Media framing of the Cayman Turtle Farm: Implications for conservation conflicts

Conflicts over natural resource use and management often arise where groups have different goals or priorities. The media can play an important dual role in these conflicts; article content might offer insights about public opinion, whilst media may shape debates and how issues are perceived by the public and decision-makers. Wildlife farming is a contentious conservation tool attracting the attention of worldwide media, and associated conflicts among different interest groups may undermine its applicability. We investigated the media’s portrayal of the Cayman Turtle Farm (CTF), a facility in the Cayman Islands which breeds green sea turtles (Chelonia mydas) for human consumption, to investigate how the media presents information about wildlife farming (i.e. framing), consider its potential roles influencing conflicts and explore how it can be used for conservation conflict management. Content analysis was used to compare framing, article valence, and stakeholder representation in 634 newspaper articles from the international and local media. These media stories were framed in terms of: tourism, conflict, conservation, culture/community, management, and utilisation. International articles most often described CTF as a tourism facility. However, during a media campaign by an international animal welfare group, CTF was also often depicted as a source of controversy. Trade in turtle products was mostly debated in older articles. Local media mainly had a financial focus. Conflict framing was associated with a negative article valence, and conflict framed articles were significantly more likely to contain no conservation information. Mentions of environmental interest groups were significantly associated with negative articles, whereas academics were significantly more likely to be mentioned in positive articles. Conservationists must consider stakeholder objectives from the outset of interventions and be aware of the multiple roles the media might play. Media analysis and effectively harnessing the potential of media outlets should be considered as tools for managing conservation conflicts.     

Genomics: shifts in metaphorical landscape between 2000 and 2003

This article examines the shifts and changes in the metaphors used to describe the human genome and the human genome project (HGP) between 2000 and 2003, with the year 2001 as a trigger for genomic and metaphorical reflection. We want to answer questions, such as: Did the findings announced in 2001 shake the metaphorical foundations on which the HGP had been built or not? Did novel metaphors capture the imagination of scientists and the public or did old metaphors survive throughout this period? What influence does the continuity or discontinuity in metaphorical framing of the HGP have on the public perception of the HGP as well as on its scientific understanding? To answer these questions we have systematically compared the metaphors used in one major scientific journal, Nature, and in one major UK newspaper, the online edition of the Guardian/The Observer during a period of two months around June 2000, February 2001 and April 2003.     

The genome of a Gondwanan mammal

Australia is thought of as the home of marsupials, but South America has 60 or so species of these interesting mammals. The genome of one of these, the South American grey short-tailed opossum, Monodelphis domestica, has just been sequenced and published in June.1 The high quality 6x coverage is the first marsupial genome completed, pipping the 2x coverage of the Australian tammar wallaby at the post by half a year. The opossum genome has an unusual structure with fewer chromosomes than the human genome (9 pairs versus 23 pairs) but a longer total length (3.4 billion versus 3 billion bases). The opossum autosomes, like those of all marsupials, are extremely large but, in contrast, the X chromosome is only 76 Mb long. The opossum genome has turned up several surprises and provided critical new information on the evolution of mammalian genomes.     

Reconciling international human rights and cultural relativism: the case of female circumcision

How can we reconcile, in a non-ethnocentric fashion, the enforcement of international, universal human rights standards with the protection of cultural diversity? Examining this question, taking the controversy over female circumcision as a case study, this article will try to bridge the gap between the traditional anthropological view that human rights are non-existent -- or completely relativised to particular cultures -- and the view of Western naturalistic philosophers (including Lockeian philosophers in the natural rights tradition, and Aquinas and neo-Thomists in the natural law tradition) that they are universal -- simply derived from a basic human nature we all share. After briefly defending a universalist conception of human rights, the article will provide a critique of female circumcision as a human rights violation by three principal means: by an internal critique of the practice using the condoning cultures' own functionalist criteria; by identifying supra-national norms the cultures subscribe to which conflict with the practice; and by the identification of traditional and novel values in the cultures, conducive to those norms. Through this analysis, it will be seen that cultural survival, diversity and flourishing need not be incompatible with upholding international, universal human rights standards.     

Materialism and Sensuality: Visualizing the Devil in the Festival of Our Lady of Urkupiña

During the Festival of Our Lady of Urkupin ¨ a, held every August in Quillacollo, Bolivia, an estimated half million pilgrims petition Our Lady for wealth and material goods. The festival has become a national event and now includes the participation of government officials, including the President, as well as widespread coverage by the media. The festival has also become a point of controversy and contestation over the meanings of Bolivian nationalism, commercialism, and economic development. These issues, as I will show, have been articulated through criticisms of the festival as being too sensuous and overly commercialized. Through an examination of media coverage of the festival of Urkupiña, this article focuses on the ways that "evils" of materialism and sensuality are represented visually. The Bolivian state and the Catholic Church have sought to define the meaning of the festival in terms of devotion and national identity while criticizing some festival practices associated with gaining wealth. Here I show how the folkloric and devotional elements of the festival are embodied in the dancers while the visual referent for the materialism of the festival is street vendors. I also discuss how the festival transforms the meanings of the ch'alla and other Andeanpractices that anthropologists have traditionally associated with resistance to capitalism (as found for example in the work of June Nash and Michael Taussig). The article concludes by noting that, rather than mapping these meanings ontogeneralized resistance, anthropologists must be prepared fully to engage contestations over devotion, material gain, sensuousness, and economic development. In short, we should also be prepared to dance with the devil.     

In search of the Holy Grail: Media discourse and the new human genetics

It has widely been recognized that the media play a key role in framing debates about genetic issues. This paper provides an overview of the major areas of debate within the social scientific literature on media, public understanding of science and human genetics. It evaluates current approaches to assessing the role of the media in influencing public policy debates. It argues that an analysis of the strategies of news sources should occupy a central role in furthering understanding about the ways in which various social actors seek to influence public policy agendas. At present, within the field of human genetics, only a handful of researchers have systematically examined the strategies of news sources from the perspective of the sources themselves. While recent research has focused upon identifying the major sources and how they are used in science reporting, there remains much to be done in uncovering the processes of negotiation and contestation among social actors prior to issues gaining media coverage.     

Vogue and the possibility of cosmopolitics: race,health and cosmopolitan engagement in the global beauty industry

This article explores the possibility of cosmopolitics, using the global magazine franchise Vogue as our starting point. Drawing on Saito's conceptualizations of cosmopolitanism, we investigate whether Vogue promotes cosmopolitan engagement, which we define as promotion of human diversity, cultural omnivorousness and cosmopolitics. Our analysis focuses on racial diversity and health, two moral issues recently addressed by Vogue itself. We present a content analysis of Vogue and media coverage of Vogue in China, the Netherlands and the USA. We conclude that Vogue, because of its global basis, high status and reliance on visual materials, has the potential to address and unite transnational publics around global issues. However, the success of such attempts depends on local cultural and institutional contexts and the role of local actors, who may adopt, but also reframe or ignore, attempts to promote cosmopolitan engagement.     

Media mirrors? Framing Hungarian Romani migration to Canada in Hungarian and Canadian press

ABSTRACT

The most recent migration of Roma from Central-Eastern Europe to Canada started in the 1990s. Several thousand people from former socialist countries, including Hungarian Roma, moved overseas. There were many reasons but for Roma, the motivations not only included a drastic loss of employment, but re-emerging systemic and increasingly violent racism. This article focuses on the discursive framing of these motivations and the reaction within both Hungarian and Canadian newspapers from 1999 to 2013. In the article we show how the press engaged in framing and counter-framing the policies and politics of the host country through their coverage of “the Hungarian Roma” issue. Specifically, we focus on the differing and shifting spheres of consensus and the changing political/policy contexts by conducting an in-depth comparison of the changing media frames in Hungarian and Canadian newspaper coverage. We show how the “Hungarian Roma issue” becomes an example and reflection of the changing political culture.     

Onward, Christian penguins: wildlife film and the image of scientific authority

Within US media reactions to March of the penguins, animal images became an arena for displaced conflicts of human interest. This paper examines an intermediary step through which the film became a medium for social disagreement: conflict over control of the cultural authority to interpret animal images. I analyze claims to the cultural honorific of science made within disputes over readings of the film as evidence for intelligent design (ID). I argue that published refutations of this reading were largely misguided in that they tended to group arguments-for-ID with a suite of social-allegorical readings of the film. By failing to address essential differences between interpretations, critics of the arguments-for-ID necessarily overlooked their problematic and unexamined claim that the film shares the cultural authority of science. Furthermore, where critics of the ID readings might have challenged this claim, they often replicated it instead. This overarching failure critically to assess the status of the film's scientific authority may have resulted from audience expectations about the genre of wildlife films, the advertising strategy of the film's US distributors, and structural ambiguities within the film concerning its status as a scientific representation.     

Race,ethnicity and German identity: a media analysis of the 2010 world cup men's national soccer team

Enjoying a surge of national pride, the German media celebrated the 2010 German World Cup team's success in South Africa. A dominant theme in this coverage was the ‘immigration background’ of 11 of the 23 players on the team and their claim to German identity despite their ethnic diversity. Amid debate over the changing nature of German citizenship, the national team's ‘multicultural kickers’ became the focal point for those who wished to re-frame German identity. This article examines German newspaper and magazine coverage of the national soccer team emphasizing the role that media played in constructing competing definitions of the German citizen and nation.     

Managing the boundaries between maverick cloners and mainstream scientists: the life cycle of a news event in a contested field

Abstract

In January 2004, the ‘maverick cloner’, Dr Panos Zavos called a press conference in London to announce that he had implanted a freshly cloned human embryo in the womb of an infertile woman. Reports of this press conference gained prominent coverage in the national newspapers the following day and led television bulletins that evening. This article discusses the ways in which expertise was claimed by or attributed to Dr Zavos and other key media sources. It argues that three key boundaries were demarcated in the coverage as journalists framed the stories in terms provided by Zavos's antagonists, ‘mainstream scientists’. It also discusses the engagement in tactics of news management by an organised grouping of UK scientists who attempted to shape the terrain of news coverage on the subject of cloning. The question of the extent to which interested scientists should be able to set the terms of media debate is explored.     

Ethnicity,the search for rapists and the press

Media reporting of rape continues to provoke concern. This article focuses on the press reporting of the discovery and search for alleged rapists. On examining nine British newspapers for one complete year (1992), a serious distortion in the media reporting of ethnicity emerges at this early stage of the criminal process. While there is an over‐representation of minority ethnic men accused of rape coming to the notice of the police, the cases identified as involving minority ethnic (particularly black) men as assailants, are much more likely to be reported widely. The distortion is then intensified by associating minority ethnic (and again particularly, black men) with certain types of rape. However, there are important differences between newspapers in their coverage. Furthermore, while media coverage of the search for rapists is a matter of concern, it also needs to be seen as part of the wider process of the social construction of rapists. Nevertheless, the conclusion is that the media coverage of rape tends to distort in ways which may well exacerbate hostility against minority ethnic groups.     

"The Vulgar Spirit of Blogging": On Language, Culture, and Power in Persian Weblogestan

This article is an ethnographic study of Persian-language weblogs (blogs), focusing on a divisive argument among Iranian bloggers that came to be known as the "vulgarity debate." Sparked by a controversial blogger who ridiculed assertions that Islam was compatible with human rights, the debate revolved around the claim that blogging had a "vulgar spirit" that made it easy for everything from standards of writing to principles of logical reasoning to be undermined. My study focuses primarily on the linguistic side of the controversy: I analyze blogging as an emergent speech genre and identify the structural features and social interactions that make this genre seem "vulgar." I also examine the controversy as a confrontation between bloggers with unequal access to cultural capital and a struggle over "intellectualist" hegemony. In the conclusion, I use the construct of "deep play" to weave together multiple layers of structure, explanation, and meaning in the debate.     

Variola virus genome sequenced from an eighteenth-century museum specimen supports the recent origin of smallpox

Smallpox, caused by the variola virus (VARV), was a highly virulent disease with high mortality rates causing a major threat for global human health until its successful eradication in 1980. Despite previously published historic and modern VARV genomes, its past dissemination and diversity remain debated. To understand the evolutionary history of VARV with respect to historic and modern VARV genetic variation in Europe, we sequenced a VARV genome from a well-described eighteenth-century case from England (specimen P328). In our phylogenetic analysis, the new genome falls between the modern strains and another historic strain from Lithuania, supporting previous claims of larger diversity in early modern Europe compared to the twentieth century. Our analyses also resolve a previous controversy regarding the common ancestor between modern and historic strains by confirming a later date around the seventeenth century. Overall, our results point to the benefit of historic genomes for better resolution of past VARV diversity and highlight the value of such historic genomes from around the world to further understand the evolutionary history of smallpox as well as related diseases.This article is part of the theme issue ‘Insights into health and disease from ancient biomolecules’.     

Escalating coverage of obesity in UK newspapers: the evolution and framing of the "obesity epidemic" from 1996 to 2010

Obesity is one of the fastest growing and most serious public health challenges facing the world in the 21st century. Correspondingly, over the past decade there has been increased interest in how the obesity epidemic has been framed by the media. This study offers the first large-scale examination of the evolution and framing of the obesity epidemic in UK newspapers, identifying shifts in news coverage about the causal drivers of and potential solutions to the obesity epidemic. Seven UK newspapers were selected and 2,414 articles published between 1 January 1996 and 31 December 2010 were retrieved from electronic databases using keyword searches. The thematic content of articles was examined using manifest content analysis. Over the 15-year period there was an increase in media reporting on obesity and in particular on childhood obesity. There was evidence of a trend away from a focus on individuals towards a greater level of reporting on societal solutions such as regulatory change, with the greatest shift in reporting occurring in mid-market and serious newspapers. Given that the media have a huge influence in shaping public opinion, this shift in reporting might be an early indicator to policymakers of a growing public discourse around a need for regulatory change to tackle the obesogenic environment.     

Racism and the politics of signification: Israeli public discourse on racism towards Palestinian citizens

This paper explores the phenomenology of racism using the Israeli situation as a case study to examine if, when and how the concept of ‘racism’ is employed in local media discourse on policy towards Palestinian citizens.

Our central argument is that racism, as a signifier of policy, can be located in the dialectic between denial and affirmation of the category of race, while we link the scope and meanings of practices marked by the media as ‘racism’ to contingent cultural, social and historical conditions. The article proposes the periodization of the relevant discourse into three primary phases: from 1949 to the late 1970s, when the category of racism was ‘prohibited’ in Israeli discourse in the aftermath of the Holocaust; the mid-1980s, when this taboo was broken and the phenomena included in the category of racism expanded accordingly; and the 1990s to 2000, during which racism became an institutionalized, all-encompassing discursive term.     

Newspaper Portrayals,Local Policies,and Dog-Supportive Public Space: Who's Wagging Whom?

ABSTRACT

Dog-walking promotes physical activity and positive social interactions, and thus dog-walking has implications for people's physical and mental health. As a result, experts in public health have endorsed designing and managing public space to support dog-walking. Nevertheless, the presence of dogs in public space is subject to negotiation and can be controversial. Generally, municipal governments or local councils exercise political jurisdiction over both dogs and public space. As a case study, we systematically collected and analyzed a local newspaper's portrayals of issues relating to dog-walking in public space. Our purpose was to understand how public and policy agendas were being represented by local media, during a period of time when local policies on dog ownership and dog-supportive public space were being reviewed and revised. The analysis involved three phases: 1) thematic content analysis; 2) issue framing analysis; and 3) policy analysis. Thematically, we found that social conflict predominated. In terms of issue framing, local policy and individual dog owner behavior were both problematized. Over time, the policy agenda evolved to emphasize the design and management of public space, especially park land. Policy-makers presented this emphasis on public space as a proactive strategy to reduce social conflict and to promote compliance with existing rules on dog ownership. When it comes to promoting dog-walking to benefit animal welfare and human health, our findings underscore the importance of paying close attention to local policies and media coverage. In fact, we found that endogenous conflict and public controversies can actually represent significant opportunities to bring about positive changes in the lives of humans and nonhuman animals.     

Decoding the genetics debate: hype and hope in Icelandic news media in 2000 and 2004

The attraction of human genetics is rooted in optimistic projections of possible futures, where present-day problems are to be solved by technologies-to-come. But hyperbolic optimism with its consequent cycles of expectations, investment and disappointment is a threat to users, investors, and the ethical reputation of the biotechnology field. We report a study of the entire news coverage of genetics in Icelandic mass media in 2000 and 2004. All media promoted optimistic industry-based information largely without critical questions concerning scientific uncertainty, health benefits, or ethical challenges. Criticism and deliberation were thematically narrowed down, in 2000 to the issue of “presumed consent” for nationwide participation in a database proposed by the company Decode genetics, and in 2004 to topics concerning Decode's finances. In a discourse of monetary gain and loss, sustained exploration of scientific, moral and cultural issues has little appeal.     

A Bumpy Ride on the Diagnostic Bench of Massive Parallel Sequencing,the Case of the Mitochondrial Genome

The advent of massive parallel sequencing (MPS) has revolutionized the field of human molecular genetics, including the diagnostic study of mitochondrial (mt) DNA dysfunction. The analysis of the complete mitochondrial genome using MPS platforms is now common and will soon outrun conventional sequencing. However, the development of a robust and reliable protocol is rather challenging. A previous pilot study for the re-sequencing of human mtDNA revealed an uneven coverage, affecting predominantly part of the plus strand. In an attempt to address this problem, we undertook a comparative study of standard and modified protocols for the Ion Torrent PGM system. We could not improve strand representation by altering the recommended shearing methodology of the standard workflow or omitting the DNA polymerase amplification step from the library construction process. However, we were able to associate coverage bias of the plus strand with a specific sequence motif. Additionally, we compared coverage and variant calling across technologies. The same samples were also sequenced on a MiSeq device which showed that coverage and heteroplasmic variant calling were much improved.