How three Southeast‐Asian newspapers framed the haze’ of 1997–98

Abstract

‘Framing’ refers to the journalistic act of reporting the news through core and secondary themes. Computer‐aided content analysis was used to study three newspapers’ framing of the Southeast Asian smoke‐cloud ‘haze’ of 1997–98. The newspapers tended to emphasize generally non‐confrontational frames and to downplay those that potentially were politically sensitive. They also favoured frames that were largely specific to their home countries. This finding tends to support the argument that journalism in Asia is unique, likely because of the influence of regional and national ideologies. But the findings also suggest that some aspects of the newspapers’ ‘haze’ coverage were consistent with US‐Western journalistic routines.