Guest Post: BP Oil Spill #5

From Briana, Schuler, Nick, and Dion

Posed with the question of addressing science communication in

accordance with the BP oil spill of 2010, we decided to analyze how

the location of a newspaper effected the reporting on the oil spill

approximately one month after the disaster.  This seemed a worthy

endeavor to look into considering science communication, and its

involvement with the media.  After all, news holds the power to effect

public perception, and it is well known that with intentional framing

news can be presented in a number of ways.  If the news that was being

presented varied by location, that could in turn mean that the

regional perception of the news story would vary as well.

It was not much of a stretch to hypothesize that the quantity and

quality of science communication that was taking place concerning the

oil spill was decreasing as the distance from the epicenter of the

disaster increased.  We figured that the community near the epicenter

would be the ones who would most desire to know what was happening

with the situation and therefore receive the better science

communication, or news in this case.  We also figured that the amount

of people interested in the disaster would decrease as the distance

from the disaster increased resulting in less reporting on the

subject.

After addressing the question, constraints were put on the subject of

the matter.  The quantitative data would be collected in the time

range from May 20th to May 31st and involve three newspapers, of

local, regional, and national stature.  The qualitative data analyzed

would be based on article comparison among the different newspapers.

The comparison would be based upon the level of technical detail

included, the tone of the article, and the general feeling of how

science communication was presented within it.  The newspapers used

were the Louisiana-Times Picayune, the New York Times, and the Denver

Post.  It was believed that these three papers would represent a taste

of how the news was reported by varying location.

In researching this particular question, we decided to look at how

another disaster in the United States was covered by different

newspapers across the country. We were able to find the thesis

statement of a graduate student who decided to write on the subject

for their Master's degree that addressed a similar issue.  The study

was concerned with Hurricane Katrina and looked at newspapers at the

national, regional, and local levels.

The student found 263 articles under the constraints set that talked

about the hurricane in the newspapers. Of those 263, a majority came

from the national newspapers, but she mentioned that while the local

newspapers did not have as many articles as the others, their articles

tended to be more in-depth and longer, as well as having larger

photographs depicting the destruction and distress after the

hurricane.

The newspapers also differed in what they covered. The national

newspapers tended to talk more about issues associated with the

government and Washington, D.C., while the regional and local

newspapers focused more on the destruction from the hurricane and

rebuilding efforts in New Orleans and Mississippi. The conclusions

drawn from this research were that the local and regional newspapers

took cues from the anticipated needs and demands from their readers as

opposed to national needs, and the closer that the newspaper is to the

center of destruction, the more it assumed the role of spokesman for

the voiceless thousands affected by the disaster.

The quantitative methodology resulted in interesting results.  The

amount of the articles found concerning the topic fell right in line

with our projected hypothesis.  The regional Picayune published 181

articles concerning the topic followed by the New York Times’ total of

73.  An exact number could not be found when addressing the question

for the Denver Post.  In the archives of the newspaper, AP articles

are not formally included, and there were only ten staff publications

concerning the issue.  Due to its lack of publication, it was hard to

address the quantitative involvement of the Post, yet based on the

amount published by the local staff writers, it was probably less than

the amount from the Times.

The articles were then organized into contextual categories to get an

idea of the science communication being presented.  The articles were

arranged into categories consisting of: environmental impact/effect,

industry and business impact/effect, personal story, technically

based, politically based, or a situational update.  The results can be

seen in the figures below.  It was reasonable to conclude that the

national paper held a clearly politically favored frame to the

situation, as was found similar in the literary review.  The majority

of the articles published involved political discussion and the total

content presented avoided an even representation of the news that was

out there.  The Picayune by contrast had a much better representation

of all the detailed news that was available.  Each category had more

stories to represent the overall impact of the disaster.

The article comparison involved one article from each newspaper on the

subject of the top-kill failure.  These articles were presented May

29th, right after the attempt at plugging the well with a top-kill

failed.  As was expected, the analysis of the three articles resulted

in the findings that the newspaper closest to the epicenter had the

best technical detail, a neutral tone and had little political

content.  The New York Times had a moderate level of technical detail,

a negative tone, and moderate political content.  The Denver Post

produced little technical content, a positive tone, and little

political content.  Examples of the writing styles can be seen in the

following figures from the three newspapers.

	Denver Post	Times-Picayune	New York Times
Next Step	“Right now we are evaluating a back-up plan.”-Salazar	“Suttles said, ’cutting off the broken riser to leave a clean cut pipe surface at the top of the blowout preventer and installing a new cap fitted with a flexible ring atop the package. The cap will be connected to the surface by a new riser with a drilling pipe inside it…’”	“The new strategy is to smoothly cut the riser from which the oil is leaking and then place a cap over it.”

	Denver Post	Times-Picayune	New York Times
Relief Wells	n/a	“The ultimate answer for blocking the flow of oil remains the same, drilling two relief wells to intersect the failed well and pumping down cement to permanently close it… a first relief well has reached a depth of 12,000 feet below the surface but has another 6,000 feet to go through difficult layers of rock before it will be in a place where cement can be squeezed into the original well.”	“ ‘We will continue to pursue any and all responsible means of stopping this leak until the completion of the two relief wells currently being drilled.’”-Obama

Based on the information collected, it was reasonable to conclude that

science communication is effected by location.  The material that was

being presented was clearly being written for different audiences.

Close to the disaster, news covered several local issues and kept the

community up to date with detailed information.  On a national level,

the news held political connotations and was only moderately detailed.

 In Denver, the news was being related to local stories to keep the

reader interested.  This conclusion was also reached looking at the

quantitative results.

If this study was continued for further results, there are a few

recommendations that we would like to make.  Increasing the number of

papers analyzed and using a wider range of dates, we believe, would

potentially enhance the case of the findings.  Also, we would want to

look at Associated Press articles and see where newspapers are

publishing them.  This could give great insight to what news is

reaching different locations.  Analyzation of another disaster as well

as further literary reviews would also improve this study.