Night and Day

Abstract

This study analyzes letters to the editor in two Oklahoma newspapers during the debate over a constitutional amendment banning judicial use of the Islamic moral code called “Shariah Law.” Using Moral Foundations Theory (MFT) to operationalize the moral evaluations in media framing, three morality-based frames were identified: a Patriot frame emphasizing Shariah’s harms, a Heritage frame advocating loyalty to the American Way, and a Golden Rule frame promoting equal treatment of Muslims. Each frame was related to moral foundations that align with particular political ideologies, and amendment supporters were more likely to frame their arguments in moral terms.

The Moral Foundations of Human Rights Attitudes

“…Some studies have tried to address these limitations by using manual coding in addition to the raw word frequencies (e.g. Bowe & Hoewe, 2016;Clifford & Jerit, 2013;Graham et al, 2009). Another approach to improve the power of the analysis is to use more sophisticated techniques to extract moral foundations usage from text sources (e.g.…”

Permitted to Build? Moral Foundations in Newspaper Framing of Mosque-Construction Controversies

“…This software counts virtue and vice terms related to the five foundations and calculates a score that is a percentage of foundation terms in each text (Graham et al, 2009). This is a technique that has been used in previous research to determine moral foundations in texts (Bowe & Hoewe, 2016; Clifford & Jerit, 2013; Dehghani, Sagae, Sachdeva, & Gratch, 2014; Garten, Boghrati, Hoover, Johnson, & Dehghani, 2016; Graham et al, 2009; Jairam, 2012; Motyl, 2012; Sagi & Dehghani, 2014; Teernstra, van der Putten, Noordegraaf-Eelens, & Verbeek, 2016), thus replicating a well-established method. Lacy et al (2015) argued that algorithmic textual analysis tools (such as LIWC) are best used in studies of well-archived digital data in contexts (such as digitized newspaper stories storied in databases) that are concerned with explicitly manifest variables (like the ones in the MFT dictionary for LIWC).…”

“…This technique also removes the researcher one step from the frame identification process. The cluster method has gained popularity in recent years and has been endorsed and/or adopted by other researchers (Bell & Entman, 2011; Bowe & Hoewe, 2016; Bowe, Oshita, Terracina-Hartman, & Chao, 2012; Donk, Metag, Kohring, & Marcinkowski, 2012; Van Gorp, 2010). However, the approach has been critiqued for its reliance on manifest content as a trade-off of validity (B.…”

“…This study uses MFT to operationalize framing’s moral evaluation dimension. MFT has been widely used to study political discourse (Bowe & Hoewe, 2016; Feinberg & Willer, 2013; Graham, Haidt, & Nosek, 2009; Graham, Nosek, & Haidt, 2012; Haidt & Graham, 2007). Based on insights from anthropology and evolutionary psychology, MFT posits that moral reasoning is based on a series of moral foundations (Graham et al, 2013; Haidt & Joseph, 2004).…”

“…In recent years, media coverage of Islam has been scrutinized in a string of contentious debates widely reported in the news. These issues include international terrorism (Nacos & Torres-Reyna, 2006), wars in Muslim-majority countries (Entman, 2004), immigration (Poynting & Mason, 2007), the Islamic moral code called Shariah (Bowe & Hoewe, 2016), visual depictions the Prophet Muhammad (Shehata, 2007), and traditions related to the hijab head covering and halal food preparation (Poynting & Noble, 2003; Saha, 2012; Scott, 2010).…”