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Retailing science: genre hybridization in online science news stories

  • Yiqiong Zhang

    Yiqiong Zhang is Associate Professor at the Center for Linguistics and Applied Linguistics, Guangdong University of Foreign Studies, China. Her research interests include Multimodal Discourse Analysis, English for Specific Purposes, Multiliteracies, and Science Communication. Her publications have appeared in international journals such as Semiotica, Critical Discourse Studies and Journal of Multicultural Discourses.

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Published/Copyright: February 27, 2018

Abstract

This study explores how marketing and science rhetoric have become entrenched in online science news stories. The schematic structures of a corpus of 270 news stories from three types of website (university websites, the websites of Futurity.org and MSNBC.com) have been analyzed and compared. An eight-move structure identified from the corpus suggests that the genre of news stories is a hybridization of promotional discourse for marketization and science discourse for explanation. Hybridization is first evident in university press releases, which are then spread by the mass media without significant changes. From the perspective of intertextual chains, the emerging discourse practices can be attributed to the power shifting of news production from journalists to science institutions and further from journalistic to scientific norms. In turn, the discourse practices accelerate the shift of power, which could ultimately lead to the loss of independent and critical science journalism.

About the author

Yiqiong Zhang

Yiqiong Zhang is Associate Professor at the Center for Linguistics and Applied Linguistics, Guangdong University of Foreign Studies, China. Her research interests include Multimodal Discourse Analysis, English for Specific Purposes, Multiliteracies, and Science Communication. Her publications have appeared in international journals such as Semiotica, Critical Discourse Studies and Journal of Multicultural Discourses.

Acknowledgements

The study was supported by the National Social Science Foundation of China [grant number 14CYY061]. The author would like to thank Dr. Min Wang for her assistance in data analysis.

Appendix: sources for excerpts

  1. http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/34366719/ (accessed 26 October 2015)

  2. http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/34209727/ (accessed 26 October 2015)

  3. http://esciencecommons.blogspot.com/2010/08/ancient-brew-masters-tapped-drug.html (accessed 26 October 2015)

  4. http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/34209727/ (accessed 26 October 2015)

  5. http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/33551631 (accessed 26 October 2015)

  6. http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/34370302 (accessed 26 October 2015)

  7. http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/38755436/ (accessed 26 October 2015)

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Published Online: 2018-2-27
Published in Print: 2018-2-23

© 2018 Walter de Gruyter GmbH, Berlin/Boston

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