Shifting linguistic patterns in oyster restoration news articles surrounding the Deepwater Horizon disaster

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dc.contributor.authorFitzsimmons-Doolan, Shannon
dc.contributor.authorPollack, Jennifer Beseres
dc.creator.orcidhttps://orcid.org/0000-0003-2558-9678en_US
dc.date.accessioned2023-03-29T18:56:06Z
dc.date.available2023-03-29T18:56:06Z
dc.date.issued2023-03-29
dc.description.abstractPopulations of the eastern oyster Crassostrea virginica are declining globally. With the loss of oysters, sustainable provision of natural resources and ecosystem services are also threatened. In 2010, the Deepwater Horizon (DWH) oil spill became the largest marine oil spill in history, imperiling coastal and marine habitats in the Gulf of Mexico. Whereas ecological restoration serves as an important tool in natural resource management, its success depends on achieving ecological objectives and meeting public expectations. However, little is known about how the public perceives ecological restoration—even less in the context of disasters. It has long been understood that mass media messaging helps shape public understanding. Documenting patterned representation of oyster restoration in mass media texts can help set goals, improve stakeholder communication, and ensure required support for restoration activities. To address this goal, this study asks, does newspaper language on the topic of oyster reef restoration change in relation to an environmental disaster? If so, how? A 1.1 million-word Deepwater Horizon Oyster Restoration (DHORN) Corpus—a comprehensive body of newspaper articles about oyster restoration from 3 national and 18 gulf-state newspapers—was developed for the period April 2008–April 2014. The distribution and deployment of collocates of OYSTER* across three DHORN subcorpora delimited by time (pre-, during, and postDeepwater Horizon oil spill) were compared through iterative quantitative and qualitative analysis. Examination of salient collocates in use over time indicated an increase in the representation of oysters as quantifiable entities during/postDWH; at the same time, there was a decrease in the representation of the roles of OYSTER* in the Gulf ecosystem. Furthermore, multiple propositions associating oysters and oyster restoration activity with DWH and oil spills were introduced into language use by the disaster and persisted for years afterwards. This association was not present pre-DWH. Understanding shifts in linguistic patterns of oyster restoration in news articles before, during, and after Deepwater Horizon can be used to deliberately refine communication between the conservation community and both journalists and policymakers to promote conservation initiatives.en_US
dc.description.sponsorshipThis project was made possible with funding from the Harte Research Institute Fellows Program. Partial support for this publication was made possible by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, Office of Education Educational Partnership Program with Minority Serving Institutions award (NA21SEC4810004). The contents of this publication are solely the responsibility of the award recipient and do not necessarily represent the official views of the US Department of Commerce, National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.en_US
dc.identifier.citationFitzsimmons-Doolan S and Beseres Pollack J (2023) Shifting linguistic patterns in oyster restoration news articles surrounding the Deepwater Horizon disaster. Front. Conserv. Sci. 4:1113844. doi: 10.3389/fcosc.2023.1113844en_US
dc.identifier.doihttps://doi.org/10.3389/fcosc.2023.1113844
dc.identifier.urihttps://hdl.handle.net/1969.6/95837
dc.language.isoen_USen_US
dc.rightsAttribution 4.0 International*
dc.rights.urihttp://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/*
dc.subjectcorpus linguisticsen_US
dc.subjectCrassostrea virginicaen_US
dc.subjectdisasteren_US
dc.subjectdiscourse analysisen_US
dc.subjectinterdisciplinaryen_US
dc.subjectmass mediaen_US
dc.subjectoil spillen_US
dc.subjectpublic perceptionen_US
dc.titleShifting linguistic patterns in oyster restoration news articles surrounding the Deepwater Horizon disasteren_US
dc.typeArticleen_US

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