Analysis of Emerging Fields in News Media: A Case Study on Nanotechnology (2010)
Undergraduates: Benjamin Ivey, Cory Tarlton
Faculty Advisor: Craig Carroll
Department: Communication Studies
Our research focuses on the process through which an emerging field becomes legitimized in the public psyche through mainstream news coverage. We refer to legitimization as a process through which widespread understanding is fostered. To understand this process, we identified the emerging field of nanotechnology as an appropriate context for exploration. Using content analysis, we examined a selection of news articles (n=633) on nanotechnology from 1985 through 2008. These articles were published in Business Week, Chicago Sun Times, Forbes, New York Times, San Francisco Chronicle, and Washington Post. We used Kenneth Burke’s five pentadic dimensions to help identify how nanotechnology was portrayed in the news coverage. These dimensions – act, agent, agency, scene, and purpose – were used as the analytical framework. The field of nanotechnology was identified as the act for the entire sample of articles. For each news article, we coded for the presence of individual dimensions, and selected the one that was the most prominently featured (the dominant dimension). A major finding of the study was that the pattern of news coverage changed over time from Agency as the dominant dimension to Purpose as the dominant dimension. This suggests that an explanation of the process is necessary to begin fostering knowledge about a new set of practices. As the field becomes more widely known, criticism and scrutiny will necessitate defenses and speculation about new and useful applications.