ABSTRACT

Economic news uses fiscal experts to construct discourse about government deficits, debt, spending, and services. Most previous studies have assumed that knowledge and understanding are key to the construction of economic expertise in news. This study undertakes a quantitative analysis to discover how the British press represents three high-profile fiscal experts: the Institute for Fiscal Studies (IFS), the National Audit Office (NAO), and the Office for Budget Responsibility (OBR). It analyses 21,515 articles published in the Financial Times, Independent, Guardian, The Daily Telegraph, and Times between May 2010 and December 2016. Surprisingly, the results show that explicit constructions of knowing, understanding, or even being expert are rarely associated with the experts themselves. Markers of social position—being “independent” or “respected”—are much more prominent than indicators of technical knowledge or deep understanding of government finances. Discourses of economic expertise in news are less technical and more social than one would assume from previous scholarship. Journalists use expert sources in the text not to confront complexity, but rather to invoke the experts’ networked positions. Press text constructs expert judgments as superior by representing the experts as properly positioned to judge, not by representing their judgments as being better informed.

摘要

经济新闻利用财政专家来构建有关政府赤字，债务，支出和服务的论述。以前的大多数研究都假设知识和理解是新闻经济专业知识建设的关键。这项研究进行了定量分析，以发现英国媒体如何代表三位备受瞩目的财政专家：财政研究所（IFS），国家审计署（NAO）和预算责任办公室（OBR）。它分析了《金融时报》，《独立报》，《卫报》，《每日电讯报》和《泰晤士报》上发表的21,515条文章从2010年5月到2016年12月。令人惊讶的是，结果表明，了解，理解甚至成为专家的明确结构很少与专家本身联系在一起。社会地位的标志（“独立”或“受人尊敬”）比技术知识或对政府财务的深刻理解标志更为突出。新闻方面的经济专业知识讲演比以前的学术论文所讲的要少技术性和社交性。记者在文本中使用专家资源不是为了面对复杂性，而是要援引专家们的网络立场。新闻稿通过代表专家处于适当的判断地位，而不是代表他们的判断被更好地告知，从而将专家判断构造为优越。