Taking a Stance on Doping

Online Press Evaluation of a Parliamentary Select Committee’s Investigations into Doping in British Cycling

Abstract

Between 2016 and 2017, the Parliamentary Select Digital, Culture, Media and Sport Committee was charged by the House of Commons to investigate doping in British sport, following revelations in the press that this practice was widespread. This study focuses on the witness sessions involving exponents of cycling, a sport frequently linked with performance enhancement.
The study adopts a Computer-Assisted Discourse Studies (CADS) approach. By comparing a corpus of the Committee hearings with a corpus of online media coverage, the study offers a detailed qualitative analysis of stance and evaluation strategies in both corpora. Analysis highlights the importance of stance adverbials for witnesses and Committee members alike. It also reveals patterns of attitude adverbials. It is shown how patterns of stance in the hearing prime the press account of the issue, resulting in predominantly negative evaluations that reduce the complexity of the issue to an oversimplified more polarized account, presumably in the interests of newsworthiness.