Features

• Presents qualitative results from focus groups and interviews to provide a much more nuanced picture of what non-experts think about nanotechnology and what they expect from it
• Details lessons learned from the empirical evidence to date
• Reviews different risk communication models used for other products that could apply to different forms of nanotechnology, such as informed consent, nutritional and side effects labels, other consumer warnings, chemical pesticide labels
• Explains how public opinion about new technologies is formed and adoption decisions made based on media messages, other information, and pre-existing values
• Explores how risks become amplified or attenuated by social processes; and how this applies to nanotechnology
• Backs assertions with solid theory and research on how "ordinary" people actually think and decide about technologies generally and nanotechnology specifically
• Investigates the concept of public engagement, why it has appealed as a means of addressing communication problems encountered in unrolling earlier technologies

Summary

This quick, easy-to-read reference supplies data and interpretation on the public perception of nanotechnology, along with a discussion of the implications for risk communication. An integral component of the Perspectives in Nanotechnology Series, the book is based primarily on a review of available social science evidence as well as the author's research concerning public perceptions of nanotechnology. She applies lessons learned from other emerging technologies to help clarify and define the issues of risk and the public that accompany nanotechnology, and to suggest the challenges involved in managing those risks. The book demnostrates how the wide variety of nanotechnologies under development precludes reliance on a single approach.