CERN Higgs boson Flash Report - PowerPoint Presentation

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CERN Higgs boson Flash Report December 12th-16th, 2011Slide2

Table of Contents

CERN Higgs boson Flash Report

Executive Summary & Findings 3-4Background 5Pre-announcement overview 6Announcement overview 7Post announcement overview 8 Key Metrics 9-14Quotes in Coverage 15 Key Take Away Points 16Methodology 17Contact Details 18

Sources

Glide Intelligence

offers a view of editorials based upon a range of sources which are incorporated into each analysis.

This report analyses all online

content,

and print

content in

the UK, France, Germany, Spain and

Italy (EU5) and key outlets globally.

This includes print national news media, print regional news media, print magazine and trade journals, online news sources (including online versions of print publications), blogs associated with print and online news and consumer media sources, in addition to broadcast coverage (television and radio).

Syndicated stories are included and annotated within the GlideIntelligence system. For reporting purposes, they are included in calculations for sentiment, circulation and AVE.Slide3

Executive Summary & Findings

Faced with the prospect of handling media expectation and coverage over a set of experimental announcements billed (even by some physicists) as ‘the most important announcement of this century’, CERN had to achieve a fine balance between fact and implication.

The Communications executive did manage the news sufficiently well to see the majority of traditional media outlets report a balanced view, dominated by the expressions; ‘narrowing the search’, ‘tantalising glimpse’, ‘on the trail’ and ‘God particle’. Social media was polarized between the intense re-tweeting of the best of the physics community’s explanations and a new round of improbably physics jokes - but was overwhelmingly positive. Of note was the fact that Twitter was literally ‘overwhelmed’ by the volume of material. Between reporting the obvious excitement and anticipation within the physics community and the public appetite for an ‘epoch-making’ announcement to follow the ‘faster than light’ story the media more or less presented the public with a balanced view which (by accident or design) got the story more of less correct without losing its appeal. There were exceptions, notably a heated debate over the use of the ‘God particle’ description and the consequences for the standard model of physics if the Higgs boson were found not to exist, bit of which saw Peter Higgs interviewed. Lack of a ‘publicly accessible’ explanation of the Higgs theory either before or during the announcement hampered many media outlets’ ability to explain why the results had caused so much excitement. Slide4

Broadcast media and mainstream newspapers fared best with their access to popular science presenters, scientists and personalities - though even these sometimes struggled to explain matters.

In that the balance of reporting did convey the facts that the Atlas and CMS results had narrowed the possibility of detecting the Higgs’ decay signature to areas consistent with theory, and that further results would make it possible to have a more conclusive announcement in 2012. The results vindicate CERN’s media strategy.

There are lessons, however, for future announcements which include a clear need for the development of materials aimed at making physics concepts more comprehensible to the general media and public.

Within the reporting charting has been modified to reflect CERN’s media strategy that the reporting should reflect the fact that there was no conclusive proof of the existence of the Higgs boson, but that results were consistent with theory and would be updated next year. Correspondingly, reports containing a conclusive yes or no were scored as a negative outcome and the large volume of neutral articles can be viewed as a positive outcome for CERN. One thing is certain; CERN has entered the public mainstream to a degree unmatched by any other scientific institution – a fact with both positive and negative potential going forward. Executive Summary & Findings (2)Slide5

At the outset the communications executive at CERN faced a daunting set of challenges. On the one hand, rumors and blog posts from scientists had established that the Dec 13th briefing by the Atlas and CMS groups would contain an important update about the decades long search for the Higgs boson (possibly validating the existence and expenditure on the controversial Large Hadron Collider), on the other was the difficult task of managing media expectation and reporting on a technically difficult branch of physics.

The ‘media frenzy’ was certainly fuelled by September’s ‘faster than light’ neutrino experimental results which had, in the minds if some aspects of the popular press, ‘challenged’ Einstein’s most famous theories. Could CERN, they wondered, top this by confirming or disproving the basis of modern physics as an encore?

  Underpinning these stories was the sometimes hostile media reporting of the massive amounts of time, resources and money by CERN at a time of economic crisis throughout Europe on experiments which (at least to the tabloid press) had very little relevance to the ‘average person’.

  Against such a mix of competing sentiment the ‘best’ outcome for CERN’s communications team was a ‘draw’ which would see the excitement of scientists balanced against the reality that the results would be inconclusive (in that no definite yes or no was possible to announce).  Complicating the picture still further was the fact that the subject was a difficult (sometime impenetrably so) branch of physics which reporters and public would find hard to explain and previous media attempts at this with slogan-based descriptions including ‘the God Particle’.BackgroundSlide6

In the seven days preceding the Atlas/CMS announcement there was some evidence of pre-briefing key media groups to establish a framework of reference or context around the content of the announcements. However, although the mainstream broadcast media moderated their reporting to suggest that the announcement would be, at best, a ‘first sign of evidence’ rather than a definitive announcement This was overwhelmed by the volume of unbridled speculation in the social media and ‘populist’ media outlets. The problem this created was simply one of a ‘demand’ for certainly on a subject where such clarity is difficult, if not impossible, for the general public to grasp.

The degree of difficulty in understanding (or creating simple analogies) for the public is evidenced by the inability of science reporters (e.g. BBC’s Susan Watts) to articulate even the basics of the Higgs theory about fields and bosons - and frequent ‘clips’ from scientists in reports stating that they could not explain it either.

Former CERN Scientist Professor Brian Cox did at least add popular appeal to some broadcasts.

A consequence was a series of circulated analogies including the way rumors added ‘mass’ to politicians in a meeting room. Arguably the most comprehensible was the analogy that the Higgs was the keystone in an arch dividing those particles with mass from mass-less particles.Pre AnnouncementSlide7

Such was the level of anticipation for this announcement that some broadcast channels interrupted their news broadcasts to go ‘live’ for coverage. Attempts by broadcasters to add commentary were mixed but did manage to get the critical ‘sound bites’ about ‘glimpses’ and agreement with theory, along with Professor Rolf-Dieter Heuer’s ‘stay tuned’.

With editorial pages likely ‘booked’ ahead of time the mainstream media appeared to struggle to with headline writing and ‘colour’ to fill up the space. In Europe, Germany, France, the Netherlands and the UK saw consistent coverage of the main facts including; the results are exciting but not conclusive, new tests will allow more certainty in 2012, the results are from two independent groups, results do not contradict theory, use of the Large Hadron Collider was crucial to conducting the experiments and that although seemingly irrelevant to the world at large our understanding of fundamental physics does find it way into ordinary everyday existence.

  There was around 3% of coverage stating that CERN had found the Higgs (boson or field was not differentiated) but the overwhelming theme (61%) described ‘tantalising hints’ and ‘glimpses’ that scientists were ‘on the right track’.

  Social media was paradoxically more serious (and intense in its factual discussion of the results) and more flippant in its generation of Higgs puns and jokes, plus some aimless speculation about the future of religion, science and why did any of it matter. What is interesting is that there was little apparent crossover between traditional and social media stories (possibly because the timing of the announcement allowed even print media the chance to cover the story with only a 12-15 hour delay). Twitter became part of the story as its system was overwhelmed for several hours by the volume of material and retweets citing resources and blogs explaining the Higgs boson.AnnouncementSlide8

The aftermath of the announcement saw a fragmentation within the media, and a skew of announcement content across an extended period as the weekly and specialist scientific media’s longer schedules saw the same reports appears across several days.

There were several storylines which grew out of the announcement coverage including; ‘does this announcement challenge the existence of God?’ (and the reverse), does ‘big science’ matter, how physics has helped shape the modern world and several ‘short histories’ of the Higgs theory.

Although these represent unique threads in coverage they do in fact only account for around 16% of the total, which may be taken to mean that, good or bad, the interest beyond the ‘headline’ announcement is limited and dropping back to pre-announcement levels of activity.

Post AnnouncementSlide9

Most Observed Message:Scientists narrow search for Higgs boson -

they are on the right track

Most Observed Issue:

Data not yet conclusive but announcement in 2012 is likelyMost Negative Message:Arguments over use of term ‘The God particle’Total Volume: 1910 Very Positive: 10.41% Positive: 10.36% Neutral: 68.17% Poor: 6.49% Negative: 4.55% Circulation: 629,337,259AVE: €112,156,338 Key Metrics – Overall (Global) Slide10

Article Volume Higgs boson 2011

(Global)

CERNSlide11

Mentions by Tonality Higgs boson 2011

(global)

CERNSlide12

% of Mentions by Tonality Higgs boson 2011

(Global)

CERNSlide13

CERN

Key words/themes in Higgs boson Media Coverage

(Global)Slide14

CERN

Social Media Trend

(Global)Slide15

The Professor Rolf-Dieter Heuer, head of CERN, urged: "Please be prudent. We have not found it yet. Stay tuned for next year."

Financial Times 13

th

December 2011The "The Higgs is not endowed with any religious meaning. It is ridiculous to call it that,“."It's not doing justice to the Higgs and what we think its role in the universe is. It has nothing to do with God." - Peter HiggsReuters 13th December 2011Last The exchange, as physicists at the CERN research center near Geneva were preparing to announce the latest news from their long and frustrating search for the Higgs boson, illustrated sharply how science and the popular media are not always a good mix. The Guardian 13th December 2011Am europäischen teilchenforschungszentrum cern, dem größten beschleuniger der welt, wurden mit zwei detektoren erste hinweise auf das higgs-boson entdeckt. es verleiht der materie die masse - und ist das meistgesuchte teilchen der physikgeschichte.... Frankfurter Rundschau 13th December 2011Les scientifiques du cern ont annoncé mardi avoir localisé le lieu d'existence du boson de higgs, particule donnant leur masse à toutes les autres particules élémentaires. un élément capital pour décrire toutes les forces dans l'univers. AFP France 24 - Décembre 13th 2001

Twitter feeds were choked by the volume of tweets mentioning CERN or Higgs and the webcast from CERN webcast.web.cern.ch/webcast/ struggling to cope with demand from Higgs-hunters.

BBC World News – 13

th

December 2011

Comments from Articles

CERNSlide16

The CERN communications team should rightly conclude that the announcement strategy was a success given the objectives to manage expectations about certainty, and the context required to understand the announcement at all. Of particular note was the scientific engagement materials referenced in the social media space which were widely taken up and re-distributed.

Less successful was the ability to engage with mainstream media writers and producers, many of whom appeared to have had to create their own explanations and ‘expert opinion’ contributors (it is noteworthy that Fermilab scientists in the USA appeared more comfortable with media questions and had ‘public-friendly’ ready answers to hand in interviews. It was Fermilab’s visualisation which topped the trending on YouTube to help the public understand the Higgs boson and it was widely used in US media.

There are some learning points which may help bridge the gap in understanding between CERN’s scientists and its mainstream audiences in order to retain media interest in 2012 concerning Higgs results, or any other announcement.

Drawing on the experience of other scientific announcements which gained popular understanding might offer one avenue to take the Higgs results forward would be some image or graphic (not a graph, or at least one which looked as ‘laboratory produced’ as the one used during the announcement). Examples include IBM’s writing its name in atoms (scanning tunneling microscope), numerous Hubble telescope images (astronomy and the cost of the project), Mandelbrot set (chaos mathematics) and even the dual-slit banding to show wave/particle duality. Having twice caught the general public’s attention with announcements in 2011 CERN has a unique opportunity to cement the role of ‘big science’ in a context which will retain broad public support – but it needs to demonstrate its awareness that its global audience does often not understand the language of physics and be prepared to help bridge this gap as a means to manage expectation.Key Take Away PointsSlide17

The determination of sentiment and message content was determined using the GlideIntelligenceTM

system which applies grammar and syntax rules to allow the identification of phrases and messages including close approximations rather than keywords or simple Boolean logic. For example; the phrase “delivering shareholder value” would also return results from phrases including “will see a healthy return for shareholders”. The method can also produce results for contradictions of messages. Overall article tonality is determined by an advanced syntax mapping software model which breaks the article into component ‘sentiment’ transactions i.e.

"A controversial decision by <1|Lloyds Banking Group> to award its senior executives large bonuses has been endorsed"[+] even though "more than 10 per cent of the bank's"[-] "shareholders failed to back the plan"[-] .

"Just over 8.5 per cent of investors opposed the bank's remuneration policy at its annual meeting in <2|Edinburgh> yesterday"[-]. A further 1.5 per cent abstained. But "the pay structure was approved by a comfortable margin"[+], "given the <3|Association of British Insurers> had issued an amber top alert"[+], "urging investors to give <3|it> careful consideration"[+]. "Investors questioned the performance criteria used by the bank's pay committee that led to senior executives being awarded bonuses of more than £5m in a year the state-backed bank recorded a £6.3bn loss"[-] .The individual transactions (seen here in [ ] ) are aggregated using a statistical association tested on human readers to produce an overall output score (positive or negative number) which can be mapped into a scale. For Sony Europe this is a five point scale. Articles are analysed in such a way that both individual scores are produced for companies, divisions, products and topics making it possible to separate individual elements from the overall tone of an article (i.e. A negative article may contain positive mentions of Sony or its products).Circulation is calculated using audited circulation figures for print and broadcast sources, and a statistical model based on the ‘AlexaRank’ rating system for online sources. AVE figures are calculated for all articles based on their size and the volume of content. In the case of negative coverage there is a modified value system which can produce negative scores to show the scale of negative impact (as an equivalent to Advertising). Two values are shown; the highest figure represents a ‘best case’/’best value’ upper range, the lower figure is adjusted to look only at the value of individual transactions, impact from negative coverage and the percentage of coverage against competitors. If this value shows negative AVE it’s displayed in red.The commentary sections in the report are produced by a combination of the GlideIntelligence automated article summaries and assessments from Glide analyst consultants.Appendix – MethodologySlide18

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