Defi nition and Analysis Method
In order to carry out a quantitative analysis of the genres of the texts, I required a defi nition and a categorisation of media genres. Establishing a categorisation involved a strategy for identifying media genre types.
In presenting genre as one of Barthes’ semiotic “codes” in Chap. 3 , I characterised text genres as being identifi ed through any or all of the fol- lowing: common communicative purpose, structural regularities, stylistic regularities and similarities in content. I have yet to fi nd a systematic taxonomy of media genres, and it is possible that none such is available.
According to Chandler (1997: 1), “Th ere are no undisputed ‘maps’ of the system of genres within any medium”, no one text displays all the features of a genre and there is considerable overlap between genres. I required a genre categorisation that was suitable for my purpose, that was pragmatic and workmanlike. Th e two principles I used for genre categorisation were that, where possible, the genres should be recognised in scholarly litera- ture, and, secondly, that they should be on the same level as each other in a notional taxonomy. By this I mean that they are (relatively) mutually exclusive, and one is never subsumed by the other.
Following these principles of previous recognition as a genre, and sin- gle hierarchical level, and using Bhatia’s (1993) terminology, I used the categorisation shown in Fig. 6.1 .
Th e central column, “genres”, provided the basis for the genre analysis shown in Table 6.2 .
Findings from the BP Data
Table 6.2 shows how the genres to which the selected texts belong change over the three years of the data. In 2010, 73% of the texts were either print or TV news reports, with the remaining 27% being largely fi nancial reports (27 April was Quarter 1 results day). By 2012, news reports had reduced to less than half of the texts (45%). Th ere is an increase over the years (by proportion) in business and market reports, feature articles and
Fig. 6.1 A genre categorisation of news texts
Table 6.2. BP oil spill texts by genre 2010–12
27 April 2010 27 April 2011 27 April 2012 No. of
texts % No. of
texts % No. of
texts % News report (written) 117 69 24 26 13 42 News report (TV and radio) 7 4 1 1 1 3 Financial report 34 20 38 40 2 6 Spoken interview (TV or radio) 3 2 3 3 0 0 Feature article 0 0 0 0 2 6 Editorial or opinion piece
(print/online)
6 4 13 14 3 10 Arts review 0 0 1 1 5 16 Letters 0 0 3 3 1 3 Business or market report 2 1 11 12 4 13 Total 169 100 94 100 31 100 a
a Note that low numbers make percentages indicative rather than fi rm fi ndings
arts reviews of various kinds. Th e following is a brief description of the texts in my BP data sets, according to genre.
News Reports
In 2010, the news reports on the BP oil spill (73% of texts) are mainly progress reports that discuss announcements by BP concerning the victims and the work being carried out to stop the oil escape, which was still uncon- trolled and unpredictable at this stage. As well as quotations from press releases and news conferences, other inputs from eyewitnesses and experts in the fi elds of oil drilling, the environment and food industries are evident.
By 2011, only 27% of texts are news reports. Directly related news stories deal mainly with the progress of compensation and legal action. However, very many of the news reports cover stories that are not directly related to the BP oil spill, but concern other events or companies, where the BP oil spill is mentioned in a minor capacity. For example, one 2011 text (Th e Irish Times, 27.4.2011) deals largely with the new chairman of commodi- ties trader Glencore and his contentious remarks about women employees, also mentioning that Glencore had appointed Tony Hayward as a senior independent director, but noting that “his reputation has been shredded by the Deepwater Horizon disaster”. A 2012 text (Lewiston Morning Tribune [Idaho], 27.4.2012) reports that an oil spill in the Yellowstone River has created a need for fi sh testing. Laboratories, however, are still “backed up processing specimens collected in the BP oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico”.
As well as written news reports, the 2010 data set includes a number of television or radio news reports. Even more than reports in newspapers, television news focuses on breaking news. It is therefore unsurprising that while seven of the texts in 2010 were transcripts of television interviews, this dropped to one in each of 2011 and 2012, as the story moves from the immediate explosion to longer-term issues such as compensation.
Financial Reports
In 2010, fi nancial reports account for 20% of texts, and in these the news of BP’s fi rst quarter results competes with the ongoing news of the oil spill; 27 April 2011 is again results day, and the fi rst quarter results
become the main story in texts mentioning the BP events, accounting for 40% of items. Th e spill is mentioned (this is more or less the fi rst anniver- sary) but in the context of Quarter 1 results. By 2012, only 13% of texts about the BP events fall into the fi nancial reports pages.
Spoken Interviews
Of the six spoken interviews in the full data sample, four are Fair Disclosure interviews in which annual company earnings are discussed in conference calls and are presented in transcript by Nexis. Th ese did not all concern BP solely, but BP was mentioned in all. Th e other two, both in 2011, are an interview with Michael Greenberger, of the Center for Health and Homeland Security, and a transcript of a speech made by Assistant Attorney General Tony West at the University of Chicago Law School. Both make reference to BP only in passing, in the fi rst case as an instance of a crisis to be dealt with at a national level, and in the second as an example of a large litigation case.
Feature Articles
Th is media genre appears only twice in the entire data set, and this is in the form of travel features, both, coincidentally, dealing with New Orleans and both written in 2012. Both use the theme of the city’s renais- sance in the wake of a series of disasters (one shared with the rest of the USA, that is, the fi nancial crisis, and two that were much more localised, that is, Hurricane Katrina and the BP oil spill). One of the items goes even further back in time and scope:
Th e nearly 300-year-old city has had to rebound from centuries of disasters including fi res, plagues, hurricanes and most recently, the BP oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico. (Th e New Zealand Herald, 27.4.2012)
One writer uses a personal narrative approach, comparing New Orleans with her home town of Sarasota, and the other uses an impersonal observer approach. In both cases, the tone is largely descriptive, with the point of closure at the end, as is typical of the genre.
Editorial or Opinion Pieces
Th e texts in this category in the sample are of two main types—editorial/
journalistic comment and blog comment. Over the three-year span, the proportion of editorial or opinion pieces increases strongly to 2011 and remains at a similar level in 2012, indicating a shift in focus from report- ing to commenting on and evaluating the events. Comment tends to be presented as more impersonal in quality papers, as more personal and emotional in the popular press and often as highly charged in Internet blogs, as two example titles from 2012 exemplify: “Should we kill the politicians before they kill us?” (Phil’s Stock World, 27.4.2012) and
“‘Crucify them’: the Obama way” (Right Wing News, 27.4.2012). How commentary is variously constructed as more or less “personal” is a topic for attention in the detailed analysis chapters.
Arts Reviews
Th e purpose of the arts review genre is to inform the reader about and comment upon particular items of art, fi ction and non-fi ction literature and so on. Th is genre does not appear amongst the 2010 texts, and is represented by only one text in 2011, but by 2012 5 of the 31 texts in the data set are of this kind. Th is is commensurate with the length of time many artworks (in the broadest sense) take to complete, but might also suggest that there is a length of elapsed time deemed appropriate or decent for works of this nature to appear, and also indicates that a process of assimilation may have taken place, that it takes an amount of time for the wider signifi cance of events to be understood and this is necessary for a work of art to have resonance. Th ese texts imply a move of the repre- sentation of BP events from being part of the world of “reality” to having an alternative existence in the world of artistic representation. Examples of works referred to in the data are fi lms, books (both fi ction and non- fi ction) and documentaries.
Letters
Th ree letters appear in the sample in 2011, with a further one in 2012.
Th ese are sent from both those in the public eye (e.g. by the Florida Attorney General), with the purpose of publicising engagement with the crisis, and members of the general public, challenging politicians about their response to the crisis, and in 2012 addressing the continued eff ect on sealife of the spill.
Business or Market Reports
Business or market reports have in common that they represent events from the sole perspective of their eff ect on the business world. Th ey can be argued as a genre, in Bhatia’s terms, as they have purpose and audience in common, yet stylistically they can be rather diff erent. Th ey can range from somewhat resembling news reports to off ering summaries, evalua- tion and commentary on diverse business-related events. Business reports account for only 1% of the texts in 2010 but increase to 12% and 13%
in 2011 and 2012, as writers are able to gain better insight with time into the implications of the BP events for the oil and gas industry as well as for wider business practice. Examples in this data set are a web piece on petrol price rises ( Th efl yonthewall.com , 27.4.2011), a report on off shore drilling (Greenwire, 27.4.2011) and a report in Campaign on “Building brands through behaviour” (Campaign Middle East, 27.4.2012).
In Summary: The Importance of Genre
I suggested earlier that an understanding of media genres is central to any work which seeks to identify meaningful patterns across a widely varied data set. It was important to understand which of the language features I examined were generally characteristic of the media genre under study, and which were characteristic of writing about crisis events, or indeed
the BP crisis in particular. However, I return to my earlier point that the choice of genre has semiotic meaning in itself. If the BP events are described in a way that is typical of a particular genre, then this is a cru- cial part of how meaning is made by journalists and received by readers.
In this way, the shift of the genres and sub-genres within which the story is located is as important as the individual expressions or structures used to describe the BP events.