Rights statement: The final, definitive version of this article has been published in the Journal, Discourse & Communication, 14 (1), 2019, © SAGE Publications Ltd, 2019 by SAGE Publications Ltd at the Discourse & Communication page: https://journals.sagepub.com/home/dcm on SAGE Journals Online: http://journals.sagepub.com/
Accepted author manuscript, 389 KB, PDF document
Available under license: CC BY-NC: Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License
Final published version
Research output: Contribution to Journal/Magazine › Journal article › peer-review
<mark>Journal publication date</mark> | 1/02/2020 |
---|---|
<mark>Journal</mark> | Discourse and Communication |
Issue number | 1 |
Volume | 14 |
Number of pages | 20 |
Pages (from-to) | 84-103 |
Publication Status | Published |
Early online date | 16/09/19 |
<mark>Original language</mark> | English |
Awareness of the risks posed by excess nitrogen is low beyond the scientific community. As public understanding of scientific issues is partly influenced by news reporting, this article is the first to study how the British press has discussed nitrogen pollution. A corpus-assisted frame analysis of newspaper articles (1984-2018) highlighted five frames: Activism, where environmental charities and organizations are portrayed as having an active role in fighting pollution; Government Responsibility, where privatization is presented as central and positioned as one of the main causes of pollution; Industry Responsibility, in which industries' actions are depicted as causing pollution to increase; Pollutions as Politics, in which pollution is not discussed as a problem to be solved but rather as a means to increase votes; and Risk, where readers are warned about the possible effects of pollution on human health, flora and fauna. The analysis also points to the absence of named scientists and sources with the coverage being dominated by politicians.