News coverage of GM food in three developing economies: a comparison of Brazilian, Chinese and Indian newspapers

The debate about the production and consumption of genetically modified (GM) food has been ongoing for more than three decades, since the 1980s, when scientists first revealed that they had managed to place foreign genes into plant cells. Over this period of time the number of actors involved in the debate has increased substantially and now includes a wide range of developing countries. Even though the debates in these nations have attracted considerable social and political attention, academic research on the issue remains rather limited. Central to the discussion are the media, which offer a platform for the exchange of perspectives around a topic that is often polarized between those that perceive GM technology as a risk and those that perceive it as an opportunity, particularly for developing economies. This paper looks at the coverage of GM food in three of them: Brazil, China and India. We present the results of content analysis of newspaper stories related to genetically-modified food over the last decade (2004-2013). Our results indicate that despite having different political systems, being at different stages of adoption of GM technology and having diverse media ecologies, the three countries show notable similarities in their news coverage, but differ when compared to the previous literature dealing with GM food in industrialized nations. We found evidence of noticeable politicized newspaper coverage across countries and newspapers. In terms of sources cited, government and official sources are the ones most often used and the prevalent discursive frame is the political-regulatory frame. We conclude by arguing that as the global economic and political weight of Brazil, China and India grows, it is becoming ever more necessary for communication scholars to consider them as useful cases for comparative studies.