4 - Change over Time

Summary

This chapter explores trends in obesity coverage over time, both in terms of areas of stability and change. Two perspectives on time are adopted. First, changes to keywords are studied on a year-by-year basis, spanning the duration of the corpus (i.e. 2008 to 2017). Second, change is studied in terms of the annual press cycle, with keywords obtained by comparing articles in terms of the particular month in which they are published (e.g. comparing articles published in January against those published in all other months combined, and so on). The first part of the analysis shows how certain discourses, namely those which represent obesity as a matter of personal responsibility, are increasing in relative frequency over time, while those which represent obesity as something resulting from social and political factors are in decline. The second part of the analysis shows how obesity representations can be driven by the news values associated with particular events in the annual (press) cycle, such as Christmas, Easter, summer holidays and the timing of children’s school terms.