Injecting Ozempic Narratives: A Corpus-Based Discourse Analysis on U.S. Newspapers

Abstract

This Bacheor’s thesis examines how Ozempic, the type 2 diabetes drug increasingly used for weight loss, is portrayed in contemporary U.S. newspaper articles. As media interest in Ozempic grows, especially in the United States, this study is set to explore how language contributes to shaping the different discourses associated with Ozempic. By employing Paul Baker’s framework for corpus-based discourse analysis, this study investigates word frequency, collocation, and concordance to look into language patterns associated with Ozempic. In addition, the findings of the analysis are used to identify dominant discourses around Ozempic. Initially, some assumed discourses around Ozempic were themes such as weight loss, administration methods, and risks. As data, this study utilizes a specialized corpus consisting of 26 newspaper articles from The New York Times, USA Today, The Hill, and Los Angeles Times. These newspaper or web articles collected from NexisUni database were published between January 1, 2022 and February 10, 2025, and included the keyword ozempic at least once. The analysis conducted with corpus linguistics software AntConc included both quantitative corpus linguistic analysis as well as quantitative interpretation of the analysis results. The results of this study show that four dominant themes arise in the newspaper reporting on Ozempic: the medical discourse, the weight loss discourse, discourse around the cost of Ozempic, and counterfeit Ozempic discourse. Therefore, the hypothesis of the study was at least partially correct, as the newspapers do not merely report on Ozempic, but actively construct and reinforce certain ways to understand it. These findings demonstrate the roles of language and media in shaping public discourse and perception around medical treatments, such as Ozempic.