Framing Agricultural Biotechnology in Iranian News Agencies between 2005 and 2017

Abstract

In 2017, the debate over approving the ban on the import of transgenic crops caused increased public debates on the disadvantages or benefits of agricultural biotechnology in Iran. This increased the importance of studying how media coverage and frame agricultural biotechnology news. In this study, the news of three top Iranian news agencies over a 13-year period has been analyzed. Entman’s method is used for doing frame analysis. A review of all the biotech news shows that most of them are related to medical biotechnology and only 4.12 percent of the news covers agricultural biotechnology. The number of news on agricultural biotechnology has also increased dramatically between 2015 and 2017. All three news agencies have a non-critical and positive judgment towards this technology and its potential. The four frames identified include “management of agricultural biotechnology”, “effects of agricultural biotechnology”, “seeking support of agricultural biotechnology” and “public understanding of agricultural biotechnology”.

Keywords

• agricultural biotechnology
• risk society
• frame analysis
• news agencies
• iran