August 2011

by Huib de Vriend, LIS Consult

Assuming that the media reflect to a large extend the public debate about biotechnology, both in reporting about this public debate and shaping it, we have analyzed more than 22,700 news articles about biotechnology collected from a wide range of sources between July 2005 and July 2010. These articles were stored in a database with attached information concerning the source, the type of biotechnology, geographical information about the event and major interests described in each article. A pilot study with 3,460 articles collected during the first year confirmed the feasibility of an method of analysis that demonstrates differences in positioning of agricultural and medical biotechnology between continents and countries by plotting the average rating of a large number of articles on a diagram that visualizes the level of technology push in developments and dominance of private vs. public interests in decisions taken. This pilot study also suggested the potential for further analysis of a shift in positioning of actors in countries over time. An additional 19,250 news articles were collected during four years following the pilot study and were stored in the database in a slightly different way. The results presented here mostly concern the July 2006 – July 2010 period.

http://www.lisconsult.nl/images/stories/lisbeeld/CGM_2011-012_News_analysis_2005-20101-1.pdf

Website: http://www.lisconsult.nl

Published: August 15, 2011