Alyt Damstra, and Rens Vliegenthart, both of Amsterdam School of Communication Research, explore how the recent economic crisis was framed by print media and how do they differ in their use of those frames. The focus is on the Netherlands

By using in-depth qualitative content analysis and a quantitative analysis the writers found five major frames: business, financial, individual, Euro-zone and moral system. The appearance of frames differed across outlets, but there was a notable similarity in over-time frame prominence. The volume of the coverage appears to be related to specific key events.

Newsworthiness is driven more strongly by the unexpectedness of events than by the negativity of consequences, the authors conclude.

The article “(Un)covering the Economic Crisis? Over-time and inter-media differences in salience and framing” was published online by Journalism Studies. Find the article here.

Picture: el crepusculo del euro by Jimelovski Platano Macho, licence: CC BY-SA 2.0