著者

中山 茂

出版者

研究・イノベーション学会

雑誌

研究技術計画 (ISSN:09147020)

巻号頁・発行日

vol.8, no.2, pp.131-135, 1994-06-30

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The author has carried out a ten-year project on science, technology and society in postwar Japan during which he looked into the publishing activities of the industrial, governmental and academic sectors. Till the 1970s science and technology journalism aimed at rendering science and technology understandable to the general public; later however, it focused on issues that became the concern to the general public such as pollution. The author describes the various stages science and technology journalism have gone through, from its incipient role in the nineteenth century when it was used as a way to enlighten the general public and as a public relations tool for the scientific community, to the atomic age when journalism became aware of both the positive and negative aspects of science and technology by remained at a loss on how to go about reporting it, to the space age when enlightenment aim became predominant again, to the antipollution campaigns that used the visual mass media to great effect, to the debate on gene recombination with scientists addressing the general public on the issue. Science, the author points out, needs now feedback from the general public since it has acquired a new and expanded ability to control people's lives.