November 7, 2022 – There are several steps newsrooms can take to report on polarized or potentially polarizing science topics such as vaccines or climate change, according to a recent article co-authored by Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health’s Amanda Yarnell.
In an October 25 article in Source, Yarnell, senior director of the Center for Health Communication at Harvard Chan School, and co-author Katie Burke, an editor and science writer, offered four recommendations for newsrooms:
- Build relationships with trusted messengers in communities to help share accurate scientific information
- Use a strategy known as “prebunking”—warn people about falsehoods before they emerge and highlight manipulation techniques commonly used in misinformation
- Speed up fact-checking to identify misinformation quickly
- Cultivate networks between scholars and journalists to lend context and historical information to media coverage
Read the Source article: Four things newsrooms can do right now to counter science polarization