And man descended from the sheep: the public debate on cloning in the Italian press

Abstract

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.

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