Technoscientific discourses under review: A systematic analysis of studies on mediated science and technology debates

As original method of communication sciences, quantitative and qualitative content analyses are widespread not only in numbers, but also their thematical scopes. Accordingly, this methodological approach receives high popularity within the science of science communication community when it comes to investigating media coverage on scientific or technological topics. Yet, scholars criticise that there are only marginal accumulations of knowledge about this kind of coverage which they trace back to loose or missing links to theory of many empirical examinations in this area. By focussing on the concept of (public) discourse whose terminology is nearly equally widespread within the field as potential theoretical framework, this study investigated a sample of 379 scientific studies using content or discourse analytical approaches. Asking whether and how they are embedded within broader discourse theories and on what coverage they are concretely focussed on as well as examining the interconnectedness of the research area through common references and journals, the systematic review showed that content analytical studies on technoscientific media discourses are not only thematically scattered with analysed coverage ranging from environmental crises to novel technologies and health advice, but also highly heterogeneous in terms of publishing journals and shared references. This might be related to a mostly implicit and therefore vague inclusion of (some kind of) discourse concept by uncritically using the term synonymous to media coverage in many of the reviewed publications. In summary, this study critically exemplifies what happens when the links between theory and empirical research are questionable in large parts of a research area but also establishes the concept of technoscientific media discourse as promising starting point to meet this problem.