Routine Influences on Aquaculture News Selection: A Q Method Study With New England Journalists

Abstract

Environmental journalists, as gatekeepers, often become arbiters of risk and benefit information. This study explores how their routine news value judgments may influence reporting on marine aquaculture, a growing domestic industry with complex social and ecological impacts. We interviewed New England newspaper journalists using Q methodology, a qualitative dominant mixed-method approach to study shared subjectivity in small samples. Results revealed four distinct reporting perspectives—“state structuralist,” “neighborhood preservationist,” “industrial futurist,” and “local proceduralist”—stemming from the news value and objectivity routines journalists used in news selection. Findings suggest implications for public understanding of, and positionality toward, natural resource use and development.

Can Some Words in News Content Create Negative Perception in terms of Sectoral Image? Aquaculture or Fish Farms

“…It is found that analyzed news in this study have generally positive tone (n=309, 53,74%) about the sector. It is seen that aquaculture sector has been portrayed in media as negatively in most countries (Amberg & Hall, 2008;Schlag, 2011;Forechlich, Gentry, Rust, Grimm, & Halpern, 2017;Olsen & Osmundsen, 2017;Duffy, Rickard, & Grosswiler, 2019). In the case of this, when it is compared to the other studies, this result differs from studies in literature on this issue except Feucht and Zander (2016).…”