Picture: Polar bear by Andy Brunner, license CC0 1.0

ARTICLE: Framing of climate change news has only limited effects to selective exposure

Framing of the stories plays only a limited role in driving exposure to climate change news, a new study finds. Lauren Feldman of Rutgers University and P. Sol Hart of the University of Michigan, conducted two news browsing experiments, testing six different climate change frames. The experiments were done with national samples of adults in … Continued


Picture: Security in Ngwom by lesley wright, license CC BY-NC-SA 2.0

ARTICLE: US television coverage of Nigeria is mostly negative

Western media coverage of Africa has long been a subject of controversy. US television news portray Nigeria mainly in a negative light, a new study by Oluseyi Adegbola and Sherice Gearhart of Texas Tech University, and Jacqueline Skarda-Mitchell of the University of Nebraska Omaha (authors not in original order), finds. Authors analyzed television coverage of … Continued


ARTICLE: Climate change reporting needs alternative frames

Environmental injustice is a key issue in understanding climate change. When discussing environmental justice, mainstream media mainly reproduces anthropocentrism, that is, a human-centric view, write Renée Moernaut, of Vrije Universiteit Brussel and University of Antwerp, Jelle Mast, of Vrije Universiteit Brussel, and Yves Pepermans, of University of Antwerp. The researchers conducted a multimodal framing analysis, looking … Continued



ARTICLE: The Olympic Games as a transnational social drama

  Because Olympianism represents universal ideals, since its inception it has been a source of appropriation by strategic actors, writes Limin Liang, of City University of Hong Kong. The article studies the Beijing Olympics as a transnational social drama. The study is based on a discourse analysis, drawn from The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, The Guardian, … Continued


ARTICLE: Framing of nationally and locally sensitive issues in China

Sensitivity of news is expected to influence news framing significantly, write Xianwen Kuang and Rining Wei, both of Xi’an Jiaotong-Liverpool University. The authors choose two sensitive political issues with different geographic relevance and explore the frame use of three party and three nonparty newspapers in China. The study confirms the assumption that the framing of nationally sensitive … Continued


Picture: Hong Kong's Umbrella Revolution by Studio Incendo, license CC BY 2.0

ARTICLE: Divided reporting of the Occupy Central Movement protests in Hong Kong

The Occupy Central Movement protests in Hong Kong in 2014 divided the local media in their stance: some applauded the fight for democracy, others condemned the actions. William Dezheng Feng, of the Hong Kong Polytechnic University, investigated reports from four major Chinese newspapers in Hong Kong, using an attitude framework. The news articles’ attitudes toward … Continued


Picture: Santiago, Chile by Stanley Wood, licence CC BY 2.0

ARTICLE: News frames influence sharing on Twitter and Facebook

Sebastián Valenzuela, Martina Piña and Josefina Ramírez, all of Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile, studied how news frames affect sharing on social media in Chile – the country with the highest social media penetration rate in Latin America. The study looked at the effects of four frames: conflict, economic, human interest, and morality. The authors collected … Continued


ARTICLE: Audience reactions to domesticated distant suffering

Domestication as journalistic practice refers to the framing of a foreign news event within the perceived national or local context of the audience, write Eline Huiberts and Stijn Joye, of Ghent University. The study investigates how an audience makes use of domestication strategies in viewing and reacting to mediated distant suffering. The study draws on audience research … Continued


ARTICLE: Media framing of trolling and online abuse

Karen Lumsden, of Loughborough University, and Heather Morgan, of University of Aberdeen studied the framing of trolling in British newspaper reports. Qualitative document analysis of 175 newspaper reports of trolling from British national newspapers was applied. The tactics employed by trolls can be seen as examples of “silencing strategies”. The article argues that the media’s framing of trolling … Continued