title: Constructing (un-)certainty: An exploration of journalistic decision-making in the reporting of neuroscience.
abstract: Based on 21 individual case studies, this article inventories the ways journalism deals with scientific uncertainty. The study identifies the decisions that impact a journalist's perception of a truth claim as unambiguous or ambiguous and the strategies to deal with uncertainty that arise from this perception. Key for understanding journalistic action is the outcome of three evaluations: What is the story about? How shall the story be told? What type of story is it? We reconstructed the strategies to overcome journalistic decision-making uncertainty in those cases in which they perceived scientific contingency as a problem. Journalism deals with uncertainty by way of omission, by contrasting the conflicting messages or by acknowledging the problem via the structure or language. One finding deserves particular mention: The lack of focus on scientific uncertainty is not only a problem of how journalists perceive and communicate but also a problem of how science communicates.
authors.affiliation: KIT Karlsruhe Institute of Technology, Germany markus.lehmkuhl@kit.edu.
authors.forename: Markus
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Lehmkuhl
authors.affiliation: Forschungszentrum Jülich, Germany.
authors.forename: Hans Peter
authors.initials: HP
authors.lastname: Peters
mesh_terms: D003657:Decision Making; D033181:Information Dissemination; D020452:Journalism; D008402:Mass Media; D009488:Neurosciences; D010465:Perception; D035501:Uncertainty
keywords: case studies; journalism; mass media; scientific uncertainty