Generic Frames Research Articles

Topic modelling as a method for framing analysis of news coverage of the Russia-Ukraine war in 2022–2023

This study critically analyses the representation of the Russia-Ukraine war in Western (the Euronews) and Eastern (the Kyiv Post) media discourses. It examines how media organisations shape narratives through strategic framing. Employing the Natural Language Processing technique – Topic Modelling – with a generative probabilistic model LDA and a transformer-based language model BERT, the study reveals generic frames elaborated by more specific extensions, shedding light on media portrayal of economy, public opinion, security & defence, external regulations, policy evaluation, and health & safety sectors. Through Named Entity Recognition with roBERTa, Sentiment Analysis with distilBERT, and Corpus Linguistics methods with LancsBox X, interpretation of these overarching frames provides a comprehensive analysis of the nuances in narratives, societal perceptions and policy decisions amidst the ongoing war.

Different Realities Surrounding the 2022 Russo-Ukrainian Conflict: The Cases of Russia Today and CNN

The aim of this small-scale research is to provide a combined quantitative and qualitative analysis of the framing of news articles about the 2022 Russo-Ukrainian conflict, focusing on online news portals Russia Today (RT) and CNN. The 5 generic frames: Attribution of responsibility, Human interest, Conflict, Morality, and Economic consequences, developed by Semetko and Valkenburg (2000), were used to perform the analysis. The purpose of this study was to compare the dominant frames and the extent of their usage in the two outlets. Following the compilation of two separate corpora with an equal distribution of 100 articles from each outlet, the articles were classified according to the frames they exhibited by utilizing a set of yes/no questions. To ensure reliability, the classifications were performed independently by both authors. The results of the analysis showed on one hand significant differences in the framing of the war between the two outlets, and on the other similarities in the extent to which framing was utilized. RT mostly relied on the Attribution of responsibility frame to present the West as responsible for the outbreak of war, as well as the Economic consequences frame to portray the Russian economy as resilient despite the Western sanctions. On the other hand, the most frequent frames in CNN’s articles were Conflict and Human interest, which focused on battlefield reports and the portrayal of the Ukrainian side as worthy of assistance, respectively.

Framing of the Belt and Road Initiative by Selected India Online Newspapers

The Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) was launched by China in 2013. The Chinese government perceives this initiative as an economic cooperation effort aimed at addressing obstacles that impede development. The intricacies of the China-India relationship have caused India to perceive the BRI from a distinct perspective. The role of relationship type as an external factor in the frame-building process has been neglected until now. This study aims to determine the influence of China-India relationship types on the five generic frames formulated by Semetko and Valkenburg in 2000. The relationship types include cooperation relationship, competition relationship, and friction relationship. The frames under consideration encompass the responsibility frame, human interest frame, conflict frame, morality frame, and economic consequences frame. The study employs quantitative content analysis as its methodology, utilising this approach to analyse news articles sourced from selected India online newspapers, namely The Times of India, The Hindus, and Hindustan Times. A total of 658 news articles were selected in online newspapers, covering the period from September 2013 to September 2022. This study found that relationship types indeed play a significant role in the frame-building process. Cooperation relationship had a very weak positive correlation with the responsibility frame; the competition relationship had a very weak negative correlation with the responsibility frame and a weak negative correlation with the conflict frame; the friction relationship had a weak positive correlation with the conflict frame. Overall, it can be concluded that the highlighted relationship types do indeed influence the framing of news. Keywords: Media framing, frame building, belt and road initiative, China-India relationships, India online newspapers.

The role of masonry infills on the interstory drift demand of reinforced concrete frames

Most frame buildings, especially those with shear-type moment resistance frames, are affected by masonry infill panels, which change the mechanical properties of whole systems in a big way. In turn, seismic performance varies depending on the infill panel and frame interactions. In conventional structural design practice, such interaction has been overlooked. This study looks at the range of local displacement demands in shear-type frames with and without infill panels. Generic frames are developed by tuning the story stiffness and mass to produce a reasonable period range between 0.2 and 2.0 s. The masonry infill panels are simulated through equivalent diagonal struts. A Bouc–Wen-based hysteretic model is applied to incorporate the post-yielding hysteresis degradations of both columns and masonry panels. The hysteresis loop control parameter values are also given for incorporating masonry infill properties. The correlation analysis between the strength and stiffness of RC frames and masonry infills is supplied as an instrument for calibrating the hysteretic model. In the collection of records, there are a lot of near-fault ground motions, which puts a lot of seismic demands on the buildings. The modification factors via regression analysis are proposed using over 1254 nonlinear response history analyses. This modification factor is figured out by looking at the difference between the mean drift spectrum for a set of generic frames that are both bare and filled. The nonlinear analysis shows that residual drift demands can be reduced in the case of panel effects that exist for masonry-infilled mid-rise RC shear-type frames.

Developing a synthetic news corpus to validate generic frame detection methods

Frames are a central concept in communication research. Based on our literature review, we propose that frame identification is an act of identifying selected reality and communicative intention. We then highlight the conceptual and methodological issues of frame identification using computational methods. To avoid the correlation between topics and frames, we provide a synthetic dataset for evaluating frames found in multi-topical news content, using the detection of generic frames as a test case. With this dataset, for the first time, we benchmark manual coding and various automatic and semi-supervised methods. Based on the preliminary benchmark results, this study provides evidence that generic frame identification using both manual coding and automatic methods might not be accurate.

Posting and framing politics: a content analysis of celebrities’, athletes’, and influencers’ Instagram political content

ABSTRACT Instagram and its famous personae are nowadays an important news source for many users, which may stem from celebrities’ and social media influencers’ (SMIs) repeated engagement with political topics on their otherwise entertainment- or lifestyle-oriented accounts. Yet, to date, no study has systematically investigated the type and framing of this political content. This content analysis examined 1,256 Instagram posts and 2,936 stories of the 59 most popular opinion leaders (19 athletes, 20 celebrities and 20 SMIs) in Western countries, and documented, for the first time, the prevalence of types of political topics and their framing. Results from multilevel analyses suggest that SMIs and athletes are more likely to post lifestyle-oriented political topics, while celebrities engage more with conventional topics. Moreover, political topics appear more often in ephemeral than permanent content. Generic frames were overall rare, but the most dominant frame of political content was the human impact frame.

The commodification of men of color initiatives: community colleges directors’ experiences with non-performative commitment

Program directors at community colleges must navigate institutional rhetoric to effectively support Men of Color. This study considers how administrators often exhibit a non-performative commitment to diversity, in that stated commitment might not equate to action. Utilizing a framework grounded in critical race theory and cognitive frames regarding diversity, deficit, and equity, the authors of the study interviewed directors of men of color programs to explore their administrators’ commitments to support the work. They also explored the ways that diversity rhetoric affected the success of their programs. Findings revealed that rhetoric often took the place of tangible action, that diversity rhetoric might contradict directors’ experiences, and that directors regularly acted as commodities to do the work of diversity with little support. Through this research, the authors offer several implications related to the need for more explicit institution-wide practices that center on equity-mindedness and move past generic frames about diversity.

Framing Revolution: Multiframe News Themes in Lebanon’s October 2019 Uprising

This study examines news framing of partisan media during uprisings. Through mixed methods, it studies the framing of Lebanon’s October 2019 protests, compares frames across political divides, and interprets story themes based on associations between multiple frames. First, the qualitative media framing analysis (MFA) inductively interprets issue-specific frames. Then, the quantitative content analysis deductively examines the developed issue-specific frames and the generic frames across five partisan news channels and tests the relationship between them and across the pro- and anti-protests media. Finally, multiple associated frames are grouped together into news story themes. Results from the MFA reveal six frames: solidarity, head-to-head, individualization, acknowledgment, disruption, and peace through violence frames. The study detected the frequent deployment of the solidarity, conflict, and acknowledgment frames and a significant framing difference between pro- and anti-protest channels. Pro-protest channels more often deployed the solidarity frame, while anti-protest channels more frequently used the conflict, acknowledgment, disruption, and economic consequence frames. Finally, the study developed four story themes based on associations between frames: Blame the protestors or the politicians; protestor violence begets government violence; divided they suffer; and politicians may not only be the culprits but also the solution. The resulting multiframe news themes offer nuanced meaning to generic frames that frequently appear with issue-specific frames and highlight the different roles a singular news frame can play when combined with other frames.

The Framing of Anti-Fake News Law in Malaysian Newspapers

The government of Malaysia enacted an Anti-Fake News law right before the 14th general election. In more ways than one, this law relates to Malaysia’s practice of development journalism, which is a tool for the government to foster economic growth and nation-building. The main aim of this study is to explore the differences between Malaysian serious newspapers and tabloids in terms of frames employed in the Anti-Fake News Law reports. This study applied the generic frames of the framing theory in quantitative content analysis. The serious newspapers chosen in this study were Bernama and The New Straits Times, while the selected tabloids were The Sun and The Malay Mail. Results from the analysis of the 212 news reports retrieved showed that serious newspapers favored the use of the attribution of responsibility frame, while tabloids favored the use of the human interest frame. Additionally, the findings showed that the attribution of responsibility frame was more susceptible to a positive tone and the conflict frame was more susceptible to a negative tone in reports. In conclusion, this study gained insights into journalistic role performance under the practice of development journalism in Malaysia, particularly pertaining to the Anti-Fake News Law.

Crisis as Emotional Labour in the News. Assessing the Trauma Frame During the Economic and the Pandemic Crisis

This study focuses on the way(s) that the economic and the pandemic crisis were covered by media outlets and aims to research whether journalists’ own feelings and experiences of covering both these traumatic events were depicted in their news articles. Drawing on Semetko and Valkenburg’s (2000) set of five generic frames this study focuses on Greece, a country that has been severely hit by both these crises and brings together theories about journalism as emotional labour that defy the prevailing notion of the distant and neutral observers. Moving one step further, this study argues that journalists convey their source’s emotions, but in some cases, they also reveal their own feelings through their news articles. Findings suggest that apart from the already documented frames, (i.e., attribution of responsibility, conflict, human interest, economic consequences, and morality), journalists used the trauma frame, a notion we use to refer to news articles that essentially reflect and reveal journalists’ own emotions. This finding refutes the traditional understanding of quality journalistic discourse as one stripped of emotional expression and opens new pathways for research.

Another Violent Protest? New Perspectives to Understand Protest Coverage

This study assesses the relationship between two well-established sets of frames to better understand the news coverage of massive political protests. By relying on Semetko and Valkenburg’s generic frames and McLeod and Hertog’s protest frames, this study aims to identify whether certain generic frames emphasized in news stories increase the tendency to delegitimize protest movements. To this end, we analyzed the news coverage of Chile’s Estallido Social, a series of massive political demonstrations that developed across the country from October to December 2019. Data for this study come from stories published by Radio Bío Bío, the most trusted news outlet in the country, according to Reuters Institute. By analyzing a sample of 417 stories, we found the coverage replicated patterns that usually delegitimize protest movements, as many of the stories focused on violent acts and depicted demonstrators as deviant from the status quo. We also found a direct relationship between generic frames and protest frames, in which the presence of the former determines that of the latter. Generic frames provide information about how the news media interpret and package the news, which in turn affects demonstration-related features that the news media pay attention to. As such, we argue that combining both generic and issue-specific frames is a helpful approach to understanding the complexities of protest news coverage.

Framing of Covid-19 Pandemic News in Malaysian Local Newspapers

As a reliable means for the public, mass media is a critical medium to be used to disseminate information predominantly in crisis. At the end of 2019, the world faced a new pandemic, later known as the COVID-19 pandemic, after scientists identified the virus that caused this infection. The media coverage of this cause accelerated and became more expansive after the spread of a group of shocking pictures of infected cases who died on the roads and streets due to this disease. People have turned to the mass media to find out what was happening, and at the same time, media outlets interacted differently with this pandemic. In particular, this study seeks to reveal the news framing used by the most popular local newspapers in Malaysia. This study, therefore, examines the five mainframes developed by Semetko & Valkenburg: conflict, attribution of responsibility, human interest, economics, and morality. This sampling involves the News Straits Times and The Star from April 1 to April 10, 2022. This study concludes that both newspapers NST and The Star reported the Covid-19 pandemic with all the five generic frames in this order (attribution of responsibility, human interest, economic frame, morality frame, and conflict frame), where the attribution of responsibility frame is the most used frame, and the conflict frame is the least used in both media outlets, the second significant result in this study concludes that NST used these generic frames more than The Star newspaper. Keywords: News framing, Covid-19, newspapers, News Straits Times, Utusan.

Mediated Representation of Sharia in Aceh: A Hybrid Approach to Media Frames

Aceh is the only province in Indonesia with an exceptional degree of autonomy to implement Sharia. This paper explores how Serambi Indonesia—the leading Acehnese local newspaper—framed the implementation of Sharia in the region. This study employed content analysis of the Sharia coverage in Aceh from 2012 to 2020 using a hybrid approach, combining issue-specific and generic frames. The results revealed the four identified frames: Sharia codification, deviance from Sharia, desirable Sharia enforcement, and Islamic morality. among those frames, the deviance from Sharia was much preferred. The frame prominence was more prevalent after Qanun Jinayat (Islamic Criminal Bylaw) took into effect in Aceh. It was also given more prominence on the front page than on other pages. However, other frames made up 60% of the articles, implying that the Acehnese local newspaper positively represented the implementation of Sharia in Aceh while highlighting Sharia problems surrounding its enforcement. These findings exemplify the use of a hybrid approach to better examine the media frames, support the effect of critical events on changes in the media frames, and confirm the different prominence of the frame based on the page placement.

A Closer Look at 1MDB Framing in Malaysian Mainstream English Newspapers Before and After GE-14

An analysis of mainstream Malaysian English newspaper coverage of the 1Malaysia Development Berhad's (1MDB) financial crisis before and after Malaysia's 2018 14th General Election is presented in this study. Content analysis was used to undertake a quantitative analysis of news stories from four mainstream English newspapers, namely The Star, New Straits Times, The Edge, and The Sun. A total of 1,362 articles were analysed for the presence of value frames of Conflict, Economic Consequences, Responsibility, Human Interest and Morality introduced by (Semetko & Valkenburg, 2000). The findings reveal that there were significant differences in the use of the five generic frames in all of the four English mainstream newspapers following General Election 14. In particular, Conflict frames were found to have declined significantly in the period following the elections. In addition, there were also statistically significant interaction effect between newspaper and main sources indicating that the influence of the political actors is more significant than the effect of the media in determining the framing of the articles. The changes raise questions on the effectiveness of Malaysia’s media reform plans which were introduced following the 14th General Election.

Фрейминг в кризисной коммуникации (на материале правительственного ответа США на пандемию COVID-19)

The aim of the study is to identify the main frames in the US administration’s response to the COVID-19 pandemic. The article reveals the content of the notions of frame and framing and pre-sents the results of a quantitative and qualitative content analysis of the material selected for the study. The scientific novelty of the work lies in the research of the generic frames used by the officials and mem-bers of the US coronavirus task force in response to the pandemic based on the analysis of the lexeme fre-quency. As a result, it has been revealed that the main frames in the studied material are “medicine/ science”, “human interests”, “hope”, “ethnicisation”, “economic consequences” and “conflict”.

Widening the North/South Divide? Representations of the role of the EU during the Covid-19 crisis in Spanish media

Abstract In this article we study the discursive construction of the EU managerial role in the early stages of the Covid-19 pandemic in four Spanish newspapers: two published in mainland Spain – El Mundo and El País – and two published in Catalonia – La Vanguardia and ARA. By doing a qualitative study of newspapers, this article aims to identify which discourse strategies are used when informing about the actions and decisions taken in European political and economic fora. The analysis identifies the three main generic frames which are used in news pieces: morality (mostly as a call for solidarity), economic (mostly as preventing possible harm), and conflict (focused on divide(s) within (EU)rope). The activation of these frames in the news pieces contribute to an implicit legitimation of the existence of (EU)rope as based on two core values – solidarity and cooperation – together with a delegitimation of the actions performed by some European institutions.

Framing socio-political controversy: The 2012 Spanish labor reform as a case study of cascading activation

In February 2012, the Spanish Government approved an aggressive labor reform. Many political agents committed to emphasis framing, highlighting certain aspects of the topic to persuade their publics with their definitions of the situation. Some generic frames suggested an individualistic approach to the labor market, while some others called for collective action. Following the cascading activation model, this research attempted to identify the flows of frames from the elites to the media outfits. A content analysis was conducted with the materials disseminated in February 2012 by the government, the two main Spanish unions, the confederation of employers, and four print media. Differences and similarities were found through bivariate analyses between the categories of the codebook. Although clear cascades emerged from the unions to the online daily Público.es, and from the government to Larazón.es, generally the media frame building processes did not limit to just depicting the frames of an elite.

Influence in Social Media: An Investigation of Tweets Spanning the 2011 Egyptian Revolution

Through the lens of social movement theory, this paper investigates the drivers of individual users’ social influence on Twitter during the Egyptian Revolution of 2011. Following this lens, we suggest an extended model of sustained social influence (that considers retweets as the measure of user influence) as a function of the duality of individual Twitter users’ social actions and the underlying facilitating Twitter network structure. Based on an analysis of organic large-scale Twitter data on this social movement, we examine how characteristics of individuals’ social actions, namely activity and tenure on Twitter, and characteristics facilitated by the network (i.e., the number of followers as well as centrality in the community structure of Twitter), impact retweet influence in time windows spanning the movement. Utilizing a mixed methods approach consisting of machine learning and human coding we conceptualize social movement-related engagement activities of Twitter users, which map to generic frames of social movement mobilization. The analysis reveals interesting patterns across different contexts of the Egyptian Revolution. Regarding individual social action, social movement related to “who” and “where” activities, as well as tenure, were found to contribute to individual social influence. In terms of the facilitating structure, the follower network (an observed network structure) and centrality (an unobserved network structure) were both found to contribute significantly to sustained influence.

Suppression of Pakistani Media in the Post-2000 Scenario (An analysis of Musharraf, Zardari and Nawaz Regimes)

This study, “suppression of Pakistani media during Musharraf, Zardari and Nawaz’s regimes in the post-2000 scenario," was analyzed through the prism of Authoritarian and Framing Theories by taking generic frames from Semetko & Valkenburg Model-2000 and some other issue-specific frames. Quantitative and qualitative content analyses with a distinct coding scheme were applied. SPSS Version-21 was utilized for descriptive statistics, variance, and multiple regression tests of the quantitative data with a sampling frame of 2880 of four newspapers. The qualitative data was examined with Nvivo software. Results disclosed that categories revealing media suppression dominated with 1404 (69.50%) items of the total 2020, while those suggesting media facilitation were only 538 (26.63%). The highest media suppression was reported during Musharraf’s era. A relatively less significant difference was observed between Zardari and Nawaz regimes. Results partially supported the hypothesis of significant difference in media treatment by all three regimes

“Chuck Norris, Please Help!” Transnational Cultural Flows in the 2017 Anti-Corruption Protests in Romania

This study examines the meaning-making work of transnational cultural references in protest. Whether using the image of the superhero or re-mixing a famous painting, the presence of such references in home-made protest placards was a striking feature of the 2017 anti-corruption protests in Romania. By means of a qualitative analysis of 58 such signs, this study identifies five types of transnational cultural resources co-opted in the local protest: politics, high and popular culture, brand names, computer culture, and other motivational slogans and protest symbols. Such references are appropriated in local protest for their recognizability potential, their generic interpretive frames, or their usefulness in generating surprising re-iterations of the political cause. Yet, the use of such references remains interwoven with the symbolic and political capital of professional, middle-class elites. In the Romanian case, the use of these transnational cultural references also constructs the protesters as cosmopolitan and aligned with Western cultural consumption and political practices. In turn, this frames political opponents as backwards, parochial, and unfit for democratic politics.