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Public debates tend to operate with distinctions, which allow comparative judgments and choices. How such distinctions fall are matters of historical and social scientific interest. In the case of biotechnology, a number of distinctions were suggested in public debates over the years. During the 1990s the red/green distinction of biotechnology came to dominate media coverage, public perceptions, and regulation across Europe. By 1999, medical biotechnology (red) was treated much more favorably than agri-food biotechnology (green). This paper assesses the cultivation effects of the press on public perception. Little evidence for a cultivation effect that is consistent across Europe is found. However, the results show a strong convergence of press and perception over time: the results specify a direct relationship between changes in quality press discourse and changes in elite perceptions in relation to the red/green distinction. The study extends the cultivation approach from television to newspapers, and from direct to indirect measures of worldviews, using cross-national and longitudinal data.
Martín W. Bauer (Thu,) studied this question.