Media Cultures and the Representation of Science in Korea and the United States: The BSE Case in 2008

Abstract

In 2008 the Korean government decided to resume importing US beef, leading to a nationwide controversy over the risk of bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE), or mad cow disease. Korean media coverage of BSE during this controversy demonstrates how media reporting on scientific matters interacts with political controversy over science-related risks. In Korea, where media organizations tend to be associated with particular political ideologies, the media emphasized the uncertainty of scientific accounts in the BSE case and reinforced the politicization of science by selectively mobilizing contrasting scientific claims and scientific authorities based on each media outlet's political position. The distinctive role of such a media culture in the science-related political discourse is further highlighted when we consider US media coverage of BSE risk during the same period: in that coverage, the baseline technical risk-related issues were taken for granted and the BSE controversy in Korea was presented largely as a trade issue.

Keywords:

• BSE
• mad cow disease
• media representation
• politicization of science
• science-related controversy
• media culture

Acknowledgments

This work was supported by a National Research Foundation of Korea Grant funded by the Korean government (NRF-2013S1A3A2053087). We thank Ashley Anderson, Jin Hong Park, Ju Young Huh, and Rob Chiles for research assistance. Thanks, too, to the reviewers and editors of this journal, who provided thoughtful and probing comments on each draft of this article.

Notes

1 Details of the basic history of the BSE controversy can be found in Timmons 2003; Wikipedia 2017a, 2017b. For statistics on BSE and vCJD, see World Health Organization 2012; National CJD Research and Surveillance Unit 2017.

2 Of course, we can always raise a question about the extent to which the US media follow journalistic objectivity and neutrality in practice. Indeed, the question of whether US media outlets tend to take a politically neutral position has been subject to intense debate in recent years (see Puglisi and Snyder 2015). Researchers who study political journalism tend to be skeptical about the journalistic norms in the United States, emphasizing many deviations from the ideal in practice (Ludwig 2009; Peake 2007). By contrast, researchers on science journalism generally hold that US media tend to emphasize the norms of objectivity and neutrality compared to their counterparts in many other countries (Boykoff and Boykoff 2004; Dunwoody 2008; Nelkin 1987). For example, noting that European newspapers tend to “have an explicitly partisan view,” Nelkin has claimed that objectivity in the media is “an American ideal.” “Contemporary science reporting” in particular, she writes, “reflects early efforts to adapt the norms of scientific objectivity to the practice of journalism. Journalists no longer believe that real objectivity is possible, but they are expected to approach the ideal of neutrality and unbiased reporting by balancing diverse points of view, by presenting all sides fairly, and by maintaining a clear distinction between news reporting and editorial opinion” (Nelkin 1987: 84).

3 One of the authors and two graduate students read and categorized these news articles into three groups—emphasizing risks, emphasizing safety, and neutral/balanced. The intercoder reliability was 81.6 percent. Detailed criteria used for categorizing reportage can be found in Bak 2011.

4 Cattle age has been considered important because almost all BSE-infected cows were over thirty months old. The OIE therefore determines the range of SRM differently according to the age of cattle.

5 OIE standards are recognized by the World Trade Organization as international reference sanitary rules and used to prevent unjustified trade barriers due to sanitary concerns. In its Terrestrial Animal Health Code, the OIE specifies parts of cows that are more likely to be contaminated by BSE (SRM) and prohibits their trade.

6 Uncertainty resulting from juxtaposing mixed messages may lead to delayed actions from citizens (Friedman, Dunwoody, and Rogers 1999). However, even though increased citizen deliberation on scientific issues can sometimes delay actions, encouraging citizens' engagement in science-related political debates would be an important goal of the media in this uncertain world.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Daniel Lee Kleinman

Hee-Je Bak is a professor in the Department of Sociology and the director of the Center for Science, Technology and Society at Kyung Hee University, Korea. His main research interests include public understanding of science, social controversies over technological and environmental risks, and the structural transformation of universities. His recent publications can be found in the journals Science and Public Policy, Research in Higher Education, and East Asian Science, Technology and Society.

Daniel Lee Kleinman is associate provost for graduate affairs and a professor of sociology at Boston University. Before coming to BU in January 2017, Kleinman was a senior associate dean and a professor at the University of Wisconsin–Madison. Kleinman has authored numerous papers and books. His most recent book, with Sainath Suryanarayanan, is Vanishing Bees: Science, Politics, and Honey Bee Health (Rutgers, 2017). In 2012, Kleinman was an international scholar at Kyung Hee University in Seoul.