The Immersion Stage in Summary
Feature 2: Naming of People
identifi cation). However, importantly, an increase in the length of the naming term does not entail an increase in the specifi city or the accu- racy of the overall description of events. Rather, these longer terms replace detailed descriptions, thereby reducing depth and accuracy and off ering a simplifi ed depiction of the events.
• Are increasingly likely to be negative in tone. Th is fi nding should be read in conjunction with the fi nding on modality, which suggests an increasing level of certainty about the nature of events and how we are to understand them.
Th e clustering around negative descriptors is unsurprising in itself, given the serious nature of the explosion and oil spill, and the media here acknowledge rather than in any sense downplay that seriousness. Th e question remains of how this negative naming of the events by the media is positioned: whether these negative shorthand terms are contextualised to suggest that events such as Deepwater Horizon are either regrettable but inevitable or aberrant and preventable. Th e regular use by the media of certain shared terms, however negatively shaded, can serve to familiarise and compartmentalise deviant phenomena such as crises, as much as mark them out as shocking.
for example, “your grandkids” in the expression “What are you going to say to your grandkids when they say …”, or “designated managers” who would be dealing with a hypothetical crisis.
Having gathered all instances of human actors, I looked for logical groupings, for example, “BP employees” at each of executive and staff levels, representatives of agencies and so on. From this analysis I was able to inves- tigate the salience of diff erent groups to the story, and how this changed over time. I was able to look at the proportion of named and unnamed participants, and what groups each belonged to: and for both named and unnamed people, I could see what descriptors were used to defi ne them. I was able to look at whether participants were real, fi ctional or hypothetical and whether this changed over time. Finally I could identify movements in participants’ proximity to the BP story, looking at how closely related the people mentioned in the news texts were to the actual Deepwater Horizon events, and whether and how this changed over the three years.
Findings from the BP Data
In 2010 and 2011, the number of actors mentioned is nearly 17 per 000 words. By 2012 there is an increase to about 21 per 1000 words. Put simply, more people are being drawn into the BP story, or rather the BP
Table 8.2 Social actors in 2010–12 BP texts
2010 % 2011 % 2012 % BP staff 44 29 12 10 4 2 US agencies 37 24 10 9 10 6 Universities and private agencies 22 14 4 3 1 1 Workers, public, local businesspeople 17 11 13 11 32 34 BP management 14 9 23 20 2 1 Politics 9 6 8 7 33 19 Business and media—comment 3 2 32 27 19 11 Finance 3 2 7 6 1 1 Lawyers 1 1 2 2 1 1 Art-related (writers, artists and
fi ctional characters)
0 0 3 3 42 24 Others 3 2 3 3 3 2 Total including repeated mentions
Total per 1000 words
Total excluding repeated mentions
153 16.8 61
100 117 16.7 59
100 148 20.8 89
100
story is being widened to include more people. Th e proportions of types of social actor are also considerably changed, as Table 8.2 shows, with some types increasing and others disappearing from the story.
Th e largest groups of people mentioned in 2010 are (1) BP staff (2) US agencies and (3) universities and private agencies. By 2012, the three largest groups of people, accounting for three-quarters of actors, are (1) members of the public and the community (2) writers, other artists and fi ctional characters and (3) those in politics. Th is represents a consider- able shift in the cast of stakeholders from both 2010 and 2011 to 2012.
By 2012, mentions of BP management and staff are almost completely absent. Where the name of Tony Hayward does appear, it is either as the neutral but familiar “ex-boss of BP” (Campaign Middle East, 27.4.2012) or the evaluative “BP’s hapless chief executive, Tony Hayward” (Th e New York Times, 27.4.2012). Th e one named BP employee (Kurt Mix) is mentioned in the context of his arrest for deleting electronic evidence in relation to the disaster. Th ose mentioned in the areas of business and media comment are still evident, but these are now secondary to those mentioned in an artistic context.
Members of the public are increasingly mentioned in broad groups—for example, “thousands of people”, “Americans”, “the public”, “consumers”—
and are ever further away from the events, for example, people who live in a town (not near the Gulf) whose work situation has been aff ected by the Gulf oil spill, or the brother- and sister-in-law of the journalist visiting New Orleans to report on the state of the town after recent disasters. Similarly, politicians, who have an increased presence in the 2012 texts, are less closely connected to events than is the case in 2010. At that time, key fi gures include, for example, the Chair of the Energy committee, and Governors of the Gulf States. By 2012, they include fi gures much further away from events, for example, George W. Bush, UK Chancellor George Osborne and President Vladimir Putin. Th is is another indication of the shift of the representation of the crisis from being something highly situated and local, to something representative and global (even though we know that newspaper coverage is located increasingly in the USA). Th e considerable proliferation of people mentioned is shown in the analysis which excludes repeated instances. Th is indicates that 89 unique people or groups are mentioned out of 148 total participant-mentions—a higher proportion than in previous years, where the same people tend to be cited repeatedly.
As indicated in the overview of text genres, a signifi cant change in 2012 is the emergence of texts with a connection with fi ction and non- fi ction writing, art and music. Th is brings with it a new cast of characters whose part in the BP story is extremely diverse:
[Review of a fi lm based on a Margaret Atwood book] Also thrown into the mix are Conrad Black , the disgraced media mogul who went to prison for mail fraud, a tattooed Canadian man serving time for robbery and abused migrant tomato pickers in Florida . All are subjects worthy of discussion, but tackling them in one fi lm disrupts the movie’s momentum and short- changes viewers . Baichwal could have devoted a single fi lm to just BP’s disgraceful behavior. (Th e New York Post, 27.4.2012, my emphasis)
[New Orleans’ recovery from Hurricane Katrina, the fi nancial crisis and the BP oil spill] Fast-forward to April 14, 2012. Th ere were no musicians enlivening the concourse as I arrived this time, but there would be hun- dreds of them down along the sunny riverfront, where an estimated half- million people make a pilgrimage each year to the French Quarter Festival.
(Sarasota Herald Tribune [Florida], 27.4.2012, my emphasis)
Th e references to written and performed art generally entail the BP events being placed within a wider context, with no restriction on participants.
By 2012, readers and viewers are expected to understand what the events might represent, or what social meaning they have, even as further light is shed upon them through their juxtaposition with other social phenomena. A number of the people included in the “Art” category are not real but fi ctional.
In Summary
Th e pattern of participants in the texts over the years is one of increasing fragmentation and dispersal. More and more people are mentioned in connection with the BP story, and there are more unique mentions rather than repeated individuals, yet they have weaker and more distant connec- tions with the BP crisis. BP employees and the victims of the explosion are virtually absent by 2012.