Imagining GMOs: The Chinese public's scientific perception in the digital age

Science communication is broadly defined as the use of appropriate skills, media, activities and dialogue to produce one or more personal responses to science: awareness, enjoyment, interest, opinion-forming and understanding (Burns et al., 2003). The goal of science communication is not just to promote science but also to create an informed public that is aware of the implications, limits and power of science as applied to human affairs (Metcalfe and Gascoigne, 1995). Many believe that social controversies over science are rooted in ignorance, that scientific facts speak for themselves, and that—as long as members of the public are informed of scientific knowledge—they should be able to think about and view scientific issues just as scientists do; if they refuse to accept scientific facts, then scientific journalism, the irrationality of the public, or both, are to blame (Bauer et al., 2007; Nisbet and Goidel, 2007; Bauer, 2008).

However, there is an increasing realization among researchers that scientific literacy plays a very limited role in shaping the public's perception of science and influencing its science-related decisions (Allum et al., 2008) and that orientations—including values, ideology, political affiliation and religious faith—play a more important role (Nisbet, 2005; Ho et al., 2008; Scheufele et al., 2009). Therefore, science communication efforts need to be based on a systematic, empirical understanding of an intended audience's values, knowledge and attitudes, its interpersonal and social contexts and its preferred media sources and communication channels (Nisbet and Scheufele, 2009).

Even from the perspective of pure science communication, people vary significantly in their psychological attitudes towards scientific issues (Metag and Schäfer, 2018), and researchers have found that audiences in different groups vary greatly in their access to science communication resources:

There are also arguments that social reproduction in science communication constructs a narrow public that reflects the shape, values and practices of dominant groups at the expense of the marginalized (Dawson, 2018) and that, in many underdeveloped countries, particularly in rural areas, ‘science is everywhere, but no one knows it’ (Guenther et al., 2018).

In the age of digital media, science communication faces even more challenges. Driven by new technologies, a new system of science communication has emerged. It has more participants and open interaction, which spreads scientific knowledge as well as information that may be wrong, false or misleading (Lu and Zhou, 2015). The credibility and reliability of information are central to the public understanding of science. In the age of traditional media, the authoritative sources and the credibility of the mass media played a foundational role in the credibility and reliability of scientific information.

However, in today's media environment, which is characterized by the declining authority of scientific culture and the potential risks involved in scientists’ direct communication with the public through social media, science communication may be entering a ‘post-truth’ phase. The greater visibility of scientific results is accompanied by an increasing risk that rushed conclusions and even fraudulent content will be pushed into public discussion (Bucchi, 2017). At the same time, strong differences in perceptions of science between different segments of the public have been shown to relate to demographics, specific scientific knowledge, attention to media, attitudes towards media, and the use of social network platforms (Runge et al., 2018).

Of course, science communication is not concerned solely with the public's science perceptions and literacy. Since the mid-20th century, the public in the ‘risk society’ (Beck, 2004) has been aware of the potential destructiveness of science. A wide range of concerns has included the threat of nuclear war, the ecological consequences of the misuse of antibiotics and pesticides and the spread of AIDS. This has damaged the public's optimism about science and led to rising distrust of and scepticism about science (Bella et al., 1998). The intertwining of highbrow scientific issues and political, societal, ethical and risk issues in the age of globalization has given rise to disputes and even social movements, including the ‘Not in My Back Yard’ movement (Bauer and Bucchi, 2007). The disputes have centred mainly on five major questions: healthcare, public health, food safety, the environment and energy. Among them is the controversy over genetically modified (GM) food.

Genetic modification technology involves multiple fields, including public health, food safety and environmental security. It is intrinsically complex, which creates differences of opinion about its risks and even conflict between the public and the scientific community (Covello and Sandman, 2001). Moreover, its rapid advance from laboratory research to industrial application has been subject to the influence of political and commercial considerations.

Because the dispute about genetic modification has generated heated discussion about things far removed from the scientific issues, misunderstanding of and rumours about it have turned into a ‘human panic’ (Yuan, 2014). An in-depth exploration of this issue may offer an interesting case study of science communication and shed new light on how science communicators should build the relationship between science and the public in the age of globalization and digitalization.

Genetically modified organisms (GMOs) are organisms that have had their genetic material altered using genetic engineering techniques to improve their properties. For some researchers, the primary reason that GMOs have so far been rejected by a significant portion of the public, despite their safety being universally recognized by the scientific community, is a failure of science communication.

According to a previous survey of representative papers on GMOs indexed by Social Sciences Citation Index over the past 20 years, the commercialization of GMOs in the mid-1990s was the key to the intensification of anti-GMO sentiment. A series of factors, including the scientific community's neglect of public concern about the risks of GMOs, negative views in the popular media, the limited role of scientific knowledge in shaping public perceptions and a lack of trust in public institutions, combined to trigger the rapid rise of an anti-GMO movement promoted by diverse groups in Europe (including anti-globalization activists, environmentalists, civic organizations and commercial stakeholders such as organic farmers and organic food retailers). Even in the United States, where neither mainstream environmental organizations nor the media had treated GMOs as a major issue, there was still a remarkably hostile media effect. Therefore, it is difficult to use traditional science communication, which relies on the communication of information, to change the public perception of the GMO dispute, which is stuck in the framework of risk, uncertainty and ethics (Jia and Fan, 2015).

Even though some have reached optimistic conclusions about increasing public knowledge and acceptance of GMOs (Xiong et al., 2014), the promotion of genetic engineering technology and GMO products has always been met with resistance from the public in China. Besides China's traditional cultural emphasis on nature and obsession with traditional agriculture (Fan et al., 2013), the GMO dispute that features prominently in the landscape of science and technology risks (Zeng and Dai, 2015) also relates to uncertainty over new technology and the resulting potential risks.

After safety certificates were issued by China's Ministry of Agriculture for two GM rice varieties developed by Huazhong Agricultural University in 2009, the Chinese public's misgivings about GMOs were intensified by the proposal of GM staple food in 2010 and the ‘golden rice’ incident in Hunan in 2012; the dispute was significantly amplified by the debate between internet celebrities Fang Zhouzi and famous former TV host Cui Yongyuan in 2013. A series of factors, including the uneven distribution of topics in popular media, imbalanced discourse on them and the crisis of trust in scientists, fuelled the vicious cycle of the dispute (Chen, 2014).

The decentralization and recentralization of social media, as well as social media's anti-establishment tendency, have facilitated public participation but failed to effectively promote in-depth communication about the underlying scientific issues and the continuous attention required for prudent decision-making, while simultaneously dissolving the elitist authority of science (Jia et al., 2014).

Interpersonal communication has increased the Chinese public's perception of the risks of GMOs, while internet technology not only undermines the effectiveness of science communication in popular media but also becomes a social and technology platform magnifying science risks (Cui and Ma, 2013). One example is the significant overrepresentation of content about the health risks of GMOs in internet videos about them, which substantially undermined the progress framework of science (Wu and Wang, 2017).

The above literature review provides a rough survey of the many factors contributing to the Chinese public's anxiety about GMOs, including irrational, unscientific media reports (Chen, 2014), differences among the scientific community, the media and the public in their understanding of the uncertainty of science (Liu and Qi, 2017), lack of social trust (Zeng and Dai, 2015) and low levels of scientist participation in science popularization (Jin et al., 2018). The existing literature on individual thinking about GMOs showed that scientific uncertainty, if put into the appropriate preventive framework, can play a positive role in reducing misunderstanding (Liu and Qi, 2017), but empirical research on this subject has been very limited.

Therefore, as an exploratory study, we surveyed science communication on mobile internet devices to examine how the Chinese public perceives GMO technology, aiming to not only provide a reference point for the promotion of transgenic technology but also to lay foundations for a new understanding of how science communication builds the relationship between science and the public in the digital age.

Specifically, this study examines how individual members of the public see GMOs in two interrelated dimensions: perception and attitude. Perception is a basic mental process through which a person obtains or employs knowledge. The public perception of GMOs includes how people perceive and understand GMOs and the concepts, judgments and images that appear in people's mind when they process external information about GMOs. People's attitudes towards GMOs encompass their views, opinions and behavioural tendencies based on their perception of GMOs. This involves not only their scientific literacy but also their values and how science communication works in the process. Regarding the GMO dispute, this study attempts to examine the differences between people with a positive attitude towards GMOs (‘GMO supporters’), people with a neutral attitude (‘GMO neutrals’) and people with misgivings about them (‘GMO opponents’) and the factors that influence their attitudes.

This exploratory research is based on in-depth interviews that we conducted in Shanghai, Xining (Qinghai Province), Jinhua (Zhejiang Province), Nanjing (Jiangsu Province) and Zhanjiang (Guangdong Province) from June to September 2017. Those locations were selected to produce a diverse representation and for convenience. Each interview lasted 50–90 minutes. The interviewees were acquired through the snowball method, and the interviews were semi-structured. We determined the interview framework and basic questions based on a literature review and focus-group interviews, and interviewers made spontaneous decisions according to their interactions with interviewees.

We collected valid responses from 51 participants (see Table 1), of whom 45% were female and most of whom were fairly young and well educated. GMO supporters (clearly supporting transgenic technology and GM crops and food), GMO neutrals (neither clearly supporting nor expressly opposing and avoiding transgenic technology and GM products) and GMO opponents (expressly opposing, rejecting and avoiding GM crops and food) accounted for approximately 24%, 29% and 47% of respondents, respectively.

Table 1 Summary of semi-structured in-depth interviews

Table 1 Summary of semi-structured in-depth interviews

Although the sample collected by the snowball method was limited, we still managed to collect fairly rich first-hand material, thereby laying foundations for subsequent research.

Among the 23 female participants, 15 were GMO opponents and three were supporters; the numbers of male supporters, neutrals and opponents were 9, 10 and 9, respectively. Among the 12 supporters, 10 were under 29 years old, one was between 30 and 50 years old, and one was over 50 years old. The attitudes of respondents with six kinds of academic backgrounds showed certain differences (see Table 2).

Table 2 Profiles of GMO supporters, neutrals, and opponents in the sample

Table 2 Profiles of GMO supporters, neutrals, and opponents in the sample

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3.1 Research finding 1: Perception of GMOs in a motley pool of information

Scholars previously conducted an in-depth investigation into more specific issues under the framework of the risk society theory of Ulrich Beck (2004), reaching the important conclusion that there is no significant consistency between the actual and perceived risk of an event (Covello and Sandman, 2001). While a technology's actual technical risk is a physical, tangible and measurable risk, people's perception of risk is mentally constructed (Stevens, 2008).

As far as transgenic technology is concerned, although the safety of GMOs is universally recognized in the scientific community from the perspective of technical risk (Jia and Fan, 2015), its perceived risk has long been lodged in people's minds. To investigate the underlying perception of risk, our in-depth interviews started with what the interviewees knew about GMOs and where they acquired such information.

The interviews showed that, overall, GMO supporters had a certain base of scientific knowledge underlying their support for GMOs. When asked, ‘What do you think genetic modification is?’, most gave confident answers explaining the underlying scientific specifics:

Genetic modification is a technique for transferring a piece of DNA from one organism to a different organism. For example, scientists, seeing that cobwebs are adhesive, may try to transfer the corresponding DNA from spiders that contributes to the adhesive property to silkworms, so that they will produce silk with this property. If a laboratory experiment is successful, it can be put into application. (E15, Appendix)

When asked the same question (‘What do you think genetic modification is?’), most GMO opponents, while trying to summarize its scientific basis, could not come up with coherent answers and tended to make little or unconfident use of scientific terms:

Genetic modification is something done to organisms or plants against their natural laws of growth with a view to producing relevant products or food. Literally, it is about transforming DNA, about extracting pieces of DNA from things like molecules of organisms and artificially synthesizing them for cultivation. (C7, Appendix)

Some GMO opponents answered the question without reference to any scientific knowledge and directly showed their attitude:

What is genetic modification? I think it is nothing good. (C3, Appendix)

Many things that I grew up with have become very different from how I remember them, with different shapes and tastes. I believe such things have been genetically modified. (E4, Appendix)

To investigate what external information influenced interviewees’ answers to this question, they were asked, ‘From what sources did you acquire your knowledge about genetic modification?’ Most GMO supporters derived their knowledge from school education and other specialized information sources they accessed on their own initiative:

I learned a little about genetic modification in high school and then became better informed through online media reports and popular science works about the technology. (B3, Appendix)

I recently read the book A Rational Look at GMOs, which was published by the Ministry of Agriculture and is a recommended read for the public. (D13, Appendix)

Among the interviewees, GMO opponents derived their information about GMOs from a wide variety of sources, including celebrities, popular media, mobile social networks, and acquaintances:

I picked up what I know about GMOs from different sources, including a GMO documentary produced by the former TV host Cui Yongyuan, WeChat articles, discussions on the knowledge-sharing site Zhihu, and discussions with my friends. (C1, Appendix)

I read articles about GMOs in some magazines, and GMOs were often a dinner table topic with family relatives when I was at home. (D2, Appendix)

The first time I became aware of GMOs was when I was about to eat cherry tomatoes. I was warned by my classmate not to eat them because, according to her, I would risk becoming infertile. (E4, Appendix)

It can be seen from the GMO supporters’ responses that scientific knowledge can help narrow the gap between actual risk and perceived risk. However, GMO opponents often lack scientific knowledge, and their responses show that risk perception based on uncritically accepting false information leads to the social amplification of risk (Kasperson et al., 1988).

Just as previous research has shown, risk perception is a process of the public learning and interpreting risks (Renn et al., 1992). With the wide variety of sources of information in the digital age diluting scientific knowledge, coupled with the point-to-point communication structure of mobile internet, it is possible that some communication nodes will gain a disproportionate influence in shaping people's views. A good example of this is the former CCTV host Cui Yongyuan, who is a vocal opponent of GMOs.

Among the 51 interviewees, 40 mentioned Cui and expressed their opinions about him, and the other 11 did not mention him (see Table 3). Obviously, Cui has been a strong influencer. Whether his views are recognized by the public needs to be examined according to specific situations. Yet it can, at least, be seen that few GMO opponents were critical of Cui, and few GMO supporters spoke positively of him.

Table 3 Interviewees’ opinions on GMO opponent Cui Yongyuan and his views

Table 3 Interviewees’ opinions on GMO opponent Cui Yongyuan and his views

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The study was supported by the Science Popularization and Risk Communication of Transgenic Biotechnologies project (grant ID: 2016ZX08015002).

The authors thank Dr Chu Yajie and postgraduate students Wang Zhenyu, Xu Tongwen and Luo Shicha at the School of Journalism of Fudan University for their help in advancing the project and collecting research data.