FRAMING THE SHOOTER: THE GLOBE AND THE STREETS

This article concerns the extensive news coverage by the leading Boston newspaper, the Boston Globe, given a double homicide of two African-American boys. These two boys were killed, ostensibly following a dispute with a juvenile street gang, in April 1991. By examining the shifting focus of this coverage over time, the article examines how the local understanding of street violence was framed by the Massachusetts debate over juvenile justice, in particular newly amended state legislation which tipped the scales towards treating juvenile offenders as adults. Considered here are the Globe's attempt to both orchestrate and stand for ‘civic debate’ by entertaining and absorbing rival voices in its representational protocols.     

Fat in the Fire? Science,the News Media,and the “Obesity Epidemic”2

In recent years, the “obesity epidemic” has emerged as a putative public health crisis. This article examines the interconnected role of medical science and news reporting in shaping the way obesity is framed as a social problem. Drawing on a sample of scientific publications on weight and health, and press releases and news reporting on these publications, we compare and contrast social problem frames in medical science and news reporting. We find substantial overlap in science and news reporting, but the news media do dramatize more than the studies on which they are reporting and are more likely than the original science to highlight individual blame for weight. This is partly due to the news media’s tendency to report more heavily on the most alarmist and individual‐blaming scientific studies. We find some evidence that press releases also shape which articles receive media coverage and how they are framed.     

Genealogy of an Emerging Field: Foundations for the Study of Media and Religion

This study triangulated research methods to analyze how the public debate on a controversial issue was framed, and by whom, as a means of understanding the process and outcome of that debate. Its findings support the idea that public debates are framed by all involved parties, not just the news media. It also considered how the relative power position held by each side in this debate may have affected their interactions with the news media.     

How China’s flagship news program frames “the West”: Foreign news coverage of CCTV’s Xinwen Lianbo before and during Xi Jinping’s presidency

This study investigates how Xinwen Lianbo, a prestigious TV news program and a key propaganda tool of the Chinese Communist Party, framed a bloc of Western countries in its foreign news coverage in the period 2010-2015. The results of the content analysis performed in this study revealed that mixed and diverse images of the West were portrayed by the program. Interestingly, significantly more negative frames of these countries were identified after Xi Jinping took office in late 2012, which signaled a pivotal event in terms of China’s foreign policy. However, Xi’s speech to Chinese media workers on 19 August 2013 did not have additional effects on the program’s framing of the West.     

Strategy and Issue Framing: An Exploratory Analysis of Topics and Frames in Campaign 2004 Print News

This study refines the study of strategy and issue framing in campaign news. A content analysis of Campaign 2004 articles published in the New York Times (N = 267) from Labor Day to election day was conducted. Strategy and issue frames were observed in a topical architecture that included 8 campaign topics grouped into 3 categories: (a) Policy Issues, (b) Politics and Process, and (c) Personality. Also, strategy and issue frames were observed in stories containing metacoverage-stories that blend behaviors, products, and standards of the news media with 1 or more of the 8 campaign topics. As expected, stories that contained a salient Policy Issues topic tended to be issue framed, whereas stories with a salient Politics and Process topic tended to be strategy framed. Stories with a salient Personality topic tended to be issue framed. Metacoverage, salient in 9% of coverage, was most commonly combined with Personality topics in stories that were mainly issue framed. Implications for the study of framing in political communication are discussed.     

网络文化提升城市认同的路径探析

城市认同感体现着城市对于主体的凝聚力、感召力和吸引力,是城市文化和城市软实力建设的重要维度。网络媒介作为一种强势崛起的新的文化范式和传播范式,在城市认同感的构建中具有不可忽视的重要地位。要加强对于网络文化提升城市认同的路径和机制的研究,充分发挥网络文化在时间、空间、符号、仪式、共同体等维度对于城市认同的构建作用,促进网络所形构的城市记忆、城市地方感、城市符号、城市媒介仪式、城市共同体想象,增强网络主体与城市之间的情感、记忆和审美等纽带联结,使网络媒介成为构建城市认同、增进城市文化魅力和文化软实力影响效果的有效途径和方式。     

The press and Alitalia's 2008 crisis: Issues, tones, and frames

Given that public opinion about a company's performance during a crisis is highly influenced by the way news media cover crisis events, studies that look at news media's choice of crisis issues, tones and frames are extremely valuable. This paper presents the main findings of a study on how the Italian and international press framed the Italian national airline Alitalia and its crisis in 2008 before its privatization. This study is based on content analysis of news articles published in 2008 in two Italian and two international newspapers. Comparisons of crisis issues, tones and frames between the Italian and international press are made. Implications and recommendations for crisis managers are discussed as well as directions for further research.     

From dechristianization to laicization: state,Church, and believers in Russia

The history of twentieth-century Russian Orthodoxy has been written largely in terms of the Church and state, martyr and oppressor, all within the traditional paradigm of ineluctable, ubiquitous secularization. This article shifts the focus from Bolshevik and bishop to believer, framed within the more recent model that emphasizes “believing without belonging”. While that new paradigm fits the Russian case, the latter certainly had unique specifics: it was precisely the coercive disestablishment of the Church that empowered parishioners and inadvertently laid the foundations for the post-Soviet religious revival. While the depth and meaning of that revival is open to dispute and calibration, it has unquestionably posed a dramatic contrast to contemporary Europe.     

Troubling the ‘Happy Family’: US Liberalism and Narratives of Transnational Adoption and Immigration from China

This essay connects adoption and immigration from China by considering the relationship between the adoptee and the Chinese nanny hired to care for her. I examine news media alongside Wendy Lee’s 2008 novel, Happy Family, which portrays the adoptive family through the perspective of a Fujianese immigrant domestic worker. Transnational adoption from China emerged in the early 1990s as undocumented immigration from the Fujian province rose, representing a major shift in Chinese immigration. These practices have been apprehended divergently in mainstream discourses. This essay approaches the family as a site of neoliberal privatization that frames adoption in terms of inclusion into US national ideologies of race, gender, and class, while undocumented immigration from China has been framed through exclusion. I argue that the nanny destabilizes the construction of the family as a space of depoliticized inclusion through her labor, revealing the neoliberal inequalities that shape both adoption and immigration.     

Framing Child Sexual Abuse: A Longitudinal Content Analysis of Newspaper and Television Coverage, 2002–2012

ABSTRACT

The way in which the news media frame child sexual abuse can influence public perception. This content analysis of the child sexual abuse coverage of eight national news organizations in the United States from 2002 to 2012 includes the two dominant events of the Catholic Church and Pennsylvania State University child sexual abuse scandals. Census and systematic stratified sampling techniques were applied to articles obtained from the Lexis/Nexis Academic database, resulting in a sample of 503 articles. Intercoder reliability was ensured by double coding a randomly selected sample. Study findings indicate a shift in the attribution of responsibility of child sexual abuse among news organizations over the past decade from an individual-level problem with individual-level solutions to a societal-level problem with institutional culpability. Nevertheless, individual-level solutions continue to be framed as the best possible solution.     

Journalists’ and Educators’ Perspectives on News Media Reporting of Islam and Muslim Communities in Australia and New Zealand

We know much about how the news media report on the topic of Muslims and Islam, but we know very little about the journalistic practices and processes that contribute to the way these issues are framed and reported. Whereas research has until now largely focused on the ways in which Islam and Muslims are represented in various news media, there is relatively little research that explores the issue from the perspective of key people working in the news media. In order to address what we perceive as a significant gap in the research, we draw on data from interviews with 29 journalists, editors, media trainers, and journalism educators located in Australia and New Zealand to explore their understandings of the ways stories about Islam and Muslims are reported and why. The article also investigates the interviewees’ perceptions of the effects of news media coverage of Muslims and Islam. Our findings present a starting point to improving practice for those reporting on Islam and Muslim and inform the development of training modules in the reporting of Islam for journalists and journalism students.     

‘The Anarchists' World Cup’: Respectable Protest and Media Panics

In 2005 225,000 people marched through Edinburgh enjoining the G8 to ‘Make Poverty History’. The coalition's own assessment of their campaign highlighted the importance of media by focusing on the extent of media coverage. Media outlets, however, have their own agendas. Detailed analysis of newspaper coverage preceding the G8 Summit suggests a disjuncture between campaign objectives and media frames. This paper explores how far newspaper accounts of G8-related protests were ‘framed’ in terms of social movement aims, and how far in terms of anticipated violence. Our findings lead us to caution against an uncritical equation of ‘coverage’ and ‘success’, offering a more nuanced account of the interplay between social movements and media.     

Telling your own bad news: Eliot Spitzer and a test of the stealing thunder strategy

This study explored the concept of stealing thunder, or telling your own bad news. Unlike previous research which used surveys and experiments, this study examined actual news coverage following crises that involved individuals. One case study compared media coverage of two New York governors while the second case study compared media coverage of a high profile athlete and a late night talk show host. In each of the two studies, one of the individuals in crisis stole thunder from reporters by revealing negative information before the media did; while the other person in crisis engaged in silence and allowed the media to break the story. Results indicate there may be an association between stealing thunder and the amount of news coverage one receives. Both studies found that the source who stole thunder received considerably less news coverage than the source who did not. Additionally, results from both studies showed that stealing thunder was associated with more positively framed stories and headlines and fewer negative media frames.     

Child Sexual Abuse and the Media: A Literature Review

The media play an important role in practice, policy, and public perception of child sexual abuse, in part by the way in which news stories are framed. Child sexual abuse media coverage over the past 50 years can be divided into five time periods based on the types of stories that garnered news coverage and the ways in which public policy was changed. This systematic literature review of research on child sexual abuse media coverage across disciplines and geographic boundaries examines 16 studies published in the English language from 1995 to 2012. A seminal work is identified, citation network analysis is applied, and a framework model is developed.     

Police Accounts of Body-Worn Camera Footage In News Media

People offer accounts in response to actions that are subjected to valuative inquiry. Recordings of police actions captured on body-worn camera (BWC) video can become subject to valuative inquiry when footage is publicly released. This footage may possibly undermine police legitimacy. Managing legitimacy is a basic rationale for why police provide accounts in response to their conduct. Proponents of BWCs assert that the devices enhance legitimacy and, while police have long used accounts to justify their conduct, less is known about how body cameras affect police accountability in practice. Drawing from Scott and Lyman's accounts theory framework, this qualitative, exploratory study examines official police accounts as both outcomes of police accountability in practice and as provided in the context of news media coverage of publicly released body-worn camera footage. This allows us to ask the following questions: What types of accounts have police officials provided in news media reports in the context of publicly released BWC footage? And, more generally, what insight might an analysis of police accounts provide about accountability in relation to the implementation of BWCs? A key finding reveals that the timing of police accounts varied quite considerably, and that accounts were usually not static. The findings provide some general insight into what kinds of actions captured on body camera recordings constitute acceptable use of force by officers, even in situations when police actions resulted in death. This study also provides a small empirical window into when and how police officials provide accounts in response to publicly released body camera footage.     

Hashing it out: an examination of the interaction of image and headline frames of marijuana in a time of flux

The perception of marijuana in the contemporary move towards decriminalization and normalization in the United States and elsewhere will be affected by the manner in which the media visually and textually portray the drug. This study examines the visual and headline framing of marijuana prior to and following legalisation in Colorado, concentrating on issue framing and the valence or tone of visuals, words and their interaction. Results reveal different valences and issues amongst outlets and across time, and show complex and sometimes conflicting pairings of images and text. Neutral news outlets, while seemingly most neutral in image and in headline, were more slanted when pairing images with headlines, although they most frequently paired neutrally toned headlines with neutrally toned images. On the other hand, liberal and conservative news outlets most frequently showed neutrally valenced images with neutrally valenced headlines. While neutral news outlets may be lauded for presenting issues in a neutral tone, they are sending more mixed messages, visually, than the other outlets. Mostly framed as a political issue, marijuana was also heavily emphasised by its criminal and medical aspects. However, conservative news outlets presented its criminal aspect more than the other outlets.     

Discursive imbalance and deficiency in intercultural news communication

Intercultural news communication has become increasingly common in our current era of globalization. But why are certain topics and certain modes of speech adopted in news making rather than others, leading to discursive imbalance? Why are alternative modes of communication often excluded when news travels from one culture to another, causing discursive deficiency? We take a constructivist approach in this paper to examine intercultural news discourse, using examples from previous research and especially from reports on a controversial canine regulation in Beijing in 2006. By analyzing selected news accounts from both Chinese and American media, we attempt to elucidate the discursive power processes involved in this case and draw general lessons about intercultural news communication overall.     

Clean diesel and dirty scandal: The echo of Volkswagen’s dieselgate in an intra-industry setting

In 2015 the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency revealed that German car manufacturer Volkswagen had illegally installed software to produce fake NOx-emissions results. This study aims to analyze how the German news media framed VW’s role. Furthermore, since the scandal shifted from a single company to an industry-wide crisis, this contribution also aims to establish whether the German news media reframed the crisis as an industry-wide phenomenon in 2018. The results show that the Dieselgate was reframed in 2018 as an industry-wide scandal where the conflict, morality, and attribution of responsibility frame were most dominant. We argue that the first wrongdoer in an industry creates a crisis history, which potentially becomes an intensifying factor for competitors who are confronted with similar crises in a later stage. Findings extend the theoretical premise of an organizational reputation as postulated in SCCT, as the organizational reputation is most likely influenced by changing industry-wide perceptions as well.     

The effects of traditional news,partisan talk,and political satire programs on perceptions of presidential candidate viability and electability

This study examines how exposure to network news, partisan opinion talk, and political satire programs during the 2012 Iowa presidential caucuses affected viewers’ perceptions of candidate viability (likelihood of capturing the party nomination) and electability (likelihood of winning the general election). Programs representing these genres—ABC World News, Fox News’s Hannity, and The Daily Show with Jon Stewart—all framed the same candidate as the front-runner for the nomination, though each framed this candidate’s general election prospects in distinctive ways. A randomized field experiment assigned respondents to view one (or none) of the three programs as they aired. Assessments of the front-runner were significantly shaped by assignment to view television coverage, hence demonstrating the potential importance of all three media genres for the presidential nomination process.     

Notes on newspaper accounts of male elder abuse

Law enforcement press releases and other print-media miscellany detailing accounts of male elder abuse involving insurance fraud, false allegations by perpetrators, and abuse inflicted by caregivers, spawned interest in a more systematic review. That review was accomplished principally by accessing two search engines, with news articles from 1986 to the present. A review of these media accounts transformed the initial "insurance fraud" category into a broader one classified as "economic exploitation." That same review also resulted in three distinctive categories of caregiver abuse. This article provides abbreviated case accounts within each category, and concludes with brief notes on several themes derived from the reported accounts.