A study of the Irish debate on abortion, examining opinion and editorial articles from The Irish Times and the Irish Independent, from 1983 to 2016.
Mary Kate Hickey
BA Journalism
School of Media
Dublin Institute of Technology Aungier Street
Supervised by Tom O’Connor
April 2017
ABSTRACT
Thirty-Three Years of Debate – Have Opinions Changed?
A study of the Irish debate on abortion, examining opinion and editorial articles from The Irish Times and the Irish Independent, from 1983 to 2016.
Mary Kate Hickey
The purpose of this dissertation is to examine the Irish media’s opinion and editorial coverage of the abortion debate in Ireland. This will be done by looking at key events in the debate, from the 1983 referendum, up until the 2016 March for Choice.
This study focuses on opinion and editorial articles published by Irish broadsheets – The Irish Times, and the Irish Independent – at certain points of interest during the abortion debate. These points of interest include, but are not limited to the 1983 referendum, the 1992 referendum, the 1992 X case, and the 2016 March for Choice. This study pursues to determine whether opinion and editorial articles have become more liberal or conservative, or if they have stayed the same over the course of 33 years.
By firstly looking at literature written on abortion a sense of how abortion is written about in non-media publications can be found. This literature will give background information on abortion in Ireland, including the legislation and cases that have created debate on the topic. It will also give context to what liberal and conservative opinions are in relation to abortion. Then an analysis was carried out through the content analysis and discourse analysis of various opinion and editorial articles at the times of interest aforementioned.
This research will add to research both on public opinion of abortion as well as research on media coverage of the abortion debate in modern day Ireland.
This research found that while the balance of liberalism and conservatism have not appeared to have changed, the spectrum of what can be said has changed.
Below is a PDF of my original Dissertation
DISSERTATION 3-4-17 – MK Hickey
Mary Kate Hickey 