What’s in a frame? A comparative content analysis of American, British, French, and Russian news articles

Abstract

Drawing on the agenda-setting and framing literature, this quantitative content analysis examines how le Figaro, the Daily Telegraph, the New York Times, and the Moscow Times the Syrian war before and after the chemical weapon attack of 21 August 2013. Overall, the nationalization frame was most frequent, followed by the responsibility and conflict frames. Despite the large impact of the conflict, the morality, human interest, and economic impact frames were hardly present. Although all newspapers followed a similar pattern, the Daily Telegraph was the most heavily framed. Moreover, the stories barely provided any context while discussing several solutions largely in keeping with the suggestions of the governments. These findings raise questions about the neutrality of the newspapers and their impact on public opinion.

News framing of the Ukraine crisis in the Russian and British media

“…The six pre-defined generic frames are suggested by Semetko and Valkenburg (2000) and by Van Cauwenberge et al 2009: the conflict, human interest, economic impact, morality, responsibility, and nationalisation frames. The combination of this set of frames has also been applied by Godefroidt et al (2016) to scrutinise four countries' news articles of the Syrian conflict in a comparative content analysis.…”

“…does one party-individualgroup-country reproach another?) was altered: instead of 'reproach', 'fights, riots, and confrontation' (Godefroidt et al 2016) were used. The human interest frame was scrutinised through four questions on the extent to which the story is personalised.…”

“…Based upon Godefroidt et al's (2016) approach to evaluating diagnostic and prognostic frames, six questions were developed to measure potential diagnoses and eight questions were raised to scrutinise the potential prognoses (Appendix II). Rather than all-encompassing 'diagnostic/prognostic framing', specific causes and solutions were chosen to be looked at, because this allowed us to draw parallels with the policies carried out by the countries involved (Godefroidt et al 2016). The researcher worked out the possible diagnoses pointing towards political, socio-economic, religious factors, human rights abuse, geopolitical factors, specific triggers (and/or other causes).…”

“…The researcher worked out the possible diagnoses pointing towards political, socio-economic, religious factors, human rights abuse, geopolitical factors, specific triggers (and/or other causes). These six elements were determined by the guidance from Godefroidt et al (2016), a close reading of the articles, and paying attention to recent studies about the roots of the Ukraine crisis (e.g., Ojala and Pantti 2017). The 'rest' category was aimed to offer an opportunity to suggest a new category once more coding was complete (Godefroidt et al 2016).…”

“…These six elements were determined by the guidance from Godefroidt et al (2016), a close reading of the articles, and paying attention to recent studies about the roots of the Ukraine crisis (e.g., Ojala and Pantti 2017). The 'rest' category was aimed to offer an opportunity to suggest a new category once more coding was complete (Godefroidt et al 2016). The prognostic solutions could be: military action, change in government, diplomacy, financial intervention, internal reforms, and removal of the military weapons arsenal (and/or other solutions).…”