Tag: media analysis
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AI, metaphors and control
In the early 2000s, during the dramatic but now almost forgotten outbreak of foot and mouth disease in cattle, I wrote about war metaphors and the issue of projecting control over an ‘out of control’ virus through metaphor. Recently, in the age of AI, we have seen a mirror image of the control framing emerging,…
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Bushfires and climate change communication: Between amplification and attenuation
For about a decade I have been thinking and writing about extreme weather events and their links to human-induced climate change, and this included quite a few references to Australia, especially droughts, heatwaves and bushfires. I thought the Las Conchas Fire in New Mexico, lived through by some of my family, was bad. I thought…
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A road called ‘gene drive’ and the road to ‘gene drive’: Trials and tribulations of media analysis
As people might know, I enjoy doing media analysis of emerging biotechnologies, from cloning to gene editing and beyond. I have lately become fascinated with something called ‘gene drive’, a new genetic engineering technology that was brought to public attention around 2014/2015 at the confluence of two ‘events’: the outbreak of Zika and advances in CRISPR-Cas9…