These findings also had some interesting implications for questions of media and
‘authority’—that is, the extent to which audiences perceive what they are being told as
‘true’ or ‘trustworthy’, and to the linked matters of which media seem to command most
attention or be imbued with greatest ‘authenticity’. As various research has shown,
museums in general are generally and widely perceived as authoritative institutions or
media genres (e.g. Usherwood et al. 2004). In the Science Museum research, visitors
tended to regard the Museum as presenting them with neutral, value-free facts, even when
they were critical of what they called the ‘bias’ in other media.