This book discusses the public opinion process with a focus on the role that the news media play in shaping public opinion. Although heavily influenced by the agenda-setting perspective -- the view that the news media define the important issues of the day and determine how these issues are presented -- the authors neither support nor refute this claim. They present instead a variety of contemporary scholarship integrated into a coherent picture of public opinion for a general audience.

This book puts the subject of publics and their engagement with emerging technologies on robust footing. With a strong, though not exclusive, focus on genomic technologies, leading theorists and practitioners in the field provide overviews of methods and approaches and theoretical accounts of the processes underlying public engagement.