Manufacturing Consent for an Extractive Regime in Rural New Brunswick, Canada
Bibliographic record
Abstract
A common narrative for rural regions, maintained by corporate news media, is that extensive resource extraction from the natural environment by large corporations is an economic necessity. This corporate discourse marginalizes voices advocating for rural and community-based social and economic development. New Brunswick is one of the smallest and most rural provinces in Canada, with almost half of its residents living in rural areas. Our study explored how news editorials discussed rural issues in the province. News editorials function to maintain a dominant discourse in society. Unique in Canada, one family in the province has extensive business interests in resource extraction while owning a company, Brunswick News, that has a near-monopoly of the news media in the province. Our study conducted a content analysis of Brunswick News editorials focused on the term ‘rural’ over a recent five-year period. Our results highlight that in a vastly rural population, only one percent of editorials included this term. Of these, 87% backed claims of diminished rural communities, and 43% supported claims that corporate development of extractive industries was necessary to provide the economic boost to rural New Brunswick and ensure their sustainability. Keywords: news media, editorials, New Brunswick, resource extraction, diminished rural communities ---------------------------------------- Autorisation de fabrication pour un régime d'extraction dans les régions rurales du Nouveau-Brunswick, au Canada Résumé Un récit commun pour les régions rurales, maintenu par les médias d'information des entreprises, est que l'extraction importante des ressources de l'environnement naturel par les grandes entreprises est une nécessité économique. Ce discours corporatif marginalise les voix qui plaident pour le développement social et économique basé sur les communautés rurales. Le Nouveau-Brunswick est l'une des provinces les plus petites et les plus rurales du Canada, avec près de la moitié de ses résidents vivant en milieu rural. Notre étude a exploré comment les éditoriaux des nouvelles discutaient des enjeux ruraux dans la province. Les éditoriaux des nouvelles ont pour fonction de maintenir un discours dominant dans la société. Unique au Canada, une famille de la province a de vastes intérêts commerciaux dans l'extraction des ressources tout en étant propriétaire d'une entreprise, Brunswick News, qui détient un quasi-monopole des médias de la province. Notre étude a mené une analyse du contenu des éditoriaux de Brunswick News axés sur le terme « rural » au cours d'une récente période de cinq ans. Nos résultats soulignent que dans une population très rurale, seulement 1% des éditoriaux incluaient ce terme. De ce nombre, 87% appuyaient les revendications de collectivités rurales en déclin et 43% soutenaient que le développement des entreprises des industries extractives était nécessaire pour stimuler l'économie des régions rurales du Nouveau-Brunswick et assurer leur durabilité. Mots-clés: Médias d'information, éditoriaux, Nouveau-Brunswick, extraction de ressources, communautés rurales diminuées
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.015 | 0.049 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.001 | 0.002 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.016 | 0.004 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.005 | 0.001 |
| Open science | 0.001 | 0.002 |
| Research integrity | 0.002 | 0.002 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.015 | 0.002 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".