News coverage of biotechnology is rich with metaphors, expressing the hopes as well as the fears and uncertainties of this rapidly advancing field. In analysing the constructions and productions of risk, scholars can learn much from a study of the role of metaphors in news and other media. News items often include a mixture and clash of metaphors reflecting the complex and often polarized views which surround biotechnologies. Recently reported issues such as GM crops, cloning breakthroughs, embryonic stem cell research, and new genetic tests, for example, are replete with rich and often contending metaphors. A study of the role of metaphors in the framing of biotechnology issues can help scholars develop a more sophisticated understanding of the social processes involved in the construction and production of risk and of the politics of the definition of public issues.
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Alan Petersen (2005) studied this question.