THE PUBLIC IMPACT OF IMPACTS: THE ROLE OF THE MEDIA IN THE “DEATH OF THE DINOSAURS” CONTROVERSY

“Mass media” presentations of the dinosaurs and their co-inhabitants have been around for some 200 years. The question of what did for the dinosaurs and allowed mammals to take their leading place on Earth has a similarly lengthy history in the scientific arena and in public. But there are amazingly few communication studies of the debates around mass extinctions and impacts. Those that do exist have picked up on the fact that these debates involve scientists from several disciplines, scientists who are often unused to reading each other’s journals (e.g. Elisabeth Clemens 1986). Under these circumstances, more public or leading journals play a key role not only in getting ideas out into the public arena, but in informing scientists across disciplinary boundaries. “Normal” communication processes, in which articles in peer-reviewed journals inform the scientific community and “simplified” versions may trickle out to the public via the mass media, become more complex (Lewenstein 1995).

The dramatic impact answer to the question of the death of the dinosaurs due to Alvarez, Alvarez, Asaro and Michel (1980) seems to have attracted limited media attention at the time, confined to the “elite” newspapers. This talk analyses the newspaper coverage of the death of the dinosaurs during the period from 1980 to 2008. Analysing some 1,500 newspaper articles from English-speaking countries across the world, we find that the period from 1991-1995 was critical, in terms of changing public perceptions, insofar as they are determined / reflected in articles in general newspapers. It argues argue that the “Great Crash of 1994”, when Comet Shoemaker-Levy 9 collided with the giant planet Jupiter, played an important role in propelling the impact scenario for the death of the dinosaurs into the (mass) public eye, and that the news value co-option was important in this process.

Clemens, E.S., 1986, Of Asteroids and Dinosaurs: The Role of the Press in the Shaping of Scientific Debate: Social Studies of Science, v. 16, p. 421-456.

Lewenstein, B.V., 1995, From Fax to Facts: Communication in the Cold Fusion: Social Studies of Science, v. 25, p. 403-436.