost its power due to controversial expertise in the public sphere in particular within the mass media. As a consequence of the medialization of science, political decision makers are increasingly confronted with mass-mediated expertise. Empirical results of a qualitative survey among decision makers in the German political and administrative system, presented in this article, support the hypothesis that mass-mediated expertise has a significant impact on policy processes. Five functions of media coverage on science-based issues for policy making were identified. Mass-mediated expertise has therefore altered the established relations between scientific policy advisors and political decision makers and can be seen as informal policy advice complementing institutionalized advisory arrangements.

KW - Sustainability sciences, Communication

KW - scientific expertise

KW - medialization

KW - political mass media effects

KW - policy advice

KW - mass media

KW - mass media

KW - medialization

KW - policy advice

KW - political mass media effects

KW - scientific expertise

UR - https://www.scopus.com/record/display.uri?eid=2-s2.0-77957282673&origin=inward&txGid=0

U2 - 10.1177/0162243909357914

DO - 10.1177/0162243909357914

M3 - Journal articles

VL - 35

SP - 865

EP - 887

JO - Science, Technology and Human Values

JF - Science, Technology and Human Values

SN - 0162-2439

IS - 6

ER -