Text Example: Using an Analytical Framework to Code a Professional Science Journalism Text

Abstract

In this chapter, the analytical framework for popularization discourse is used to code the science journalism text “Baby Poop Is Loaded With Microplastics.” The chapter shows the kinds of insights that can be produced on the level of the individual text. Furthermore, presenting the in-depth analysis of a single text allows us to share what coding using our framework looks like on the level of the strategy.

5.1 Introduction

In this chapter we present an example of using our framework as an analytic tool. One professional science journalism text is analyzed using the framework. The goal of this analysis is to assess which strategies a professional science journalist uses, at the textual level, to communicate research findings to the general public. Thus, the question driving the analysis was which of the 34 strategies in our framework were discernible in the professional text. Therefore, this analysis is quantitative and instrumental. The goal of the chapter is to show what results to expect when using the framework to analyze one individual text at the strategy level.

5.2 Corpus Construction

This chapter presents the analysis of a single text: “Baby Poop Is Loaded With Microplastics,” written by Matt Simon and published on the website of Wired in September 2021 (Simon, 2021). Wired is a journalism platform (including a magazine and website) that focuses on the impact of new technology on everyday life. The text details new published research that shows microplastics have been found in newborn babies’ first feces; it offers information about the research as well as drawing those insights into the bigger realm of everyday life to show what this discovery about microplastics might mean for us on a daily and individual level. The text was part of the corpus of science journalism texts that was used in the validation step of the construction of our framework (see Chaps. 4 and 6). We chose the text because it uses the most strategies out of any text in the corpus of professional science journalism writing: 27 out of 34. Here, we show the outcomes of using the framework on the level of a single text.

5.3 Analysis

In this section, we show the analysis of the text “Baby Poop is Loaded With Microplastics”. We have underlined and coded each strategy. Some codes are used more than once, others not at all. To signal codes that run beyond a single line of text, we added a raised edge to the underline. Codes that run beyond multiple lines of text are coded with a vertical line. The underlining is color coded per theme: Subject matter is coded in purple, Tailoring Information to the Reader in blue, Credibility in green, Stance in orange, and Engagement in pink.

5.4 Overview of Strategies

Through the analysis of the text “Baby Poop Is Loaded With Microplastics,” it becomes clear that 27 out of 34 possible strategies were used in this text. In Table 5.1, examples of the use of each strategy are provided.

Table 5.1 Overview of strategies in “Baby Poop Is Loaded With Microplastics”

5.5 Interpretation

After using the framework to analyze the text “Baby Poop Is Loaded With Microplastics,” the following insights can be drawn. Our inter-rater reliability was 0.84 with 95% confidence intervals of 0.63 to 1.00.

Overall, it could be said that the text adheres to the genre demands of science journalism. The focus of the text is mainly on the results of the research and on how these new insights impact our daily life on an individual level. The use of popularization strategies is dense, with all text in the article coded for at least one strategy and often for multiple strategies. This also means that a lot of overlap is visible in strategy use. Some strategies are coded for longer passages of text, often for a length of multiple sentences, such as contextualization, presenting results/conclusions, novelty, describing the method, contribution to research, applied implications, and mentioning more research is necessary—these strategies are from the themes Subject Matter, Tailoring Information to the Reader, and Credibility. These strategies never overlap with one another, but rather alternate. Alternatively, strategies that are coded for shorter passages of text, on the level of individual or multiple words, often appear on top of or together with one of the bigger codes. These are stance markers, explanations, examples from daily life, references to the reader, features of conversational discourse, imagery, hyperlinks, additional sources, humor, lexical mention of the original research, link to the academic publication, mention of statistics, giving the researcher an active voice, giving the non-researcher an active voice, opinion, and inclusive pronouns. These strategies are mainly from the themes Stance and Engagement. Some strategies are employed throughout the entire text, such as stance markers, inclusive pronouns, references to the reader, and imagery, while others such as announcing the new finding or new contribution to the discipline (start), contextualization (start), applied implications (end), and mentioning more research is necessary (end) only appear in specific spots in the text. Applied implications are used twice in this text in two different locations, and novelty is used multiple times toward the end of the text instead of at the start, which is something we have not seen happen often in other texts we analyzed.

This example also shows that text analysis includes interpretation to some degree. The text includes the sentence “We need to look at everything a child is exposed to, not just their bottles and toys,” a quote from a researcher who was not involved in the study under discussion. This sentence can be construed as an academic implication, that is, a call to action for researchers to further investigate exposure to microplastics. Alternatively, this sentence can be interpreted to be an applied implication, that is, a call to action for the audience to pay more attention to all sources of (micro)plastic that their children are exposed to. In most cases, if a statement is unclear, the meaning can still be gleaned from the context—which in this case has led us to code the statement as an academic implication—but this is not always a possibility. The choice to code as an academic implication has consequences for further coding too; ‘we’ now includes the quoted researcher and other researchers, but not the public, and can therefore not be coded as an inclusive pronoun. Had the statement been coded as an applied implication, ‘we’ would have referred to the researcher and readers, and therefore would be coded as an inclusive pronoun.

This text also shows two uses of ‘strategies’ which we had not seen before in our corpus analysis, both of which are contained in the following sentence: “‘I strongly believe that these chemicals do affect early life stages,’ says Kannan.” This example includes a quote by a researcher who is not involved in the research under discussion—which is a textual feature that does not really fit under either giving the researcher an active voice or giving the non-researcher an active voice. The second textual feature is the use of reference within a quote; in this case it is not explicit self-reference to the writer, but to another actor and voice within the text. These two discoveries show that a framework is never truly finished (see also Chap. 8).

What You Have Learned in This Chapter

• In this chapter an example analysis of one science journalism text, “Baby Poop Is Loaded With Microplastics,” was presented.

• The chapter provides insights into what the application of the analytical framework looks like on the level of codes that are produced for a single text.

• On the level of coding, a significant insight that is produced is that some strategies are coded on the level of multiple sentences, and hardly ever overlap one another, while other strategies are coded on the single-word or multi-word level and are overlapping over longer codes.

• Some strategies are employed throughout the entire text, while others are only found in specific spots. Some strategies (novelty, applied implications) are used differently to what might be expected following the analytical framework.

• The use of quotes from other researchers that are not involved in the study and the use of self-reference within a quote does not comply with any strategy currently in the analytical framework.