dunwoody

Information

First Name

Sharon L.

Last name

Dunwoody

Title

Evjue Bascom Professor

Courses taught

JOURN 415: Science and Environmental Journalism

JOURN 860: Science and Environmental Communication

JOURN 880: Informal Science Education for Scientists: A Practicum

Biography

Sharon Dunwoody is Evjue-Bascom Professor in the School of Journalism and Mass Communication at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, as well as Interim Associate Dean for Graduate Education in the Graduate School. Among other affiliations, she is a member of the Governance Faculty of the university’s Gaylord Nelson Institute for Environmental Studies and is a faculty affiliate of the Science and Technology Studies program.

As a scholar, she focuses on the construction of media science messages and on how those messages are employed by individuals for various cognitive and behavioral purposes. Illustrative of this large domain are her current research streams:

How do individuals use information to inform their judgments about environmental risks?

What role do perceptions of both journalists and scientists play in the construction of news about science?

In addition to numerous articles and book chapters, she has co-edited two volumes, Communicating Uncertainty (Erlbaum, 1999) and Scientists and Journalists (Free Press, 1986), and authored a third book, Reconstructing Science for Public Consumption ( Deakin University Press, 1993).

Dunwoody has served as a Fulbright Distinguished Lecturer in Brazil, as a visiting journalism fellow at Deakin University in Australia, and most recently as Donnier Guest Professor at Stockholm University. She is a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, the Midwest Association for Public Opinion Research, and the Society for Risk Analysis. She is former head of the section on General Interest in Science and Technology of the American Association for the Advancement of Science and former president of both the Midwest Association for Public Opinion Research and the Association for Education in Journalism and Mass Communication. 

A former science writer, she earned the BA in journalism at Indiana University in 1969, the MA in mass communication from Temple University in 1975, and the Ph.D. in mass communication from Indiana University in 1978. Before joining the UW-Madison faculty in 1981, she was on the faculty of the Ohio State University School of Journalism.

Recent publications

Dudo, A., Dunwoody, S. & Scheufele, D.A. In press.  The emergence of nano news: Tracking thematic trends and changes in U.S. newspaper coverage of nanotechnology.  Journalism & Mass Communication Quarterly.

Dunwoody, S., Brossard, D., & Dudo, A. 2009.  Socialization or rewards? Predicting U.S. scientist-media interactions.  Journalism & Mass Communication Quarterly 86(2): 299-314.

 

Peters, H.P., Brossard, D., de Cheveigne, S., Dunwoody, S., Kallfass, M., Miller, S. & Tsuchida, S. 11 July 2008.  Interactions with the mass media. Science 321: 204-205.

 

Griffin, R.J., Zheng, Y., ter Huurne, E., Boerner, F., Ortiz, S., & Dunwoody, S. 2008.  After the flood: Anger, attribution and the seeking of information.  Science Communication 29(3):  285-315.

 

Scheufele, D.A., Corley, E. A., Dunwoody, S., Shih, T., Hillback. E. & Guston, D. December 2007.  Scientists worry about some risks more than the public.  Nature Nanotechnology 2: 732-734.

 

Powell, M., Dunwoody, S., Griffin, R.J., & Neuwirth, K. 2007.  Exploring lay uncertainty about an environmental health risk.  Public Understanding of Science 16(3): 323-343.

 

 

 

 

 

Email

dunwoody@wisc.edu

Education

 

Indiana University 
B.A., Journalism, 1969
Ph.D., Mass Communication, 1978

Temple University 
M.A., Journalism, 1975

Website

http://www.journalism.wisc.edu/dsc/

Office

5174 Vilas

Telephone

(608) 263-3389

Office hours

By appointment

Areas of research

Science and environmental communication, risk communication

History

Member for

2 years 24 weeks