Negotiating interpretive power: Interpretive practices in journalist-scientist interactions

Abstract

This study critically examines the notion of interpretation and interpretive practices within journalist-scientist interactions in the news production process. The linguistic ethnographic work in this paper offers rare insights into an intense and lengthy collaboration between a newspaper, university, and government agency as they set up a citizen science project on air quality in Belgium. Our analysis focuses on how journalists and scientists interpret scientific results and how they actively reflect on that interpretation. Beeman and Peterson’s (2001) notion of interpretive practice is adopted as an analytical framework and operationalized by looking into how routine procedures, cultural categories, and social positions from the fields of journalism and science are adapted, negotiated or reflected on in the dataset. The findings show that the scientists go beyond providing data and expertise and are heavily engaged in the interpretive work within the news production process. The close-knit interaction between the scientists and journalists brings about a struggle over whose interpretation should be a part of the final news product and limits the interpretive power of the journalist.