And Man Descended from The Sheep: The Public Debate on Cloning in The Italian Press  

Oleh:

Neresini, Federico

Jenis: Article from Journal - ilmiah internasional
Dalam koleksi: Public Understanding of Science vol. 9 no. 4 (Okt. 2000), page 359-382.
Fulltext: 359PUS94.pdf (153.28KB)

Isi artikel

Investigating the development in the Italian press of the public debate on cloning after the announcement of the Dolly’s birth allows one to trace and analyze the growing acceptance of mammal cloning as a scientific fact, at least at the media level. This analysis is focused mainly on the increasingly expanding network of issues interlinked with cloning within the “public space” created by the media and on the interaction among the various social actors who, motivated by the most divergent yet incredibly convergent interests, support these issues. Our analysis allows us to show not only the actors’ different positions about cloning, but even how they contribute to establishing mammal cloning as a scientific fact. For this analysis, the perspective adopted refers mainly to the actor-network theory (ANT). The nearly 100 articles published in the two most widely read Italian newspapers over the period in which cloning remained front-page news in 1997 have been analyzed to assess the extent of their coverage and then subjected to a content analysis to determine their coverage of the network of issues and social actors involved in the debate. 1. Introduction Back in 1993, the media dedicated considerable coverage to an announcement made by two American scientists, Robert Stillman and Jerry Hall, who publicly declared that they had decided to suspend their experiments on the duplication of human embryos, even though the experiments had been largely successful. Though the scientists continuously repeated that the research involved the duplication of embryos, in its extensive coverage the press kept calling it “human cloning.” However, the uproar about “human cloning” did not last any longer than a couple of days. As the controversy petered out, “human cloning” seemed to fade into oblivion. Just four years later, human cloning returned to the media front pages with the news of the birth of Dolly, probably the most famous sheep in history. Right from the start, the discussion created by Dolly’s appearance revolved around the issue of human cloning. But this time the coverage continued unabated for more than 20 days, involving a wide range of subjects and a range of contrasting opinions. Thus, from that fateful day, 22 February 1997, when the public announcement of Dolly’s birth was made, the issue of human cloning endemically returned to the public arena. The issue was sustained by the media, even though in connection with other issues, as it were, on a secondary level of exposure. 0963-6625/00/040359+24$30.00 © 2000 IOP Publishing Ltd and The Science Museum 359

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