Retailing science: genre hybridization in online science news stories

2018 ◽  
Vol 38 (2) ◽  
pp. 243-265 ◽  
Author(s):  
Yiqiong Zhang
Keyword(s):  
Press Releases ◽  
Science Journalism ◽  
News Production ◽  
University Websites ◽  
News Stories ◽  
Science Discourse ◽  
Discourse Practices ◽  
Science News ◽  
Science Rhetoric ◽  
Promotional Discourse

AbstractThis study explores how marketing and science rhetoric have become entrenched in online science news stories. The schematic structures of a corpus of 270 news stories from three types of website (university websites, the websites of Futurity.org and MSNBC.com) have been analyzed and compared. An eight-move structure identified from the corpus suggests that the genre of news stories is a hybridization of promotional discourse for marketization and science discourse for explanation. Hybridization is first evident in university press releases, which are then spread by the mass media without significant changes. From the perspective of intertextual chains, the emerging discourse practices can be attributed to the power shifting of news production from journalists to science institutions and further from journalistic to scientific norms. In turn, the discourse practices accelerate the shift of power, which could ultimately lead to the loss of independent and critical science journalism.

scholarly journals AI writing bots are about to revolutionise science journalism: we must shape how this is done

2018 ◽  
Vol 17 (01) ◽  
pp. E ◽  
Author(s):  
Mico Tatalovic
Keyword(s):  
Artificial Intelligence ◽  
Science Communication ◽  
Scientific Research ◽  
Press Releases ◽  
Science Journalism ◽  
Research Papers ◽  
News Stories ◽  
Sports Finance ◽  
Digital Press

The rise of artificial intelligence has recently led to bots writing real news stories about sports, finance and politics. As yet, bots have not turned their attention to science, and some people still mistakenly think science is too complex for bots to write about. In fact, a small number of insiders are now applying AI algorithms to summarise scientific research papers and automatically turn them into simple press releases and news stories. Could the science beat be next in line for automation, potentially making many science reporters --- and even editors --- superfluous to science communication through digital press? Meanwhile, the science journalism community remains largely unaware of these developments, and is not engaged in directing AI developments in ways that could enhance reporting.

The challenges for science journalism in the UK

2013 ◽  
Vol 37 (2) ◽  
pp. 152-160 ◽  
Author(s):  
Toby H.L. Murcott ◽  
Andy Williams
Keyword(s):  
Public Relations ◽  
The State ◽  
Maximum Output ◽  
Science Journalism ◽  
News Production ◽  
New Science ◽  
Science News ◽  
Public Money ◽  
The Uk

Science journalists in the UK face a number of significant challenges, some shared by journalists in general and some specific to the reporting of science. The world of journalism is changing rapidly as online media grow, squeezing resources and putting pressure on journalists to produce maximum output on minimum resources. The effect is to threaten to shift the role of science news production away from science journalists to public relations (PR) professionals, and to reduce the essential democratic role of the journalist holding the spenders of public money to account. Evidence for this is offered from recent research into the state of science journalism in the UK, and from a BBC-commissioned report into the impartiality of new science coverage in the UK by the state broadcaster.

scholarly journals Can scientists fill the science journalism void? Online public engagement with science stories authored by scientists

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Yael Barel-Ben David ◽  
Erez S. Garty ◽  
Ayelet Baram-Tsabari
Keyword(s):  
News Media ◽  
Popular Science ◽  
Early Career ◽  
Science Journalism ◽  
News Stories ◽  
Science Story ◽  
Starting Point ◽  
Significant Difference ◽  
Science Stories ◽  
Science News

AbstractIn many countries the public’s main source of information about science and technology is the mass media. Unfortunately, in recent years traditional journalism has experienced a collapse, and science journalism has been a major casualty. One potential remedy is to encourage scientists to write for news media about science. On these general news platforms, scientists’ stories would have to compete for attention with other news stories on hard (e.g. politics) and entertaining (e.g. celebrity news) topics written by professional writers. Do they stand a chance?This study aimed to quantitatively characterize audience interactions as an indicator of interest in science news stories authored by early career scientists (henceforth ‘scientists’) trained to function as science reporters, as compared to news items written by reporters and published in the same news outlets.To measure users’ behavior, we collected data on the number of clicks, likes, comments and average time spent on page. The sample was composed of 150 science items written by 50 scientists trained to contribute popular science stories in the Davidson Institute of Science Education reporters’ program and published on two major Israeli news websites - Mako and Ynet between July 2015 to January 2018. Each science item was paired with another item written by the website’s organic reporter, and published on the same channel as the science story (e.g., tourism, health) and the same close time. Overall significant differences were not found in the public’s engagement with the different items. Although, on one website there was a significant difference on two out of four engagement types, the second website did not have any difference, e.g., people did not click, like or comment more on items written by organic reporters than on the stories written by scientists. This creates an optimistic starting point for filling the science news void by scientists as science reporters.

Interdiscursivity and Promotional Discourse: A Corpus-Assisted Genre Analysis of About Us Texts on Chinese University Websites

2020 ◽  
Vol 43 (4) ◽  
pp. 397-416
Author(s):  
Tao Xiong ◽  
Qiuna Li
Keyword(s):  
Higher Education ◽  
Academic Research ◽  
Public Institutions ◽  
International Exchange ◽  
Rhetorical Strategies ◽  
University Websites ◽  
Amount Of Information ◽  
Chinese University ◽  
The University ◽  
Promotional Discourse

Abstract The debate on the marketization of discourse in higher education has sparked and sustained interest among researchers in discourse and education studies across a diversity of contexts. While most research in this line has focused on marketized discourses such as advertisements, little attention has been paid to promotional discourse in public institutions such as the About us texts on Chinese university websites. The goal of the present study is twofold: first, to describe the generic features of the university About us texts in China; and second, to analyze how promotional discourse is interdiscursively incorporated in the discourse by referring to the broader socio-political context. Findings have indicated five main moves: giving an overview, stressing historical status, displaying strengths, pledging political and ideological allegiance, and communicating goals and visions. Move 3, displaying strengths, has the greatest amount of information and can be further divided into six sub-moves which presents information on campus facilities, faculty team, talent cultivation, disciplinary fields construction, academic research, and international exchange. The main linguistic and rhetorical strategies used in these moves are analyzed and discussed.

scholarly journals Understanding the Problem of “Hype”: Exaggeration, Values, and Trust in Science

2020 ◽  
pp. 1-16
Author(s):  
Kristen Intemann
Keyword(s):  
Science Communication ◽  
Science Studies ◽  
Journal Articles ◽  
Press Releases ◽  
Science Journalism ◽  
Value Judgments

Abstract Several science studies scholars report instances of scientific “hype,” or sensationalized exaggeration, in journal articles, institutional press releases, and science journalism in a variety of fields (e.g., Caulfield and Condit 2012). Yet, how “hype” is being conceived varies. I will argue that hype is best understood as a particular kind of exaggeration, one that explicitly or implicitly exaggerates various positive aspects of science in ways that undermine the goals of science communication in a particular context. This account also makes clear the ways that value judgments play a role in judgments of “hype,” which has implications for detecting and addressing this problem.

News production theory and practice

Pragmatics ◽  
2008 ◽  
Vol 18 (1) ◽  
pp. 59-85 ◽  
Author(s):  
Tom Van Hout ◽  
Geert Jacobs
Keyword(s):  
Process Analysis ◽  
Theory And Practice ◽  
Computer Assisted ◽  
Press Releases ◽  
News Production ◽  
News Reports ◽  
Business News ◽  
Writing Practices ◽  
The Individual ◽  
And Control

This paper considers notions of agency, interaction and power in business news journalism. In the first part, we present a bird’s eye view of news access theory as it is reflected in selected sociological and anthropological literature on the ethnography of news production. Next, we show how these theoretical notions can be applied to the study of press releases and particularly to the linguistic pragmatic analysis of the specific social and textual practices that surround their transformation into news reports. Drawing on selected fieldwork data collected at the business desk of a major Flemish quality newspaper, we present an innovative methodology combining newsroom ethnography and computer-assisted writing process analysis which documents how a reporter discovers a story, introduces it into the newsroom, writes and reflects on it. In doing so, we put the individual journalist’s writing practices center stage, zoom in on the specific ways in which he interacts with sources and conceptualize power in terms of his dependence on press releases. Following Beeman & Peterson (2001), we argue in favor of a view of journalism as ‘interpretive practice’ and of news production as a process of entextualization involving multiple actors who struggle over authority, ownership and control.

scholarly journals From journal to headline: the accuracy of climate science news in Danish high quality newspapers

2011 ◽  
Vol 10 (02) ◽  
pp. A03 ◽  
Author(s):  
Gunver Lystbæk Vestergård
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
Content Analysis ◽  
Mass Media ◽  
Scientific Research ◽  
Climate Science ◽  
High Quality ◽  
Scientific Publications ◽  
News Stories ◽  
Science News ◽  
Preliminary Study

A significant number of mass media news stories on climate change quote scientific publications. However, the journalistic process of popularizing scientific research regarding climate change has been profoundly criticized for being manipulative and inaccurate. This preliminary study used content analysis to examine the accuracy of Danish high quality newspapers in quoting scientific publications from 1997 to 2009. Out of 88 articles, 46 contained inaccuracies though the majority was found to be insignificant and random. The study concludes that Danish broadsheet newspapers are ‘moderately inaccurate’ in quoting science publications but are not deliberately hyping scientific claims. However, the study also shows that 11% contained confusion of source, meaning that statements originating from press material or other news outlets were incorrectly credited to scientific peer-reviewed publications.

Deadline Writing

2005 ◽  
Author(s):  
Gareth Cook
Keyword(s):  
Journal Article ◽  
World Trade Center ◽  
Science Writing ◽  
Breaking News ◽  
News Stories ◽  
Science Story ◽  
Science News ◽  
Trade Center ◽  
The Moment ◽  
The City

The moment I walked into the newsroom, I could tell that something was wrong. A group of editors were huddled around the city desk, talking. The televisions were on. People didn't just look tense; they looked genuinely worried. As I walked over to my desk, I saw the image of a burning building. It was the World Trade Center. I was standing there when the second tower fell. I had the same thought that I'm sure a lot of people had: How could this be happening? But I'm also a newspaper reporter, and I realized that there was a science story to be done: Why did the towers fall? Six or seven hours later, I needed to have a finished story that answered that question. It is hard enough to successfully translate the arcane jargon of science into a story for the general reader. A ticking clock makes it that much more difficult—the words “exciting” and “terrifying” come to mind. For a science reporter, this type of breaking news situation doesn't happen very often. One of the great surprises when I moved to science writing a few years ago was that many of the news stories that appear in daily papers were not, in fact, written on deadline. I used to be in awe that someone had the ability to boil down some complex journal article on human origins or supernovas, reach all the important people, and write a clear, elegant article in a day. Many of the big journals, of course, operate on an embargo system, in which reporters are given advance copies and allowed to report ahead of time on the understanding that they won't publish a story until the journal appears in print. But there are still times when science news must be delivered on a daily deadline, either because news breaks or because you have a scoop you don't want to lose. In these cases, I think that everyone who does this for a living develops his own set of tools for coping. Success requires a ruthless attention to where you are in the process, where you are in the day, and what you still need.

Framing the Candidates in Presidential Primaries: Issues and Images in Press Releases and News Coverage

1998 ◽  
Vol 75 (2) ◽  
pp. 312-324 ◽  
Author(s):  
M. Mark Miller ◽  
Julie L. Andsager ◽  
Bonnie P. Riechert
Keyword(s):  
Content Analysis ◽  
News Media ◽  
Media Coverage ◽  
News Coverage ◽  
Press Releases ◽  
Presidential Candidates ◽  
News Stories ◽  
Presidential Primaries ◽  
Computerized Content Analysis ◽  
Elite Newspapers

Media coverage of presidential primaries is crucial to voters, and candidates often complain that news coverage fails to present their positions. This study used computerized content analysis to examine how the 1996 GOP presidential candidates framed themselves in press releases and how elite newspapers covered them. The analysis reveals that (1) candidate images were distinct in press releases and news stories; (2) candidate positions were represented differently in both; and (3) candidates were differentially successful in getting news media to reflect their positions. News media covered substantive concerns that were not included in candidate press releases.

Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document