What Makes Gambling News?

Authors: McMullan J.L.¹; Mullen J.²

Source: Journal of Gambling Studies, Volume 17, Number 4, 2001 , pp. 321-352(32)

Publisher: Springer

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Abstract:

This paper examines print media coverage of casino and electronic gambling in one Canadian province from 1992 to 1997. It provides a theme analysis of content of 234 gambling stories printed in the top two daily newspapers in Nova Scotia. The findings of our content analysis indicate that pro-gambling corporate and political newspaper sources waged a successful media campaign and constructed a powerful public rhetoric in support of new gambling products, services, and institutions. The media, for their part, gave visibility and form to these structured messages. They helped create expectations about gambling and economics and gambling and government. Law and order, and moral and medical discourses about gambling, we discovered, were minor representations in the news coverage, although moral narratives were a pervasive secondary theme in much of the reporting. At bottom, the press produced a “politics of truth” about gambling that was both an external exercise of power and an internal organizational production.

Keywords: gambling; media; news; discourse; content analysis

Language: English

Document Type: Regular paper

Affiliations: 1: Saint Mary's University, Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada B3H 3C3; john.mcmullan@stmarys.ca 2: Saint Mary's University

Publication date: 2001-01-01