Title: Framing disease, ageing and death in popular science journalism
Source document: Brno studies in English. 2016, vol. 42, iss. 1, pp. [49]-69
Extent
[49]-69
-
ISSN0524-6881 (print)1805-0867 (online)
Persistent identifier (DOI): https://doi.org/10.5817/BSE2016-1-3
Stable URL (handle): https://hdl.handle.net/11222.digilib/136083
Type: Article
Language
License: Not specified license
Notice: These citations are automatically created and might not follow citation rules properly.
Abstract(s)
This paper characterizes the dominant frames in popular science-oriented reports devoted to disease, ageing and death. In popular science journalism, framing often consists in the discursive construction of newsworthiness, i.e., foregrounding features of events/issues considered by science editors to be relevant or attractive for audiences, despite the alienating nature of some types of news. A sample of most-read health-related articles from New Scientist (2013-2015) is subjected to content analysis, keyness analysis, concordance analysis and news value analysis to demonstrate how bioscience tends to be framed through consistent and strategic linguistic choices. The analyses reveal that most frames for disease, ageing and death in popular science coverage work as vehicles for the celebration of medical science as a domain of reporting, and thus forward the media outlet's market-driven agenda rather than discuss the deeper implications of bioscientific findings.
References
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[33] O'Connor, Cliodhna and Helene Joffe (2013) 'How has neuroscience affected lay understandings of personhood? A review of evidence.' Public Understanding of Science 22(3): 254–268. | DOI 10.1177/0963662513476812
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[2] Bauer, Martin W. (1998) 'The medicalization of science news: From the rocket-scalpel to the gene-meteorite complex.' Social Science Information 37(4): 731–751. | DOI 10.1177/053901898037004009
[3] Bauer, Martin W. and Jane Gregory (2007) 'From journalism to corporate communication in post-war Britain.' In: Bauer, Martin W. and Massimiano Bucchi (eds.) Journalism, Science and Society: Science Communication between News and Public Relations. London: Routledge, 33–52.
[4] Beck, Ulrich (1992) Risk Society: Towards a New Modernity. London: Sage.
[5] Bednarek, Monika and Helen Caple (2012) News Discourse. London: Continuum.
[6] Bednarek, Monika and Helen Caple (2014) 'Why do news values matter? Towards a new methodological framework for analyzing news discourse in Critical Discourse Analysis and beyond.' Discourse & Society 25(2): 135–158. | DOI 10.1177/0957926513516041
[7] Bell, Allan (1991) The Language of News Media. Oxford: Blackwell.
[8] Bucchi, Massimiano and Renato G. Mazzolini (2007) 'Big science, little news. Science coverage in the Italian daily press, 1946–1997.' In: Bauer, Martin W. and Massimiano Bucchi (eds.) Journalism, Science and Society: Science Communication between News and Public Relations. London: Routledge, 53–70.
[9] Bowler, Peter (2009) Science for All: The Popularization of Science in Early Twentieth Century. Chicago: Chicago University Press.
[10] Broks, Peter (2006) Understanding Popular Science. Maidenhead: Open University Press.
[11] Calsamiglia, Helen and Teun A. van Dijk (2004) 'Popularization discourse and knowledge about the genome.' Discourse and Society 15(4), 369–389. | DOI 10.1177/0957926504043705
[12] Conboy, Martin (2006) Tabloid Britain: Constructing a Community through Language. London: Routledge.
[13] Conboy, Martin (2011) Journalism in Britain: A Historical Introduction. London: Sage.
[14] Dobrić, Nikola and Franzisca Weder (2016) 'Media conceptualizing illness – the case of flu.' Continuum: Journal of Media & Cultural Studies 30(1): 126–142. | DOI 10.1080/10304312.2015.1117573
[15] Fjaestad, Bjorn (2007) 'Why journalists report science as they do.' In: Bauer, Martin W. and Massimiano Bucchi (eds.) Journalism, Science and Society: Science Communication between News and Public Relations. London: Routledge, 123–131.
[16] Fowler, Roger (1991) Language in the News: Discourse and Ideology in the Press. London: Psychology Press.
[17] Gamson, William A. (1992) Talking Politics. New York: Cambridge University Press.
[18] Gitlin, Tod (1980) The Whole World is Watching: Mass Media in the Making and Unmaking of the New Left. Berkeley: University of California Press.
[19] Guenther, Lars and Georg Ruhrmann (2013) 'Science journalists' selection criteria and depiction of nanotechnology in German media.' Journal of Science Communication 12(3): 1–17.
[20] Gunnarson, Brit-Louise (2013) 'Development of medical discourse.' In: Hyland, Ken (ed.) Discourse Studies Reader. London: Bloomsbury, 177–193.
[21] Jensen, Eric (2012) 'Scientific sensationalism in American and British press coverage of therapeutic cloning.' Journalism and Mass Communication Quarterly 89(1): 40–54. | DOI 10.1177/1077699011428592
[22] Kitzinger, Jenny (2007) 'Framing and frame analysis.' In: Devereux, Eoin (ed.) Media Studies: Key Issues and Debates. London: Sage, 144–161.
[23] Kitzinger, Jenny and Claire Williams (2005) 'Forecasting science futures: Legitimising hope and calming fears in the embryo stem cell debate.' Social Science and Medicine 61: 731–740. | DOI 10.1016/j.socscimed.2005.03.018
[24] McLachlan, Shelley and Paul Golding (2000) 'Tabloidization in the British press: A quantitative investigation into changes in British newspapers.' In: Sparks, Collin and John Tulloch (eds.) Tabloid Tales. Oxford: Rowman and Littlefield, 75–90.
[25] McManus, John (1994) Market-driven Journalism. Thousand Oaks: Sage.
[26] Mielby, Henrik, Peter Sandoe and Jesper Lassen (2012) 'The role of scientific knowledge in shaping public attitudes to GM technologies.' Public Understanding of Science 22 (2): 155–168. | DOI 10.1177/0963662511430577
[27] Molek-Kozakowska, Katarzyna (2013) 'Towards a pragma-linguistic framework for the study of sensationalism in news headlines.' Discourse & Communication 7(2): 173–197. | DOI 10.1177/1750481312471668
[28] Molek-Kozakowska, Katarzyna (2014) 'Coercive metaphors in news headlines: A cognitive-pragmatic approach.' Brno Studies in English 40(1): 149–173. | DOI 10.5817/BSE2014-1-8
[29] Molek-Kozakowska, Katarzyna (2015) 'Pragmalinguistic categories in discourse analysis of science journalism.' Lodz Papers in Pragmatics 11(2): 157–179.
[30] Molek-Kozakowska, Katarzyna (2016) 'Stylistic analysis of headlines in science journalism: A case study of New Scientist.' Public Understanding of Science 1–14 DOI: 10.1177/0963662516637321. | DOI 10.1177/0963662516637321
[31] Montgomery, Martin (2007) The Discourse of Broadcast News. A Linguistic Approach. London: Routledge.
[32] Murawska, Magdalena (2011) 'From a complaint through therapy to recovery: Patient indexicality in medical case reports.' In: Pawlak, Mirosław and Jakub Bielak (eds.) New Perspectives in Language, Discourse and Translation Studies. Berlin and Heidelberg: Springer, 189–199.
[33] O'Connor, Cliodhna and Helene Joffe (2013) 'How has neuroscience affected lay understandings of personhood? A review of evidence.' Public Understanding of Science 22(3): 254–268. | DOI 10.1177/0963662513476812
[34] Paltridge, Brian (2013) 'Critical Discourse Analysis.' In: Hyland, Ken (ed.) Discourse Studies Reader, London: Bloomsbury, 89–109.
[35] Pan, Zhongdang and Gerald M. Kosicki (1993) 'Framing analysis: An approach to news discourse.' Political Communication 10: 55–75. | DOI 10.1080/10584609.1993.9962963
[36] Potter, Jonathan, Margaret Wetherell and Andrew Chitty (1991) 'Quantification rhetoric – cancer on television.' Discourse & Society 2(3): 333–365. | DOI 10.1177/0957926591002003005
[37] Weitkamp, Emma (2003) 'British newspapers privilege health and medicine topics over other science news.' Public Relations Review 29(3): 321–333. | DOI 10.1016/S0363-8111(03)00041-9