The Media and the Construction of Credibility
The AIDS movement's possession of cultural capital and its facility with manipulating symbols are manifested in another way that is central to the story I tell—the movement's possession of its own media institutions. A large number of studies have emphasized the important role of the media in establishing the public dimensions of scientific and medical controversies. Such studies reveal how the media filter and translate scientific information, construct public images of scientific certainty and uncertainty, shape the ways in which people understand the "sides" and "boundaries" of a debate, certify scientific and medical celebrities, affect perceptions of risk, and reinforce popular stereotypes of scientists and doctors as both heroes and villains.[101] David Phillips and his collaborators have shown that even professional scientists rely on prominent mass media organs, such as the New York Times , to provide them with a sense of which scientific findings are most important, and that "the direct transmission of information in the medical literature … is enhanced or amplified by secondary transmission in the lay press…."[102] By the same token, the mass media can bring the perspectives of delegitimated actors into the public eye. As Bert Klandermans explains in a study of social movements, the media "are able to diffuse beliefs the organization itself would never had been able to diffuse," with the result that "the movement organization itself gains greater credibility…."[103]
The analysis in this book reinforces the notion that the institutions of the mass media can play a critical role in shaping how scientific controversies are interpreted and adjudicated. But in addition, I emphasize the impact of alternative media institutions, including the lesbian and gay press, movement publications, and grassroots literature about AIDS treatments.[104] The extensive coverage of medical and scientific
issues in these publications has been a significant factor in the construction of knowledge-empowered communities, and the particular analytical frames employed by writers and editors have helped shape the orientations of the AIDS movement. Indeed, some media organs of the AIDS movement, such as the publication AIDS Treatment News , are widely recognized as agenda-setting vehicles for the circulation of scientific knowledge, and are read by activists, doctors, and researchers alike.[105] Such developments pose an important challenge to the conventional "top-down" models of how expert knowledge is disseminated.[106] As Indyk and Rier suggest, the spread of knowledge about AIDS is best conceived as "a multisite process, involving not hierarchies of diffusion but webs of exchange."[107]