American Ebola Story: frames in U.S. National Newspapers

Abstract

ABSTRACTThe 2014 Ebola epidemic saw the first symptomatic and fatal cases of Ebola in the United States. Concurrently, news coverage in U.S. media about Ebola increased. Research has shown that media’s framing of events influences public perception and understanding. To address framing of the Ebola epidemic in the U.S. media, researchers conducted a content analysis of newspaper articles reporting on the Ebola epidemic during the U.S. contact tracing period from September 30 to December 2, 2014 (n = 718). The top three circulating U.S. national newspapers were used in the analysis. The results show that the human interest, conflict, and action frames had the highest presence across newspaper articles, whereas the presence of attribution of responsibility, morality, and economic frames was lower. This study furthers knowledge of U.S. news media framing and coverage of new public health emergencies, and how newspapers may drive audience understanding and perception of the 2014 Ebola epidemic. This study also discusses implications of the findings and suggests directions for future research.