Sex! Aliens! Harvard? Rhetorical boundary-work in the media (a case study of the role of journalists in the social construction of scientific authority)
Loading...
If you need an accessible version of this item, please email your request to iusw@iu.edu so that they may create one and provide it to you.
Date
2010-05-24
Authors
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
Volume Title
Publisher
[Bloomington, Ind.] : Indiana University
Permanent Link
Abstract
With science and the media playing prominent roles in contemporary life, it is important to understand the cultural authority of science and the role of the media in maintaining this authority. This paper will report on a case study of journalists' participation in the social construction of scientific authority. The case involves print media coverage of controversial scientific research conducted by a tenured professor of psychiatry at Harvard Medical School, a Pulitzer Prize winner, and a well-known authority in his field. When this elite scientist embarked upon the study of people who believe they have been abducted by aliens he drew fire for stepping outside the boundaries of "real" science, despite his stellar credentials and long history of accomplishment. Much of this fire took place on the field of the mass media. The boundaries of science and scientific authority were tested in this case, and journalists played a role in the boundary-work. Employing the sensitizing concept of boundary-work to guide analysis of media content, this case study explores how journalists constructed scientific authority in their coverage of Mack's abduction research, and to what ends, and how scientific and journalistic norms operate in media coverage of science. Rhetoric is a primary tool for constructing social reality, and the rhetoric of science is a key source -- for the purposes of this study, arguably the sole source -- of the cultural authority of science. Burke's dramatistic criticism is thus employed as a primary analytic tool in this study, to excavate the landscape of symbolic communication. The aim of this study is to illuminate ambiguity, complexity, motives and meanings in this case. It is intended to be thought provoking, instructive, and productive, to enrich the ongoing examination of the cultural roles of science and journalism.
Description
Thesis (PhD) - Indiana University, Journalism, 2005
Keywords
social studies of science, mass communication, science communication, journalism, boundary-work, rhetorical analysis
Citation
DOI
Link(s) to data and video for this item
Relation
Rights
Type
Doctoral Dissertation