Design

Our main objective is quite ambitious, we are intending to conduct a structural analysis of science programmes in 13 European memberstates, which integrates the organisational aspects that enables the production of science content in TV and Radio and additionally integrates the users point of view.

Our approach consists on three different parts:

A) The description of science programmes with the special focus on organisational needs

B) The analysis of the popularity of these programmes and the identification of potential factors, that may contribute to an explanation why different science programmes are judged differently by different groups in different countries.

C) The development of an action plan that makes use out of the results produced by our project.

The chart gives an idea of how this main task is meant to be approached. It consists of three blocks.

Left block: In the first place we try to find out how science and technology are observed by whatever specialised unit of the channels in 13 European Memberstates. To gain access to these units, for instance to the science sections of WDR in Cologne, we analysed programme guides to identify the science programmes we are interested in.

Right block: Additionally we would like to gather information about the audiences of the selected programmes. In our assumption  a deeper understanding of the structures of science and technology observation by TV and Radio editors in particular is only possible by integrating user data that can be linked to the programmes.

The block in the center represents a focus group analysis that will be conducted exclusively in the five collaborating countries. This block aims at the generation of indicators that may be useful to explain the perceived differences.