A content analysis of the newspaper coverage of the three major hurricanes in 2005

As the primary means of communication between government agencies and the general population, the media play an important role in shaping how the public perceives a potential risk. Risk communicators should carefully consider media coverage of disaster to successfully communicate with the public in the future. This paper examines the content of Hurricane news stories and the framing patterns (e.g., emotional vs. logical) used by local newspapers 1 week before the occurrences of three major hurricanes in 2005. “Actions to take to prevent the risk” was the most frequently covered content, followed by “anticipated damages.” The majority of the risk content was presented using logical framing patterns.     

The image of the United States in the Chinese media: An examination of the evaluative component of framing

This study examines the presentation of the image of the United States in 874 news stories carried in five Chinese newspapers – from a framing perspective. It has yielded four major findings: (1) the political image of the United States is presented by the Chinese press in a relatively balanced fashion, depicted as one that embodies contradictory attributes: positive and negative, strong but aggressive, democratic but hypocritical; (2) the economic image of the United States is presented as one that is undergoing a recession but full of hope in recovery; and (3) the social image is one that features “fair play with minor skirmishes”; and (4) the cultural image is one that is diverse, free, democratic, advanced in science and technology, but hegemonic and biased.     

Korean practitioners and journalists: Relational influences in news selection

This study investigates how source–media relationships influence perceptions toward news selection from the public relations practitioners’ viewpoint in Korea. The results show that Korean public relations practitioners who perform formal media relations believed that journalists would select news stories based on journalists’ media routine principles, such as using government sources. In contrast, Korean public relations practitioners who perform informal or monetary media relations believed that journalists would select news stories based on journalists’ extra-media factors, such as personal relationships with public relations practitioners.     

Effects of government public relations on international news coverage

Using content analysis of an international newspaper and a government publication, this study examines the influence of newsworthiness and public relations efforts on international news coverage, one of the key sources for understanding other countries. Grounded in gatekeeping theory, this study hypothesizes strong relations between three variables (newsworthiness, public relations involvement, and international news coverage) in the context of several South Korean news stories.     

What Makes Gambling News?

This paper examines print media coverage of casino and electronic gambling in one Canadian province from 1992 to 1997. It provides a theme analysis of content of 234 gambling stories printed in the top two daily newspapers in Nova Scotia. The findings of our content analysis indicate that pro-gambling corporate and political newspaper sources waged a successful media campaign and constructed a powerful public rhetoric in support of new gambling products, services, and institutions. The media, for their part, gave visibility and form to these structured messages. They helped create expectations about gambling and economics and gambling and government. Law and order, and moral and medical discourses about gambling, we discovered, were minor representations in the news coverage, although moral narratives were a pervasive secondary theme in much of the reporting. At bottom, the press produced a politics of truth about gambling that was both an external exercise of power and an internal organizational production.     

The representation of the Chinese product crisis in national and local newspapers in the United States

This paper examines how national and local newspapers in the United States frame Chinese product recalls in 2007. First, it reviews literature on international communication and framing. Second, it content analyzes the presentations of the Chinese product recalls in two leading national newspapers, including the New York Times and the USA today, and six major newspapers from five Southern states, including Georgia, South Carolina, Louisiana, Mississippi, and Alabama. Third, it compares media representations of Chinese products in the two national newspapers with those in Southern newspapers. We argue that American media are still dominated by stories from the U.S. perspectives and Chinese sources are less likely to be cited. Even though Southern newspapers play an important role in constructing local knowledge, their limited scope of coverage and perspectives constrain their role in reporting international news.     

Discourses on rurality in post-socialist news media: The case of Lithuania's leading daily “Lietuvos Rytas” (1991–2004)

The Soviet regime defined rurality as a collective-farm or kolkhoz-based society. Since the late 1980s such a state-imposed definition of rurality was rapidly unraveling under the tensions and conflicts produced by perestroika and post-socialist reforms. In the new politics of the rural, the role that the news media was playing in shaping public opinion on rural matters was of growing importance. The paper analyzes 3827 articles on rural issues published during the post-independence period (1991–2004) in the leading Lithuanian daily “Lietuvos Rytas” (LR). Two types of discourses in rural coverage are discerned. During the 1990s rural coverage in LR was reflective of conflicts and tensions between relatively prosperous urban classes which benefited from post-socialist reforms and pauperized rural population. Rurality was increasingly associated with the failure of “the moral modernization” of the rural population. Rural population was stigmatized as deficient in values and character, remaining in the grips of the Soviet mentality and state dependency and, therefore, unable to take advantage of opportunities created by the reforms. Since the early 2000s when economic situation in the country improved significantly and Lithuania started negotiations on European Union membership, rurality in LR coverage was gradually re-defined in EU terms as a socio-spacial entity shaped by regional, national, and local policies promoting multifunctionality of rural areas, well-being of rural communities, and active citizenship. Factors that influenced changes in rural discourses are analyzed. Impacts of changing discourses on rural identities, rural politics and policies are discussed.     

Can the World Expo change a city's image through foreign media reports?

Hosting global events like the World Expo is a new form of public relations for cities, but few studies have been conducted to explore the extent to which they can change the content of media reports and media attitudes toward city image. We conducted a content analysis of all Shanghai-related news reports from November 2009 to April 2011 on 30 English newspapers in 10 countries. We found a few interesting discoveries. First, the Shanghai Expo 2010 did affect newspapers’ agenda-building, with the Expo being the topic of most reports and the most important news before and during the Expo. Second, the Expo brought changes to the news frames of newspapers, but the changes were still constrained by media practices. Third, the Expo improved newspapers’ attitudes toward Shanghai's city image, particularly toward the city's potential. Finally and most importantly, global events such as the Expo do have a significant impact on the content and attitudes of newspaper reports, but a single event cannot produce long-lasting effects. Therefore improving city image requires “better actions than just better words.”     

Stale economic news,media and the stock market

I employ a classification of headlines from newspapers and wire services to examine whether stale macroeconomic news affects stock prices. Unlike with individual stocks, the cost of obtaining information about major economic releases is relatively low. Thus, stock prices should adjust to economic news announcements prior to their coverage in newspapers. I find statistically and economically significant relationship between stale news stories on unemployment and next week’s S&P 500 returns. This effect is then completely reversed during the following week. These findings show that investors are affected by salient information and support the hypothesis that investors overreact to stale macroeconomic news reported in newspapers.     

Remembering disaster: Since the media do,so must public relations

Only recently has research begun concerning the longer-term aftermath of organizational crisis. This essay presents the genre of disaster rhetoric as a viable strategy to address the problems and opportunities that arise when the media write about crisis anniversaries or news stories that refer to any crisis or disaster, past or present. After a brief review of genre theory, the authors outline the seven functions of the “rhetoric of disaster” and provide multiple examples of their application to public relations activity and its news coverage. The essay concludes with questions that practitioners may use proactively in the development of copy points to address each of the rhetoric of disaster's functions.     

How do the news media frame crises? A content analysis of crisis news coverage

The present study is a content analysis of crisis news frames found in 2006 crisis news coverage. A total of 247 news stories were analyzed to examine which of five news frames (attribution of responsibility, human interest, conflict, morality, and economic) and level of responsibility (individual and organizational level) were used by the media according to crisis type. While the attribution of responsibility frame was the most predominantly used in crisis news coverage, the use of each of the five frames depended on crisis type. The use of level of responsibility also varied by crisis type and was related to the five frames; individual level of responsibility was used more with morality, human interest, and attribution of responsibility frames. Implications and suggestions based on the results were discussed.     

The Giffords shootings in Tucson: Exploring citizen-generated versus news media content in crisis management

This study expands on previously published research into the role citizen generated content plays in the coverage of crisis situations and discusses implications for public relations practitioners who must respond to this type of coverage. Using a content analysis of newspapers and the websites of cable and broadcast news networks, the authors explored the use of both official versus non-official sources and the use of citizen generated content during coverage of the January 2011 shootings in Tucson that injured Rep. Gabrielle Giffords (D-Ariz.) and 12 others, and killed six people. Results revealed reporters were more likely to use non-official sources. Reporters also were more likely to use non-official technology sources, or citizen generated content, than official technology sources such as web-based news releases and statements. This study finds additional support for the concept that crisis managers must learn to deal with reporters’ use of citizen generated content while also leveraging social media to control their organization's message during a crisis.     

British newspapers privilege health and medicine topics over other science news

This study examines coverage of science, health and medicine in five UK national newspapers: three broadsheets, a mid-sheet and a tabloid. The content analysis is compared with a quantitative survey of members of the Association of British Science Writers (ABSW). The study confirms earlier reports that medicine and health topics are privileged over science in newspaper reporting. Unlike studies of medical research news, which have found medical journals to be the main source of news stories, this study found that general science and medical news is drawn from a wide range of sources. Although respondents were generally positive about press materials, targeting and news value were highlighted as areas for improvement. Briefing scientists to use less jargon and training scientists to better understand the needs of journalists were also highlighted by respondents as areas to improve.     

Strategic framing in the BP crisis: A semantic network analysis of associative frames

This paper contributes to the analysis of the interplay of public relations and news in crisis situations, and the conceptualization of strategic framing by introducing the idea of associative frames and the method of semantic network analysis to the PR research field. By building on a more advanced understanding of communication as process of social meaning construction that is embedded in networks of differential relations between different actors, it contributes to extend the perspective of first- and second-order agenda building towards a kind of “third order” or “network agenda building”. Via an automated content analysis of more than 3700 articles we examine agenda- and frame-differences between public relations, UK and US news in the BP crisis. The study documents that BP successfully applied a decoupling strategy: It dissociated itself from being responsible for the cause and at the same time presented itself as solvent of the crisis. It shows that in crises, associative frames in PR resonate partly to associative frames in news. Especially the US news followed BP and did not succeed in presenting political actors as solution providers.     

Doing time,filling time: Bureaucratic ritualism as a systemic barrier to youth reentry

This paper contributes to knowledge about the challenges of youth reentry by examining how transitional services can function as a barrier to – instead of a support for – healthy reintegration of youth. Using participant observation conducted in 2003–2004 at a juvenile aftercare program in Philadelphia, we explore a pervasive problem that Merton (1940) termed “bureaucratic ritualism.” Case workers and administrators became beholden to daily demands related to billing, paperwork, and meeting minimum standards, supplanting the larger goal of individualized care for young people returning from placements. Outputs, not outcomes, became the measure of success. We identify a number of reintegration activities that were ritualistic in nature and explore the features of the system that encouraged ritualistic responses by aftercare workers. Finally, we identify a group of aftercare workers, which we call “proactive caregivers” who resisted the organizational pressures to become bureaucratic ritualists.     

More coverage is less confidence? Media portrayal of “one country,two systems” in Hong Kong

This article tracks the trend of Hong Kong people’s confidence in the idea of “one country, two systems” and identifies various factors affecting its level. It also examines newspaper coverage of “one country, two systems” over the past 20 years and how it is related to people’s confidence level. Five variables, namely trust in the SAR government, the government’s performance, societal appraisal, press freedom, and confidence in China’s and Hong Kong’ s future are found to be related to people’s confidence in and newspapers’ coverage of “one country, two systems.” Newspapers have used various approaches to frame the situation over the past two decades. When there was more news coverage, there seemed to be less confidence. The oxymoronic nature of “one country, two systems” is explicated in the context of Hong Kong.     

Spin doctors in the spotlight: Effects of strategic press and publicity coverage on perceptions of political PR

News media often engage in strategy framing when covering politics, including strategic press and publicity coverage coined to express the focus on the media's role in the game of politics, as well as politicians’ calculated publicity and public relations efforts in relation to the media. This study examines the effect of strategic press and publicity coverage on perceptions of political PR once its practitioners and their publicity efforts have become the object of reporting. Drawing on data from two experiments (n = 863), we show how political PR professionals have themselves little to gain from becoming part of the story.     

Crisis managers losing control of the message: A pilot study of the Virginia Tech shooting

This pilot study examined the role citizen generated content plays in the coverage of crisis situations and discusses implications for public relations practitioners who must respond to this type of coverage. A content analysis of newspapers and the websites of cable and broadcast news networks revealed reporters were more likely to use citizen generated content during the first stage of the crisis and were more likely to use non-official technology sources, or citizen generated content, than official technology sources such as web-based news releases and official statements.     

The relationship between newsworthiness and publication of news releases in the media

Using content analysis of news releases received, selected, and rejected, and published by the media this study examines the relationship between the newsworthiness of news releases and the publication of news releases in the media. The results show that newsworthiness is a strong predictor of the selection of news releases for publication and the amount of coverage the selected news releases will receive. However, the newsworthiness of news releases fails to predict the prominence of coverage of the selected news releases.     

The Ideological Convergence of Civil Society Organizations and Newspapers in Turkey

This study investigates the extent to which newspapers are polarized in representing civil society organizations in Turkey. In examining the news in 15 printed newspapers and 2 online newspapers in 2017, we found that (1) 1499 associations and 499 foundations were mentioned but not equally distributed across the newspapers, (2) Turkish newspapers’ coverage of associations/foundations was affected by the type of association/foundation (religious/conservative vs. secular) and newspaper (pro-government vs. anti-government), (3) when news about an association/foundation appeared in pro-government newspapers, it did not appear in anti-government newspapers, and vice versa, and (4) secular associations/foundations were covered more often by anti-government newspapers than by pro-government newspapers. We therefore argue that in countries such as Turkey, where civil society organizations have historically been closely allied with state or political ideologies, newspapers’ political stances affect the media coverage of civil society organizations.