How news values, frames and churnalism in scientific press releases shape the media representation of ocean plastic research.

Description

Press releases are distributed by academic institutions to draw media coverage for research, acting as both a channel for scientific studies and a promotional tool for these institutions. Scientific press releases can be ‘churnalised’ (Autzen, 2014), where news articles closely mirror the press release content. Churnalism
potentially dilutes journalistic values that are normally considered when journalists report about science. This prompts the question of whether science organizations have the responsibility to carefully frame their press releases, moving beyond promotional language and adopting journalistic principles when communicating about scientific studies.
This study examines press releases on ocean plastic science, because of the historically extensive media coverage this research field received compared to other research fields like ocean acidification (Tiller et al., 2019). To understand why ocean plastic research received more media attention than ocean climate change studies, Vonk et al. (in submission) analyzed how both topics were communicated in scientific press releases by assessing framing elements like problems, solutions, causes, and moral evaluations (Entman, 1993). These findings revealed that ocean plastic press releases offered more comprehensive framing than press releases on ocean climate change did, thereby providing a richer context for interpreting the research.
This study aims to investigate the control that scientific press releases on ocean plastic studies yield on the representation of this research in the media. We analyze media coverage by tracking research articles and related press releases on Altmetric.com and Nexis Uni. We qualitatively assess press releases for news factors based on news value theory (Harcup & O’Neill, 2017). Additionally, we examined the occurrence of churnalism in ocean plastic science reporting by comparing press release text to newspaper articles using metrics like
Cosine similarity, Jaccard index and Levensthein distance.
Building on the findings of Vonk et al. (in submission), we hypothesize that increased framing may lead to a richer contextualization which enhances the news value of scientific studies, because it facilitates better comprehension and potentially reduces the journalists' workload. Therefore, we additionally explored the relationship between frames in press releases and media coverage of the scientific research by analyzing the interaction between frame elements and news factors.
The dataset that is analyzed consists of all press releases about peer‐reviewed articles on ocean plastic that were published on EurekAlert! between 2017 and 2021 (n=88). The 88 press releases resulted in 2565 news mentions appearing 1 month after the publication of the scientific study and accompanied press release. The news mentions included radio and television broadcasts, magazines, news websites and newspaper articles. In total, 344 English‐language newspaper articles were found and used in the distribution‐ and churnalism analysis.
We found a significant positive correlation between the number of news factors and frame variables present in press releases and the number of newspaper articles written about a peer‐reviewed study. The type of frame variables and news factors that we found and the way they interact will be further highlighted during the presentation. Analyzing churnalism, we found that half of the news articles copied large portions of the press release. Content‐wise, the press releases and newspaper articles showed little difference. In most cases, content was only deleted. In some cases original content was added by citing other studies or scientists. These findings indicate that press releases are not only important for the generation of media attention but also for shaping the content of newspaper articles.
This study reveals how scientific organizations’ press release practices impact the portrayal of ocean plastic studies in newspaper articles. The frequent replication of press release content in newspaper articles suggests that science organizations could take responsibility to reframe their press releases, moving beyond promotional language and embracing journalistic principles when communicating about scientific studies.

Period	8 Feb 2024
Event title	Etmaal van de Communicatiewetenschap
Event type	Conference
Location	Rotterdam, NetherlandsShow on map
Degree of Recognition	International