Achievement

Molly Storment is presenting her current research project "Mutant Mosquitoes and Benevolent Scientists: A rhetorical approach to framing controversial science in digital media" at the 2013 Conference on Communication and the Environment in Uppsala, Sweden this summer. Her project integrates a rhetorical approach into framing theory with a comparative analysis of media frames and audience frames on a controversial topic in new science. The case study focuses on the British company Oxitec, which has patented a genetically modified mosquito-control technique: Release of Insect with Dominant Lethal (RIDL) or "sterile" male mosquitoes. She analyzed Oxitec’s use of Twitter to communicate with interested publics by identifying the frame of each tweet in terms of agent and action identified in the text. She then compare these results to the frames identified in a U.S. public opinion survey. Her research sheds light on the differences in conceptualization evidenced by these two groups.