Public attitudes toward new technologies: Our post-truth, post-trust, post-expert world demands a deeper understanding of the factors that drive public attitudes

Public attitude surveys are the prime method used to assess public attitudes to science and technology, but can also be very problematic-as evidenced in the number of different polls that come up with different findings. Toward better understanding of what drives public attitudes, it has become more relevant to find out "Why" people think what they do about science and technology than to know "What" they think. Recent research into how values drive attitudes has been very important to our increased understanding. However, in a post-truth, post-trust, post-expert world-where notions of truth, trust, and expertise are now commonly contested-we need to also better understand the social and media environments we are now living in, and how they affect attitudes to new technologies.