Content, evaluations and influences in newspaper coverage of predictive genetic testing: A comparative media content analysis from the United Kingdom and Switzerland

2018 ◽  
Vol 28 (3) ◽  
pp. 256-274 ◽  
Author(s):  
Bettina M. Zimmermann ◽  
Noah Aebi ◽  
Steffen Kolb ◽  
David Shaw ◽  
Bernice S. Elger
Keyword(s):  
Content Analysis ◽  
United Kingdom ◽  
Genetic Testing ◽  
Public Engagement ◽  
Public Discourse ◽  
Predictive Genetic Testing ◽  
Newspaper Coverage ◽  
Media Content Analysis ◽  
Political Issues ◽  
The United Kingdom

Predictive genetic testing often entails challenging decisions about preventive measures and uncertain health-related risk predictions. Because of its increasing availability, it is important to assess how to debate it publicly. Newspaper content analysis represents a common and reliable way to investigate public discourse retrospectively. We thus quantitatively compare broadsheet newspaper coverage about predictive genetic testing in the United Kingdom and Switzerland during the period of 2011–2016 regarding content, evaluations, stakeholder influence, and trigger events. British coverage was more extensive and positive and included more personal stories. Swiss coverage had more focus on political issues. Angelina Jolie’s announcement about her double mastectomy was the most important coverage trigger. Researchers were the most frequently cited stakeholder group, but stakeholders from government and civil society were also represented. Our results thus reflect a movement toward a more active public engagement with predictive genetic testing. The findings help to improve and enrich public engagement regarding predictive genetic testing.

Monitoring Standards for Molecular Genetic Testing in the United Kingdom, The Netherlands, and Ireland

2006 ◽  
Vol 10 (3) ◽  
pp. 147-156 ◽  
Author(s):  
Simon C. Ramsden ◽  
Zandra Deans ◽  
David O. Robinson ◽  
Roger Mountford ◽  
Erik A. Sistermans ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
United Kingdom ◽  
Genetic Testing ◽  
The Netherlands ◽  
Molecular Genetic ◽  
Molecular Genetic Testing ◽  
The United Kingdom

Britain, Commonwealth and the End of Empire

2004 ◽  
Author(s):  
Robert Holland
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
United Kingdom ◽  
Great Britain ◽  
British Empire ◽  
Public Discourse ◽  
Due Process ◽  
The United Kingdom ◽  
History Of ◽  
British Commonwealth

This chapter examines the history of Great Britain, the British Commonwealth, and the end of the British Empire in the twentieth century, suggesting that the twentieth century ended in Britain as it began, with the constitutional structure of the United Kingdom a contested and vital subject of public discourse. It concludes that the transitions that characterised the Empire-Commonwealth over the twentieth century were ultimately constrained within the due process of British constitutionalism.

Discourse and Democracy

2020 ◽  
pp. 233-261
Author(s):  
Chris Heffer
Keyword(s):  
European Union ◽  
United Kingdom ◽  
Public Discourse ◽  
Large Scale ◽  
Weapons Of Mass Destruction ◽  
Democratic Legitimacy ◽  
Common Theme ◽  
The European Union ◽  
The United Kingdom ◽  
Voter Fraud

This chapter summarizes the main analytical moves in the TRUST heuristic for analyzing untruthfulness. It then applies the heuristic to three short texts that have been widely called out as lies: Trump’s tweet about large-scale voter fraud just before the 2016 presidential elections; the “Brexit Battle Bus” claim that the United Kingdom sent £350 million per week to the European Union; and Tony Blair’s 2002 statement to Parliament about Iraq possessing weapons of mass destruction. The cases share a common theme: the capacity of untruthful public discourse to undermine democratic legitimacy by, respectively, questioning the integrity of electoral procedures, harming the capacity of voters to make a rational choice, and undermining faith in the rational and responsible deliberation of one’s leaders. The chapter troubles the simple attribution of lying in these cases and shows how a TRUST analysis can lead to a deeper understanding of the types and ethical value of untruthfulness.

scholarly journals Gender and Higher Education: Increasing Exposure of Harassment and Pay Gaps

2018 ◽  
Vol 94 ◽  
pp. 7-8
Author(s):  
Ellen Hazelkorn
Keyword(s):  
Higher Education ◽  
United Kingdom ◽  
Sexual Harassment ◽  
Public Discourse ◽  
Academic Culture ◽  
Full Scale ◽  
The United Kingdom

In Ireland and the United Kingdom, public discourse around issues of sexual harassment and promotion and pay gaps is increasing. A lack of research, combined with a lack of understanding, means the full scale is unknown, and universities lack basic guidelines. Narrow definitions of excellence also shape academic culture. But action is slowly taking hold. The take-away is that nothing moves institutions fasterthan compliance and money.

scholarly journals It’s the EU immigrants stupid! UKIP’s core-issue and populist rhetoric on the road to Brexit

2019 ◽  
Vol 34 (3) ◽  
pp. 248-266 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ceri Hughes
Keyword(s):  
European Union ◽  
United Kingdom ◽  
Newspaper Coverage ◽  
The European Union ◽  
The Road ◽  
News Releases ◽  
The United Kingdom ◽  
Core Issue ◽  
On The Road ◽  
Prevalent Form

The 2016 vote to leave the European Union was one of the biggest developments in recent United Kingdom political history. Only one political party was wholly united for Brexit – the United Kingdom Independence Party. This research finds that in the years leading up to Brexit, the United Kingdom Independence Party presented itself as a rigid core-issue complete-populist party. Content analysis shows how pervasive the European Union was in much of the party output and in the contemporaneous newspaper coverage of the party. The party also utilizes complete-populist rhetoric, with ‘othering’ populism as the most prevalent form. The consistent concentration on the European Union collocated with populist messaging, in both news releases and select newspaper coverage, may have helped afford the United Kingdom Independence Party issue-eliteness in the referendum campaign. But this same work may have also ultimately contributed to make them irrelevant by 2017, and possibly moribund by 2018.

Comparing Government Agendas

2011 ◽  
Vol 44 (8) ◽  
pp. 973-1000 ◽  
Author(s):  
Peter Bjerre Mortensen ◽  
Christoffer Green-Pedersen ◽  
Gerard Breeman ◽  
Laura Chaqués-Bonafont ◽  
Will Jennings ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
United Kingdom ◽  
The Body ◽  
Systematic Research ◽  
Political Issues ◽  
Parliamentary Democracies ◽  
The United Kingdom ◽  
Government Power ◽  
Legislative Agenda ◽  
Policy Agendas ◽  
Almost All

At the beginning of each parliamentary session, almost all European governments give a speech in which they present the government’s policy priorities and legislative agenda for the year ahead. Despite the body of literature on governments in European parliamentary democracies, systematic research on these executive policy agendas is surprisingly limited. In this article the authors study the executive policy agendas—measured through the policy content of annual government speeches—over the past 50 years in three Western European countries: the United Kingdom, the Netherlands, and Denmark. Contrary to the expectations derived from the well-established “politics matters” approach, the analyses show that elections and change in partisan color have little effect on the executive issue agendas, except to a limited extent for the United Kingdom. In contrast, the authors demonstrate empirically how the policy agenda of governments responds to changes in public problems, and this affects how political parties define these problems as political issues. In other words, policy responsibility that follows from having government power seems much more important for governments’ issue agendas than the partisan and institutional characteristics of governments.

scholarly journals Bioconstitutional Imaginaries and the Comparative Politics of Genetic Self-knowledge

2020 ◽  
Vol 45 (6) ◽  
pp. 1087-1118
Author(s):  
J. Benjamin Hurlbut ◽  
Ingrid Metzler ◽  
Luca Marelli ◽  
Sheila Jasanoff
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
United Kingdom ◽  
Genetic Testing ◽  
Comparative Politics ◽  
Well Being ◽  
The United States ◽  
Direct To Consumer ◽  
The United Kingdom ◽  
Before And After ◽  
Self Knowledge

Genetic testing has become a vehicle through which basic constitutional relationships between citizens and the state are revisited, reaffirmed, or rearticulated. The interplay between the is of genetic knowledge and the ought of government unfolds in the context of diverse imaginaries of the forms of human well-being, freedom, and flourishing that states have a duty to support. This article examines how the United Kingdom, Germany, and the United States governed testing for Alzheimer’s disease, and how they diverged in defining potential harms, benefits, and objects of regulation. Comparison before and after the arrival of direct-to-consumer genetic tests reveals differences in national understandings of what it means to protect life and citizenship: in the United Kingdom, ensuring physical wellness through clinical utility; in the United States, protecting both citizens’ physical well-being and freedom to choose through a framework of consumer protection; and in Germany, emphasizing individual flourishing and an unburdened sense of human development that is expressed in genetic testing law and policy as a commitment to the stewardship of personhood. Operating with their own visions of what it means to protect life and citizenship, these three states arrived at settlements that coproduced substantially different bioconstitutional regimes around Alzheimer’s testing.

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