SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY IN COLOMBIAN NEWSCASTS: ON WHAT IS COVERED AND NOT COVERED

In this paper we analyze a corpus of science and technology news broadcasted by Noticias Caracol - the TV news program with the highest level of audiences in Colombia. This article serves for the dual purpose of verifying whether the demand of Colombians for this type of information is minimally supplied and to account for the main features of the coverage of science and technology in this TV news. The results show that these issues had relatively low importance on the agenda of this newscast and government members play an important role, not only as sources but as voices in the construction of news stories. We also found that this TV news program is not necessarily democratic in choosing its sources, its voices and its references, and did not give strong elements of context for this kind of information.

Noticias Caracol; Science communication; TV news; Science and technology; Content analisys; Colombia.