Navigating Alarming Media Messages About Nutrition and Health: How Students Engage in Critical Examination of Science in News Media

Abstract

This study focuses the emerging need for young people to critically respond to alarming messages in contemporary media highlighting the potential benefits or harms of certain foods. Besides being technical, advancements in the field of nutrition reported in media are often of tentative and speculative character, primarily selected and constructed on the basis of their news value rather than as representing established knowledge. The study aims to study students’ capabilities to navigate and critically respond to controversial media messages about health and nutrition in the context of science education. Our theoretical point of departure is in the concept “an examined life” in the critical reflection tradition of Socrates and the Stoics. We analyze how groups of upper secondary science class students engage in critical examination of a controversial message about cow’s milk encountered through Swedish public service news media on the Internet. The results illuminate that even when controversial findings are produced by a reputed university and communicated through independent media, students are capable of discerning the need to scrutinize such findings and are capable of performing such critical examination drawing on experiences of scientific investigations. Students’ openness to question authoritative voices in society and to illuminate the new findings on milk from multiple perspectives reflects how “an examined life” may be enacted in the context of science education. Inviting students to participate in related activities shows promise for enabling a critical examination of themselves and others in ways deemed important for democratic citizenship.