| The powerful influence of news discourse on ordinary people’s perception and interpretation of important social issues has widely been discussed by researchers and scholars. In terms of health related problems, it is noted that the public rely on the mass media for information about major diseases. Public recognition, understanding and judgment regarding the issue of major diseases are always determined by the power relations and’ideologies behind the media language. Major diseases are, therefore, socially constructed phenomena as well as pathological conditions.Alzheimer’s disease (AD), the most common form of dementia which progressively destroys the cognitive and behavioral abilities, is a prevalent disease threatening the whole generation of the elderly all around the world. With increasing global media attention to the disease, the social dimensions of Alzheimer’s disease reflected in the news discourse is a meaningful object of study to delve into the interplay between media discourse and dominant ideology.Despite the growing public attention to Alzheimer’s disease, media coverage of Alzheimer’s disease has aroused relatively little academic attention in comparison with other major diseases such as breast cancer and obesity. On the basis of previous studies on the media news coverage of health related problems, news framing theory is adopted as the theoretical framework in this study to compare and analyze the discursive strategies and reality construction in the news reports on Alzheimer’s disease in The New York Times and Wenhui Bao, with a time span of two years from 2012 to 2013. Salience and selection in news framing help to promote a particular problem definition, causal interpretation, moral evaluation, and treatment recommendation for the reported issue, and are therefore considered useful in digging into the ideologies and social attitudes regarding Alzheimer’s disease in China and the United States.A total of 63 news reports from the two newspapers with main focus on Alzheimer’s disease are collected from Fudan University library database and the online database of Wenhui Bao. By looking into the framing strategies including topicalization of news headlines, selection of news topics and news sources in the news content, the reality construction of Alzheimer’s disease in the news is compared between the two newspapers.Through the comparative analysis, it is discovered that differences exist in the framing strategies between the two newspapers. AD drug trials and treatment are foregrounded in the topicalization of headlines in The New York Times, while a risk avoiding frame can be found foregrounding personal prevention in the news headlines in Wenhui Bao. Dominance of biomedical topics and professional sources is discovered in both the two newspapers. News topic of personal prevention is given salience in the AD reports in Wenhui Bao, while the news topic of policy and the related sources of politicians are foregrounded in the case of The New York Times. Based on the analysis of news topic selection, episodic frame emphasizing individual aspects of the disease is found to play a dominant role in Wenhui Bao coverage, while thematic frame stressing the collective responsibility is found as the major frame in The New York Times coverage. Yet a common trend of increasing emphasis on the social responsibility of the disease can be found in both the two newspapers. In addition, marginalized voice of AD patients is discovered in the AD coverage in both the two newspapers.The Chinese tradition of taking care of the elderly and the notion of holistic human systems in Traditional Chinese Medicine are believed to be among the factors that contribute to the ideology regarding most diseases as personal issues in China; while the rapid development of medical science and the political systems in the United States are considered as the reasons behind the interpretation of AD as a social phenomenon. By comparing the news framing strategies in the AD reports and the reflected ideologies in the two newspapers, this study endeavors to equip the readers with a critical awareness of the social implications of Alzheimer’s disease and emphasizes the importance of social attention to the marginalized voice of the AD patients. |
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