Do the Media Refuse Refused Knowledge?

Abstract

This chapter examines trends in the coverage and framing of the reporting of refused knowledge across Italian mainstream newspapers. Taking into consideration the media are relevant for the analysis of RKCs, firstly given RKC followers’ beliefs that media outlets are to be considered the ‘in-house organs’ of the scientific elites, and as such an inherently untrustworthy source of information. This chapter will enquire into media treatment of refused knowledge, in eight major Italian newspapers, with a view of analysing the extent to which the media address and/or reject refused knowledge attributable to the four RKCs examined in this volume. The focus is on the issues advocated by four RKCs concerned in two interconnected ways: a quantitative presentation of coverage through a longitudinal analysis, highlighting an agenda-cutting process, and a qualitative account produced by means of content analysis addressing the issue of the institutionalisation of scientific knowledge through the delegitimation of RKC claims. This content analysis enables us to consider the framing of the coverage and whether it reinforces science or opens up to public questioning of scientific knowledge. The chapter concludes by providing a balanced view of the institutionalisation-discreditation dichotomy as the output of the media representation of refused knowledge.