RAISING BABIES, FIGHTING BATTLES, WINNING RACES: ENTREPRENEURIAL METAPHORS IN THE MEDIA OF 6 ENGLISH SPEAKING NATIONS
Alice
de Koning, Georgia State University
Sarah Drakopoulou Dodd, The American College of Greece, and the University
of Aberdeen
Principal Topic
Metaphors provide an elementary sense-making mechanism, by which people begin to develop and express mental concepts, such as purpose and identity. Earlier work, focusing on US entrepreneurs, has shown that a grounded understanding of entrepreneur-ship can be harvested from the stories featuring entrepreneurs, as presented in the media. Extraction and analysis of metaphors provides considerable insight into the meanings that entrepreneurs and their social context ascribe to their activities, and as to how they make sense of them. In this paper we compare and contrast metaphors and themes in articles from national newspapers in six countries. Do entrepreneurial meanings and metaphors differ between the six countries?
Method
The data set of articles was constructed from the on-line archives of nationally distributed newspapers in the U.S., (Anglophone) Canada, Ireland, the U.K., India and Australia. One or two papers were surveyed for each country. The newspapers own search engine was used to identify articles using the word ‘entrepreneur’ in from Dec. 1, 2001 to Feb. 10, 2002. For Ireland, the search term ‘founder’ was also used. The 156 articles ranged from very short announcements to long features, and did not include obituaries, politician speeches and editorials. The qualitative analysis of articles used coding frameworks developed in sociological studies of public debate in media.
Results and Implications
The research confirms differences between countries appear in the metaphors and themes describing entrepreneurs. Themes of self-reliance and the individual dominate the U.S. and Canada, job creation in India, and shady doings in Ireland. There is some evidence of common threads across the countries, also, in stories describing ambitious start-ups, venture financing, and glamorous industries. The meanings found in the national media may affect individual sense-making about entrepreneurship as a career, and more generally may affect the support available to entrepreneurs in the social and political spheres.
CONTACT: Alice de Koning: Georgia State University, P.O. Box 4014, Atlanta, GA 30303-4014; (T) 404-651-2989; (F) 404-651-2896; alice@dekoning.ca
2002 Babson College. All Rights Reserved. Last Updated March 2003.