LLM-Based Viewpoint Mining in the “Blame Game”: How U.S. Media Frame China’s Debt Debate

Previous research on media framing of wildfire has chiefly been concerned with the nature of wildfire in the context of climate change and with framing effects on policy and public opinion. Empirical studies on media content, hence what is mediated to crisis managers and the public concerning authorities’ and the public's response, seem to be largely missing. This is remarkable, given that the media represent main sources of information that may influence crisis management and shape public opinion. Thus, the aim of this study was to identify key media frames relating to portrayals of public and authority responses during and after a wildfire crisis. The study is based on media articles from two time periods: immediately after the fire and 1 year later. We used a thematic method of analysis (TA), thus an inductive, “bottom‐up” approach. A core frame, Responsibility/accountability is identified, underpinned by two sub‐themes. One sub‐theme relates to the causes of the fire and its escalation, revealing a number of different interrelated blame frames. The second sub‐theme refers to management of the crisis, reflecting both authorities’ and citizens’ responses. The deficiencies of the former are implicitly suggested to have forced citizens to act to compensate for their inadequacy. The main theoretical contribution is the identification of an interrelationship between frames in relation to different groups of individuals responding to a crisis, pointing to a more complex view of framing effects. In addition, results show how media tend to assess crisis management based on idealistic criteria, inevitably making the evaluation negative. This contributes to an understanding of how media blame frames, thus “blame games,” may unfold. Practical implications of these results are discussed.

The Black Summer of 2019/2020 saw the forests of southeast Australia go up in flames. The fire season started early, in September 2019, and by March 2020 fires had burned over 12.6 million hectares (Werner and Lyons). The scale and severity of the fires was quickly confirmed by scientists to be "unprecedented globally" (Boer et al.) and attributable to climate change (Nolan et al.). The fires were also a media spectacle, generating months of apocalyptic front-page images and harrowing broadcast footage. Media coverage was particularly preoccupied by the cause of the fires. Media framing of disasters often seeks to attribute blame (Anderson et al.; Ewart and McLean) and, over the course of the fire period, blame for the fires was attributed to climate change in much media coverage. However, as the disaster unfolded, denialist discourses in some media outlets sought to veil this revelation by providing alternative explanations for the fires. Misinformation originating from social media also contributed to this obscuration. In this article, we investigate the extent to which media coverage of the 2019/2020 bushfires functioned both to precipitate a climate change epiphany and also to support refutation of the connection between catastrophic fires and the climate crisis.

This study examined the Vietnamese online news media discourse of a child abuse incident at a private autism center. Using framing analysis, the study found the news media frame the child abuse dominantly as a professional misconduct. The study detailed how the media’s blame was directed to the abusive staff and the uninformed parents, not institutional governance and policy loopholes. The study argued that the Vietnamese media focused on constructing ideologies of parental responsibilization and autonomous citizenship rather than state authorities’ accountability.

The post-crisis accountability process is a purification ritual that serves to channel public emotions and enables re-equilibration after a severe disturbance of the sociopolitical order. Crisis accountability literature can be reviewed in terms of forums, actors, and consequences. This setup allows a systematic discussion of how crises impact: the accountability process in influencing its setting (the forum); the strategies of accountees and their opponents (actors); and the resulting outcomes in terms of reputation damage, sanctions, and restoration (consequences). There is a clear distinction between formal and informal accountability forums, with the media being almost exclusively informal, and judicial forums, accident investigators, and political inquiries having formal authority over accountability assessments. Yet, through the presence of formal authorities in media reporting, and because media frames influence the work of formal authorities, the different forums intensively interact in accountability processes. Looking at accountability strategies reveals that the number of actors involved in blame games is likely rising because of increasingly networked crisis responses, and the role of actors has become more important and personal in the crisis aftermath and accountability process. The consequences and success of individual actors in influencing the accountability outcomes is shaped by both institutional settings and individual skills and strategies. A current political power position that exceeds prior mistakes is an effective shield, and denial is the least effective though most commonly used strategy. Accountability processes remain a balancing act between rebuttal and repair. Yet after major crisis, renewal is possible, and post-crisis accountability can play a crucial role therein.

This chapter explores coverage of terror-related news in the Bangladeshi press, focusing on the Dhaka attack of July 1, 2016. It explores the framing of news around the incident in three Bengali-language dailies, analyzing the dominant themes and how they compare between newspapers. It also includes interviews of journalists who covered the event and cover the topic of terrorism in their work, toward identifying the challenges in writing news on the subject. The chapter provides an understanding of media framing of terrorism in Bangladesh, providing a comparative analysis of news outlets and their perspectives on and processes of news reporting. The findings revealed that episodic framing in the immediate aftermath of the event was based on official statements, focused on the incident, and initial identification of the perpetrators and victims. Longer term, thematic framing moved to a political blame game, some investigation and analysis of the incident, and extensive focus on the perpetrators as “the Other” – perverted youth from rich families and English-medium educational backgrounds. Almost all news was based on official briefings from law enforcement agencies and government sources. The journalists interviewed, too, spoke of their reliance on official sources and limitations to reporting on terrorism. The study found that despite the wide media coverage of the terror attack and the combination of episodic and thematic framing of the incident in the news, there were no comprehensive investigative news stories, and stressed on the need for reduced reliance on official sources and a greater need for investigative journalism on terrorism.