Human Cloning in the Media

The book offers a set of distinctive analyses of media and cultural texts – including press and television news, Hollywood and independent film drama, documentaries, art exhibits and websites – and in dialogue with the producers and consumers of these texts. From these investigations, key issues are foregrounded: the image of the scientist, scientific expertise and institutions; the governance of science; the representation of women’s bodies as the subjects and objects of biotechnology; and the constitution of publics, both as objects of media debate, and as their intended audience.

This examination demonstrates the importance of mediation, media institutions, and media texts in the production of scientific knowledge. Countering models that see ‘the media’ as simply a channel through which scientific knowledge passes, this book will emphasise the importance of communications technologies in the production of modern scientific knowledge and their particular significance in contemporary genomics. It will argue that human genomic science – and cloning as its current iconic manifestation – has to be understood as a complex cultural production.