Moral Framing Research Articles

Moral expression of "experts" and public engagement: Communicating COVID-19 vaccines on Facebook public pages in Chinese.

This research investigates the moral frames employed by diverse Chinese-speaking "experts" on their Facebook public pages in relation to COVID-19 vaccines, leveraging Moral Foundations Theory for analysis. The analysis highlights that experts predominantly employ moral frames emphasizing care and authority in communicating COVID-19 vaccines. However, the moral frames of care, loyalty, and fairness are more effective in garnering public support. The research thus identifies a disparity between the moral rhetoric commonly espoused by different expert groups and the rhetoric that substantively influences public engagement. The implications of diverse experts' moral framing in public health crises are also discussed.

”Queerness is unstoppable”

During the 2010s, video game content and subsets of the gaming community have been diverging in polarized directions regarding LGBTQ topics in video game culture. On the basis of these discourses,this study utilizes framing and discourse analysis to examine how video game publications frame LGBTQ topics in gaming. Analyzing 269 articles published between 2002 and 2020, it fi nds that 57,2% of articles utilize framing characterized by egalitarian equality, compared to 0,7% that use traditionalist morality framing, while 36,1% use neutral framing. A majority of articles likewise deploy politically loaded keywords in a sincere manner rather than a veiled manner, in which these words function as stand-ins for conservative views. Further, the study points to conservative discourses like Gamer-Gate affecting the output of articles between 2014 and 2015 and charts the potential construction of a journalistic paradigm in which journalists do not utilize slurs. This paradigm and high levels of egalitarian and neutral framing differ from previous findings regarding framing in game journalism.

Targeting audiences' moral values shapes misinformation sharing.

Does aligning misinformation content with individuals' core moral values facilitate its spread? We investigate this question in three behavioral experiments (N1a = 615; N1b = 505; N₂ = 533) that examine how the alignment of audience values and misinformation framing affects sharing behavior, in conjunction with analyzing real-world Twitter data (N = 20,235; 809,414 tweets) that explores how aligning the moral values of message senders with misinformation content influences its dissemination in the context of COVID-19 vaccination misinformation. First, we investigate how aligning messages' moral framing with participants' moral values impacts participants' intentions to share true and false news headlines and whether this effect is driven by a lack of analytical thinking. Our results show that framing a post such that it aligns with audiences' moral values leads to increased sharing intentions, independent of headline familiarity, and participants' political ideology but find no effect of analytical thinking. Furthermore, we find that moral alignment facilitates sharing misinformation more so than true information. Next, we use natural language processing to determine messages' moral framing and senders' political ideology. We find that an alignment of moral framing and ideology facilitates the spread of misinformation. Our findings suggest that (a) targeting audiences' core values can be used to influence the dissemination of (mis)information on social media platforms; (b) partisan divides in misinformation sharing can be, at least partially, explained through alignment between audiences' underlying moral values and moral framing that often accompanies content shared online; and (c) this effect is driven by motivational factors. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2025 APA, all rights reserved).

DISCOURSES ON CRYPTOCURRENCY IN THE NATIONAL AND INTERNATIONAL NEWS ARTICLES-A COMPLEMENTARY RESEARCH

The study focused on the discourses on cryptocurrency in national and international news articles. This study utilized a complementary research design to examine cryptocurrency's framing strategies, linguistic features, and ideologies. This study analyzed 50 news articles from leading National and International News outlets published from February 1, 2024, to June 15, 2024. Results revealed that economic consequence and conflict framing were dominant frames. Compounding and Derivation were common linguistic features, while clipping was evident in international news narratives. Moreover, no significant differences were found in economic consequence, conflict, and morality frames. However, there was a significant difference in the attribution of responsibility and human-interest frames. Moreover, there were no significant differences in compounding derivation, initialism, and acronym. However, there was a significant difference on clipping in linguistic features. The ideologies reflected habitus, field, capital, and doxa. Media and technology literacy and political preferences represent the Habitus. While the fields were government regulatory and cryptocurrency exchanges. Economic capital as Central Digital Currency and Bitcoin Etf. Social capital featured politically corrupt figures and influential individuals. Cultural capital represents the digital skills organization and educational background of individuals. The decentralized finance and Blockchain are represented as Doxa. KEYWORDS: Education, applied linguistics, framing strategies, linguistic features, cryptocurrency, Philippines

Framing of Flood News in The Borneo Post, a Regional Malaysian Newspaper

In recent years, climate change and unpredictable weather are causing more frequent severe floods in various areas, but little is understood about how regional newspapers shape public reactions to and preparations for natural disasters. This study investigated the framing of flood news by The Borneo Post, an English-language newspaper circulated in Sarawak, Malaysia. The specific aspects examined were: (a) frequency of thematic and episodic framing of flood events and (b) frame dimensions used in articles. Altogether 76 articles (25,676 words) on floods published by The Borneo Post from 1 January to 31 December 2023 were analysed. All articles were in the episodic frame. The main frame dimension was attribution of responsibility (79%), where authorities act as disseminators and narrators of disaster facts. However, the absence of thematic framing of floods lowers attribution of responsibility to authorities to plan long-term solutions to flooding. The economic consequences frame ranked second (14.5%), emphasising losses suffered. Little attention was given to human interest (3.9%) or conflict (1.3%). There was no morality frame, and 1.3% of articles were fact-filled and did not have an obvious frame dimension. The findings suggest that fact-focused flood reporting lacking the humanity element may not move readers to action.

Moral Comments in Social Media: Analyzing the Role of Ideology-Matching Moral Framing and Impression Motivation in the Persuasive Effect of User Comments on YouTube

ABSTRACT This research explores how users form attitudes when they are presented with online videos and moral comments from their fellow audience. Based on the Heuristic-Systematic Model (HSM) and Moral Foundations Theory (MFT), the study aims to find out how different moral foundations represented in user comments interact with the motivational state, the political orientation, and the moral beliefs of the viewer. In two pre-registered experiments (N = 314 and N = 1015), the inclusion of moral arguments within comments below a YouTube video (harm vs. authority), their valence (positive vs. negative) and the participants’ motivational states (high vs. low impression motivation) were varied. While Experiment 1 revealed no significant effects regarding the persuasive effect of user comments and accompanying moral arguments, Experiment 2 showed a more general effect of comment valence on viewers’ attitude formation. These results help to specify the conditions under which user comments may lead individuals to construct their attitude in a way that fits the perceived majority opinion.

Unraveling the Impact of Moral Framings within Media Coverage to Promote the (De)stigmatization of Depression on Social Media

Media coverage of depression on social media with specific framings could shape people’s perception and attitude, which is significant in reducing the stigma and promoting support for depression sufferers. Adopting the lens of moral foundation theory (MFT), this study aims to explore the effect of inherent moral framings within depression coverage on social media on the stigma and approval attitudes toward depression in audiences’ responses. A large language model and a dictionary-based approach were respectively adopted to score depression-related media coverages (n = 919) and corresponding comments (n = 92,505) collected from the Weibo platform against MFT’s five dimensions and (de)stigma attitudes. The results indicated that care, purity, and fairness framings are prevalent in depression coverage, surpassing moral framings such as betrayal, harm, and cheating. Most responses expressed approval rather than stigma. Moreover, the use of care and loyalty framings can elicit approval responses but decrease audience engagement.

Morality vs. Politics as a Framing Problem: How (Not) to Misunderstand the Fight Against Climate Change

AbstractThis paper is guided by two research hypotheses: (1) In contemporary public discourse, many of the most urgent political problems are predominantly framed and understood in moral terms; (2) this shift in framing has far-reaching consequences, impeding our understanding of the underlying problems and their eventual solution. The two hypotheses are demonstrated using multiple examples, with the fight against climate change serving as the main case study. The moral framing (thinking in terms of individual actions, duties and obligations, blame and personal responsibility) is shown to crowd out political considerations (focused on institutions and policy), even when such moral considerations are either out of place or immaterial. Consequently, individual actions and responsibility are shown to be overemphasized in contemporary public discourse to such an extent that the viable political solutions are often discounted or overlooked.The context of the argument offered here is provided by the realism-moralism debate on the distinction between morality and politics. The ambition of the paper is to show that, regardless of their possible deeper distinction (the “distinctively political normativity”), there is a strong pragmatic case for carefully distinguishing between ethical and political theorizing. Morality and politics provide different frames, distinct interpretive frameworks that consequently give rise to contrasting solutions. Therefore, they need to be kept apart.

Sharing is caring? How moral foundation frames drive the sharing of corrective messages and misinformation about COVID-19 vaccines

Drawing from Moral Foundation Theory, our study explores if and how corrective messages and misinformation related to COVID-19 vaccines utilize moral frames. Unlike studies that either focused on content-analyzing messages or study how audiences react to moral frames, this study incorporated both a content analysis of COVID vaccine messages and modeling of how millions of audiences reacted to such messages. We combined semantic network analysis, text-mining, and machine learning to analyze a large corpus of Facebook posts about COVID-19 vaccines. Our results showed that both corrective messages and misinformation prevalently deployed moral framing. We also found that while corrective messages tend to highlight the virtuous aspect of morality, misinformation focuses on the sinful aspect. In both contexts, the five moral frames could construct logically self-consistent worldviews. Moreover, for corrective messages, fairness, sanctity, care, authority, and loyalty frames all significantly influence users’ message sharing. For misinformation, only the authority/subversion frame was influential.

Analisis Framing Film Tuhan Izinkan Aku Berdosa

The film "Tuhan Izinkan Aku Berdosa" is an interesting work to be analyzed from the perspective of moral and religious framing. Hanung Bramantyo's film adaptation of Muhidin M. Dahlan's novel "Tuhan Izinkan Aku Menjadi Pelacur" offers a complex and controversial framing analysis. In this movie, themes of morality and religion are explored through a complex narrative and deep characters. The moral framing in the movie highlights the complex moral dilemma faced by the main character, who tries to balance between his religious faith and a complicated personal life. Religious framing in this context addresses the way the movie portrays religious teachings, religious practices, and their influence on the character's life. This research uses a descriptive qualitative method. George Lakoff's framing theory and framing theory in media studies provide a foundation for understanding how the selection of visual and narrative viewpoints can influence audience interpretation. The research is based on an in-depth literature study, including analysis of several related journals and books that discuss the role of framing in film. Through this approach, the movie "God Permits Me to Sin" is explained not only as a visual narrative, but also as a work of art that uses framing techniques to explore the psychological and social complexities in the story. .

How the effects of emphasizing ethics are examined: a systematic review of moral framing experiments

ABSTRACT Whether and when moral frames (de)polarize society is a matter of scholarly debate. To identify key research priorities for advancing our understanding of moral framing effects, a systematic review of 114 experiments was conducted. The study explored the use of important theoretical and methodological approaches and compared them between studies belonging to the most salient communication fields in experimental moral framing research. Based on the results, this paper advocates for more attention in moral framing experiments to (a) definitions of the term ‘moral’, (b) differences in frame valence (i.e. moral obligations vs. violations), (c) diverse outcomes that capture distinct types of polarization (i.e. cognitive, affective, perceived), (d) visual and multimodal manipulations, and (e) the choice of non-moral control group(s).

Moral reasoning and support for punitive violence after crime

In contexts marked by high violence and widespread impunity, how do citizens articulate and justify their preferences about crime and punishment? What kind of moral logic and reasoning do they employ when discussing punishments? Does support for punitive punishment derive from moralistic and deontological concerns that perpetrators need to be punished because it is right and proper? Or do people support punitive punishments because they feel they are effective? To address this question, we document and analyze stated preferences for punishment in response to crime from 62 in-depth qualitative interviews with individuals affected by violence in the Mexican state of Michoacán. We conduct a quantitative analysis of how different forms of moral justifications are related to preferred punishments for specific crime events, and a qualitative content analysis to investigate possible mechanisms. We find that two types of moral reasoning are more likely to be used to justify punitive violence: (1) consequentialist reasoning which involves weighing the costs and benefits of an action; (2) and reasoning that dehumanizes accused criminals. Deontological justifications about the right or just action, while extremely common, are used fairly equally across arguments for and against punitive violence. Our study sheds light on the diverse moral frames employed to justify the endorsement of punitive violence.

Moral framing in Ukraine war coverage

To understand how coverage of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine is being packaged and presented to an international audience, this mixed methods study examines differences in moral framing of the war by English-language international broadcasters in Ukraine, Russia, the UK, and the US. A computational content analysis based on Moral Foundations Theory found the dominant moral domain and sentiment for each article ( N = 935) during the first year of the war, and a qualitative frame analysis shows how framing in the coverage used the moral domains and sentiment to promote a ‘causal interpretation, moral evaluation, and/or treatment recommendation’ (Entman, Framing: Toward clarification of a fractured paradigm, 1993: 52) for those involved in the conflict.

Virtuous people and evil elites? The role of moralizing frames and normative distinctions in identifying populist discourse

ABSTRACT Populism has been a much-studied concept in Social Science research. A great share of research on the concept has been dedicated to measuring the occurrence of populism in political text. In this article, I propose a novel measure of populism that considers established theoretical assumptions, i.e. presenting the people as morally superior and the elite as evil. This moral framing of the antagonistic groups is necessary to identify populist discourse while keeping it separate from empirically related concepts, e.g. radical right-wing ideology. The novel two-step dictionary detects morally-framed references to both groups. I apply this approach to a text corpus of all speeches given in the European Parliament from 1999 to 2014 and carry out extensive validity checks. Taking the moralizing notion of populism more seriously not only contributes to our theoretical understanding of populist discourse and its impact on the political sphere, but the new measure also improves previous approaches to measuring populism.

No Peace without Justice, Just War as a Moral Frame of Reference

This article discusses the question of the possibility of moral and ethical grounds for the justification of the use of violence in modern times international conflicts. And specifically, how does the tradition of just war fit into this discussion? For this, a closer look at what just war thinking means is necessary. In this respect we would describe just war thinking more as a just war tradition than a just war theory, as there is no encompassing theory on just war. In history you see a development from the justification of war to a more problematic relation to the possibility of the use of military force. This can be illustrated by the more recent shift from just war thinking towards just peace thinking. This leads to the question: what kind of peace? We argue in this article that peace and justice are connected, and that you cannot have true peace without true justice.

Green and Good? Examining Intended and Unintended Effects of Morally Framed Climate Messages

ABSTRACT Based on Moral Foundations Theory, message framing, and the Sacred Values Protection Model, this pre-registered experiment tested the effects of five different moral frames in climate change messages among N = 715 U.S. adults. Contrary to prior research, we did not find evidence that matching a message’s moral frame to individuals’ endorsements of moral foundations enhances intended positive outcomes, including perceived message effectiveness (PME) and policy support. However, a moral frame mismatch did reduce PME. Also contrary to scholarly warnings about potential negative effects of moralized communication, we did not find evidence for unintended consequences of moral frame matching for outgroup perceptions. Political ideology did moderate the effect of moral framing on desired social proximity (i.e. willingness to interact with moral outgroup members) and perceived message effectiveness. Our findings raise questions about the benefits of using moral frames that invoke only one moral foundation in climate change communication.

Framing the war on Tigray: The case of CNN and Al Jazeera

This paper examined the framing of the war on Tigray on CNN and Al Jazeera from November 4, 2020, to June 28, 2021. Content analysis was used for the data analysis. The results revealed that, while CNN relied on eyewitnesses, including humanitarian workers and local people, Al Jazeera primarily relied on official sources to cover the war. CNN predominantly focussed on crimes against humanity and hunger, whereas Al Jazeera covered crimes against humanity. While CNN focussed on the responsibility and human interest frames, Al Jazeera focussed on the responsibility and morality frames. Both media largely focussed on the responsibility frame, emphasising that perpetrators should be liable for war crimes, crimes against humanity, aggression, and atrocities on civilians in different parts of Tigray, all of which epitomise genocide.

Cui Bono? Cow Slaughter ban and its impact on business and society in India

This research investigates the impact of the cow slaughter ban on different stakeholders in India. The cow is considered a sacred animal in Hinduism, and prohibition of its slaughter prevails in several states in India. India is also a secular state, as its written constitution prescribes. However, the recent ban on cow slaughter in certain states raises several interesting and important ethical questions. We use Aristotle’s Cui Bono moral framing and stakeholder theory to investigate the causes and consequences of the cow slaughter ban on business and society. To this end, our study argues that political and religious affiliations affect stakeholders’ actions and decisions and that they comply with their actions. This has implications for businesses (such as the beef business in India) and society. Based on semi-structured in-depth interviews with key stakeholders such as beef business owners, religious leaders and opposition politicians, our findings indicate that although these stakeholders have their interests, religious and political affiliations play a significant role in shaping such decision-making.

“It’s My Moral Responsibility to Protect Others!” Examining the Effects of Moral Framing and Message Format on Influenza Vaccination Attitude and Intention

ABSTRACT Vaccinations serve a dual purpose: safeguarding the vaccinated individuals while also preventing potential transmission to others. However, the pro-vaccine message has primarily emphasized the personal health risks and harms of not getting vaccinated, while rarely highlighting the moral responsibility of getting vaccinated to protect others. Guided by the Model of Intuitive Morality and Exemplars (MIME) along with the narrative persuasion framework, the current study conducted a 2 (moral framing: vaccination to protect oneself vs. protect others) X 2 (message format: statistical vs. narrative) between-subject online experiment to examine the effects of moral framing and message format on vaccination decision-making. The results revealed that individuals exposed to a pro-vaccine message framing vaccination as a moral responsibility to protect others from harm reported significantly higher levels of perceived moral responsibility and elevation, more positive attitudes toward the flu vaccine, and an increased intention to get vaccinated compared to a pro-vaccine message emphasizing vaccination for self-protection. Counterintuitively, presenting the moral responsibility of receiving the flu vaccine to safeguard others in a statistical format was discovered to be more effective in fostering favorable attitudes toward vaccination and increasing the intention to get vaccinated. This study offers a valuable insight: promoting vaccination as a moral duty could be a promising strategy for motivating individuals to get vaccinated.

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.