A heated political debate has raged in recent years over the rationality and fairness of products liability litigation and of the U.S. tort law system generally. Critics charge that tort claims, plaintiff victories, and large punitive damages awards have "skyrocketed" in the last two decades at great economic and social cost to the nation. May social scientists have responded that such criticisms are grounded in unrepresentative anecdotes and "horror stories" that obscure the patterns and implications of actual legal practice. The primary reason for the apparent political appeal of tort reform, scholars argue, is the effective manipulation of rhetoric by well financed tort reform advocates and, especially, biased reporting in the mass news media.
This project consists of conducting a content analysis of media framing of two case studies involving products liability-the McDonald's coffee lawsuit, and the two-decade legacy of lawsuits against the tobacco industry. Additionally, the project will identify common elements of products liability lawsuit coverage in the news over a twenty-year period as well as study how media-generated anecdotes, icons, and sources have figured into congressional debates about tort reform.
This research contributes to the scholarly enterprise by systematically examining media coverage of product liability lawsuits. While the empirical focus is on new media coverage, the project's primary objective is to analyze the social production of practical legal knowledge. The working assumption is that the mass media generate a significant portion of public knowledge both of and about law in modern society. This knowledge in turn is highly likely to influence public opinion and political debates regarding the need for tort reform as well as routine legal practice.
The research utilizes a general "framing" methodology. Analysis focuses on three specific dimensions of framing activity: 1) the imperative of "newsworthiness," which selects and presents news in ways that are personalized, morselized, dramatized, and normalized for cultural consumption; 2) the privileging of particular cultural norms emphasizing individual responsibility in the presentation of legal disputes; and 3) the selection of various types of authoritative data for story lines, including quotes by experts, anecdotes, and social science data. The research design tests for the influence and implications of these framing devices in the production of news stories about tort law practice. This research will enhance our understanding of contemporary debates over tort reform in the U.S. and contribute to socio-legal analysis regarding the production, reproduction, and transformation of law itself in contemporary society.
