Abstract

This analysis focuses on the public discourse surrounding shellfish in Maine and New Hampshire. Our data includes a comprehensive list of the newspaper articles published in both states that covered shellfish issues from 2000 to 2014.

Project Description

For this analysis, we have compiled newspaper articles from Maine and New Hampshire publications to get a better sense of the public discourse surrounding shellfish flat closures in both states. Our overall project goals include:

• Understand public discourse and media framing surrounding shellfish flat closures.
• Get a better sense of which reporters tend to cover shellfish flat issues.
• Compile a list of organizations/people who are cited as experts.
• Examine if, when and how our stakeholder partners are included within the articles.

The results from this work will be fed back to our stakeholder partners to guide their media relation activities. In addition, we will pay special attention to how shellfish discussions are framed and what experts are cited the most (e.g. government officials, scientists, regulators, individual citizens, nonprofits, etc.), to get a better understanding of who is shaping the discourse about shellfish in Maine and New Hampshire, and how that discourse might be improved and/or expanded.