Written Communication Jul 2005

The Language of Journalism in Treatments of Hormone Replacement News

Susan Peck MacDonald

Abstract

Researchers studying science communication have criticized the sensationalism that often appears in journalistic accounts of science news. This article looks at the linguistic sources of that sensationalism by analyzing the journalistic coverage of the Women’s Health Initiative (WHI) study of hormone replacement research, which was abruptly canceled in July 2002 and became the subject of many news articles. The article uses a coding system to analyze seven magazine and newspaper articles that appeared shortly after the WHI study was halted. The coding shows a high incidence of concrete nouns in the journalistic accounts and looks at the ways the syntax of their attributions are ordered to emphasize vivid nouns, the ways their verbs contribute to narrative, and some of the narrative devices employed in the journalistic reporting.

Journal
Written Communication
Published
2005-07-01
DOI
10.1177/0741088305278027
Open Access
Closed
Topics
scientific writing

Citation Context

Cited by in this index (4)

  1. Cramer et al. (2014)
    Examining Readers’ Evaluations of Objectivity and Bias in News Discourse
    Written Communication
  2. Oddo (2013)
    Discourse-Based Methods Across Texts and Semiotic Modes
    Written Communication
  3. Leake (2012)
    Science as Sound Bites: <i>The Lancet</i> …
    Technical Communication Quarterly
  4. Koerber et al. (2008)
    Distortion and the Politics of Pain Relief
    Journal of Business and Technical Communication

Cites in this index (6)

  1. Charney (2003)
    Lone Geniuses in Popular Science
    Written Communication
  2. KOPPLE (1994)
    Some Characteristics and Functions of Grammatical Subjects in Scientific Discourse
    Written Communication
  3. MacDONALD (1992)
    A Method for Analyzing Sentence-Level Differences in Disciplinary Knowledge Making
    Written Communication
  4. Rowan (1989)
    Moving beyond the <i>What</i> to the <i>Why</i>: Differences in Professional an…
    Journal of Technical Writing and Communication
  5. KENNAMER (1988)
    News Values and the Vividness of Information
    Written Communication
Show all 6 →
  1. FAHNESTOCK (1986)
    Accommodating Science
    Written Communication
Also cites 2 works outside this index ↓
  1. 10.1177/146488490100200310
     ↗
  2. 10.1001/jama.288.3.321
     ↗
CrossRef global citation count: 19 View in citation network →

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