Abstract
This chapter describes how the media influences the shaping of social perceptions of fertility and fertility treatment. It outlines the theory of social construction of values and perceptions, and then offers a review of the literature from the last five years on media coverage of fertility and fertility treatment. Finally, it presents a study of recent Israeli media coverage of these issues. Based on the Machin and Mayr How to do critical discourse analysis. Sage, London, (2012) model for the analysis of semiotic selections, the study examines the linguistic and visual aspects of items relating to childbirth and fertility in the Israeli media, and shows how they reflect a specific point of view and values. Five major themes emerged from the analysis of linguistic expressions in the Israeli media: age and timing of treatment; a positive attitude toward treatment; allusions to the world of Jewish religious law or Israeli culture; reference to the natural world; and corporate-speak. Analysis of the visual images showed the most prominent to be photos of couples, women, doctors, and a clock symbolizing the woman’s biological clock.
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Ben Shlomo, S., Kabizon-Pery, O. (2019). Fertility Treatment Through the Eyes of the Media: Words, Metaphors, and Images in Israeli Media Coverage of Fertility and Fertility Treatment. In: Taubman – Ben-Ari, O. (eds) Pathways and Barriers to Parenthood. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-24864-2_5
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-24864-2_5
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