This Article Full Text (OnlineFirst PDF) Alert me when this article is cited Alert me if a correction is posted Services Email this article to a friend Similar articles in this journal Alert me to new issues of the journal Add to Saved Citations Download to citation manager Request Permissions Request Reprints Add to My Marked Citations Citing Articles Citing Articles via Google Scholar Citing Articles via Scopus Google Scholar Articles by Augoustinos, M. Articles by Shepherd, R. Search for Related Content Social Bookmarking                         What's this?

Genetically modified food in the news: media representations of the GM debate in the UK

¹ Martha Augoustinos is Professor and Co-Director of the Discourse and Social Psychology Unit (DASP) in the School of Psychology, University of Adelaide
² Shona Crabb is a lecturer in the School of Psychology, University of Adelaide
³ Richard Shepherd is a Professor of Psychology and Co-Director of the Food, Consumer Behaviour and Health Research Centre at the University of Surrey in the UK

^* To whom correspondence should be addressed.

	Abstract

This paper analyses a corpus of articles on GM crops and food which appeared in six UK newspapers in the first three months of 2004, the year following the GM Nation? debate (2003). Using the methods of critical discourse analysis we focus on how specific and pervasive representations of the major stakeholders in the national debate on GM—the British public, the British government, the science of GM, and biotechnology companies—served significant rhetorical functions in the controversy. Of particular significance was the pervasive representation of the British public as uniformly opposed to GM crops and food which served rhetorically to position the British government as undemocratic and as being beholden to powerful political and economic interests. Of significance also in our analysis, is how the science of GM farming itself became a highly contested arena. In short, our analysis demonstrates how the GM debate was represented in the newsprint media as a "battleground" of competing interests. We conclude by considering the possible implications of this representation given the increasing emphasis placed on the importance of deliberative and inclusive forms of science policy decision-making.

Key Words: GM Nation? debate, GM crops and food, media representations, critical discourse analysis, stakeholder interests, British public opinion

First published on January 21, 2009
Public Understanding of Science 2009, doi:10.1177/0963662508088669


CiteULike    Complore    Connotea    Del.icio.us    Digg    Reddit    Technorati    Twitter    What's this?