Birdyline Book Blog

This article is a bit different than anything else I’ve ever written, but it’s also about a subject that’s incredibly important to me and I’m proud to share it.

Introduction

The news coverage of Hope Loves Company, like all media, has influence on the perspectives of its viewers. The focus of the articles I examined is on Summer Camps ran by Hope Loves Company,  a non-profit organization founded by Jodi O’Donnell Ames with the purpose of supporting children whose parent or grandparent has been diagnosed with the fatal illness Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis, commonly called ALS. I have examined throughout my research how news sources use methods and concepts of discourse to influence the viewer into taking away an overall more positive view of the Hope Loves Company camps. I also have researched whether their methods in this specific instance are common among other topics through use of interviews that fit predetermined storylines (Altheide 413) and framework. (Clark, Everest, 2591) Finally, I conclude that the intentions and decisions made by the news sources do not align with those of the company itself.

Methods

I have looked at three recent articles discussing the non-profit organization Hope Loves Company. “Shared Moments and Experiences” from CentralJersey.com, “Summer Camp for Kids Taking Care of Loved Ones with ALS,”  from NBCU Academy, and  “Hope Loves Company Provides Free Camp for Kids Who Live with a Loved One Diagnosed With ALS” from News 12. I looked for how discourse shaped its participants by quantitatively charting the people who were chosen as interviewees as well as indexicality to make a conclusion on who the media is characterizing their audience vs. the people onscreen to be. To find how discourse is shaped by language I again charted visibly illustrating the narrative structure of the segments and its implications. Lastly to define how discourse shapes the world, I looked for framing attempts both conceptual or literal to see what type of world the audience is being presented. I compared the choices made by the reporters to common choices made and recorded on another disease, namely cancer.

Findings

Discourse is Shaped by Its Participants 

In their book, Discourse Analysis, Barbara Johnstone and Jennifer Andrus ask how discourse is shaped by its participants and how it shapes its participants. News media is designed to inform viewers on a wide scale typically in a text or video format and typically involves key participants including the host or anchor, reporter, interviewee, perhaps a human subject, and always the audience. The articles from News12, NBCU Academy, and CentralJersey.com all utilized interviews to shape their piece. According to the Handbook of Interview Research, news outlets make strategic choices on who will most impact the audience in the desired way, both by picking interviewees their audience will respond to or by choosing interviewees whose viewpoints will likely fit well within a pre-researched topic. To clarify on the latter point, interviewers often know what material they need for the type of story they’re presenting, and they select interviewees based on those needs. (Altheide, 413-414) I found that the participants the news outlets chose to highlight in covering Hope Loves Company do not align with the participants Hope Loves Company dedicates their work to. Hope Love Company identified itself on their public website as “a nationally recognized nonprofit that provides support, resources and community to children who have or had a loved one with ALS.” To test quantitatively what participants the various sources chose to focus on, I transcribed the video from News 12 and NBCU Academy and printed a copy of CentralJersey.com’s article. The table below shows how many children vs. adults were interviewed. For the two videos the table also includes the amount of time each age group was featured to the second alongside the percentage of run time that time calculates to. The data gathered suggests that while the company claims children as their purpose, the news media sets the focus off of them more often than not.

	News12	NBCU Academy	CentralJersey.com
Total Run Time	2:08	3:17	N/A
Total interviewed	3	4	2
Total adults interviewed	2	2	2
Total children interviewed	1	2	0
Adult Cumulative Time Speaking	59 seconds or ~49% of run time	1 minute or ~33% of run time	N/A
Children Cumulative Time Speaking	2 seconds or ~2% of run time	29 seconds or ~16% of run time	N/A

Because children are the central focus of the organization the news media outlets are covering, actively leaving them out is a form of silence. We again see adults being centered through the use of phrases such as “the family” in sentences that could just as logically refer to the kids themselves, which would follow the company itself’s purpose:

In CentralJersey.com’s piece

• “…shared moments and experiences for the youth, whose families have been impacted by ALS.”

• “…working with families affected by the disease…”
• “…provides the camps free of charge to the impacted families.”

News 12’s opening 

• “A non-profit is working to support families of ALS patients…”

The participants in this media discourse are also shaped by the use of indexicality. Indexicality is defined by Johnstone and Andrus as strategies that “[help] establish the social context in which an utterance is interpreted.” (Johnstone, Andrus, 161) For example, using the pronoun “we” indicates a mutual stance, whereas the pronoun “they” separates the speaker or listener from the “them” in question. (Think: the difference between “we have to fix this!” vs. “they have to fix this!”) News 12, NBCU Academy, and CentralJersey.com nearly always refer to the children and their families in the latter way, saying things like “… in a way they could not connect back at home…,” (CentralJersey.com)  “…their lives upended…,” (News12) and “watching their mom‘s physical decline affects them mentally…” (NBCU) This is notably different than news coverage that involve other diseases, patients, and their families. For the Social Science and Medicine journal, Juanne N. Clarke and Michelle M. Everest wrote about how journalists who write about cancer “focus on treatments, followed by early detection…” and that in media “…cancer is said to grow outside of awareness…” (Clarke, Everest, 2591) Articles surrounding cancer are often titled using the pronouns you, whether literally or implied. Examples cited by Clarke and Everest are “You Could Inherit Colon Cancer,” and “Prevent Cancer.” In comparison, the titles of the HLC articles are: “Shared Moments and Experiences,” (Centraljersey.com) “Summer Camp for Kids Taking Care of Loved Ones with ALS,” (NBCU Academy) and “Hope Loves Company Provides Free Camp for Kids Who Live with a Loved One Diagnosed With ALS.” (News12) The subjects in these titles are neither the disease nor the audience as is common with articles about cancer, but rather moments, the camp itself, and the company. Using indexicality, these news outlets have sectioned the kids and families impacted by ALS separately from the viewer at home, categorizing them as participants that are strictly audience members rather than individuals who face some sort of risk by diagnosis or may want to get involved in some way.

 Discourse is Shaped by Language

The discourse presented by each of the pieces is shaped by the language used within. As discussed by Johnstone and Andrus, “…not all carefully planned discourse is written…” (Johnstone, Andrus, 229) this is corroborated by David Altheide earlier who wrote about news outlets picking their participants in advance to support the type of story or conclusion they will be airing. (Altheide, 413) The dutch linguist Tuen A. Van Dijk writes for Studying Writing: Linguistic Approaches about news articles and their typical structures, or as he calls them, “conventional news schema.” (Van Dijk, 155) The news articles I examined took on a narrative structure aligning with Van Dijk’s description, most notably having a resolution and conclusion to each story. In order to creatively map this structure as seen in each of the HLC articles, I filled out a traditional “plot diagram” with quotes from each individual news source.

The use of this narrative structure specifically involving a conflict or climax and a resolution frames Camp Hope Loves Company as the solution to the conflict. The articles refer to a child whose parents’ diagnoses’ subsequently cause a struggle, then concludes with the camp and its program as the solution. Perhaps this is even another example of silence, where the underlying root cause of the conflicts presented (the disease itself) is not being addressed. A clear example is the News12 moment where seven year old Harper is quoted to have questioned, “Why is Dad maybe not walking anymore and you know, why is he in a wheelchair and will he get better?” The proposed resolution of the news stories discusses in all three of the articles answering questions the kids may have rather than focusing on the issue of the answers- factually speaking Harper’s Dad is not walking anymore because he is dying and he will not get better, but social norms dictate this as an impolite response and is thus shielded from the viewer. Camp Hope Loves stands to relieve those burdens from the children who are learning those answers, but within a conflict-resolution story structure, an incomplete or ongoing process is replaced with a definite conclusion. “The Camp is here at Fairview Lake every year…,” (News 12) “Since 2012 there have been 47 Camp HLCs held…,” (CentralJersey.com) “Hope Love’s Company to me is the Phoenix and to me it’s just Hope.” (NBCU) The camp is placed within the narrative structure to stand as the “fix” to the issues that the news sources have presented.

Discourse Shapes the World

The aforementioned story structure “plots” seen in the articles are described by Johnstone and Andrus as “semantic scaffolds for creating worlds in discourse.” (Johnstone, Andrus, 211) They describe frames in the same way, and use the words coast and shore as examples of how frames are used and perceived. Coast and shore are “associated with different semantic frames… coast is connected to the land dwelling frame while shore is connected to the seafaring frame.” (Johnstone, Andrus, 210) Framing is used conceptually in News 12’s opening line. The reporter Amanda Lee states, “One rainy day wasn’t enough to stop the kids here at camp from having a great time…” When metaphors are used frequently, they can become idioms (Johnstone, Andrus, 48) which is how I can draw the conclusion that the messaging of “rainy day,” as an idiom, aligns with the “obvious” interpretation. Mirriam-Webster and Cambridge Dictionary both define a rainy day metaphorically as a time of need, most often involving money. The most common use of this idiom comes from “saving for a rainy day” which carries implications of inevitability. The resulting worldbuilding opening News12’s coverage identifies the kids at camp as being effected by an inevitable time of need. 

Framing does not always have to be metaphorical. Deliberate choices of literal words can also create framework that shapes the world the audience will perceive. In another news segment, this time from NBCU Academy in June 2024, the station opts to open the segment with a list of camp activities. “At the Hope Loves Company Camp, kids create art, make smores, and sing songs around the campfire.” As a result, the viewers’ first impression of the camp is the fun and typical nostalgic summer camp-style activities that Camp Hope Loves has to offer. Only after this line are viewers clued in to the reason the kids are in attendance. Perhaps the strongest example of this occurrence is from CentralJersey.com’s article, where the word “hang out” is used directly before “group shares” on the second page, and then later appears alone on page five where it reads “…the in person hang outs set a tone and space for children… [and] provides the coping skills for them to get through.” The phrase “hang out” is associated with fun, play dates, and casual meet-ups. The choice of this word frames the camp as a fun place to talk to friends, decentering the weight of the therapeutic conversations that are a central part of the company’s model as stated by the then-program manager Linda Sermons earlier on. “…some fun and mixed with lots of support, we slowly start opening the doors, breaking down boundaries… to open up the platform for them to open up…” The world the news sources are presenting here are lighthearted and revolve mostly around camp activities and friendships, and this worldview being presented seems to differ from the one the company has described themselves. It also differs from the media discussed by Clarke and Everest earlier who found that in articles speaking about cancer, framework used “…an emphasis on fear of cancer… and (3) metaphors of war and battle are used frequently.” (Clarke, Everest, 2591) Framing fighting a disease as a battle stands at a stark contrast to the “rainy day” terminology used throughout these three articles. 

Discussion

My research suggests that the news outlets discussed shape their audience’s perceptions of the Hope Loves Company Camps to be more positive by shifting focus to a more relatable age group to the average viewer and separating that audience from the children presented. The segments also use a narrative structure to propose a resolution to the presented issue which leaves the audience feeling satisfied. Further strengthened by the indexicality used to separate the viewer from the subject, the viewer may not feel any urge to research further or get involved. Lastly, the framework used by the news sources lighten the gravity of the children’s situation. Given that Hope Loves Company declares itself as “a nationally recognized nonprofit that provides support, resources and community to children who have or had a loved one with ALS” the intentions of the news outlets do not seem to align with the purpose of HLC. The news coverage of the past has decentered children unlike the organization, presented the company as a final solution to the kid’s situation, and framed the experience as a lighthearted summer camp rather than what any HLC representative had to say about it.

Works Cited

Altheide, David L. “Journalistic interviewing.” Handbook of Interview Research, Thousand Oaks, Sage Publications (2002): 411-430.

Calvo, Vincenzo, Francesca Bianco, Enrico Benelli, Marco Sambin, Maria R. Monsurrò, Cinzia Femiano, Giorgia Querin, Gianni Sorarù, and Arianna Palmieri. “Impact on Children of a Parent with ALS: A Case-Control Study.” Frontiers, February 27, 2015. https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/psychology/articles/10.3389/fpsyg.2015.00288/full.

“Hope Loves Company Provides Free Camp for Kids Who Live with a Loved One Diagnosed with ALS.” Newjersey.News.Com, uploaded by News12, 2 Jun. 2023, newjersey.news12.com/amp/hope-loves-company-provides-free-camp-for-kids-who-live-with-a-loved-one-diagnosed-with-als?fbclid=IwAR0y2cU2rqJuTvwTqQoDrK6WRdFZbr4TPBRkydQqzFg3wxH7jv4sflebnks.

Johnstone, Barbara, and Jennifer Andrus. Discourse Analysis. 4th ed., Wiley Blackwell, 2022.

Juanne N. Clarke, Michelle M. Everest, Cancer in the mass print media: Fear, uncertainty and the medical model, Social Science & Medicine, Volume 62, Issue 10, 2006, Pages 2591-2600,ISSN 0277-9536, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.socscimed.2005.11.021. TEUN, A. “News Schemata.” Studying Writing: Linguistic Approaches 1 (1986): 155.

“Shared Moments and Experiences.” Centraljersey.Com, uploaded by CentralJersey.Com, 31 May 2023, archive.centraljersey.com/2023/05/31/camp-hlc-helps-youth-share-family-experiences-with-als/.

“Summer Camp for Kids Taking Care of Loved Ones with ALS.” Nbcuacademy.Com, uploaded by NBCU Academy, 20 Jun. 2024, nbcuacademy.com/als-summer-camp/.

For the complete video transcripts, click on this link. Hope Loves Company News Coverage Transcripts

Thank you for reading!