Threat Frames Research Articles

Unequal Framing in Times of Hardship? How Newspapers from Germany, Spain, the United Kingdom and Switzerland Portray Syrian and Ukrainian Refugees – Evidence from a Deductive and Inductive Automated Content Analysis

ABSTRACT The mostly welcoming attitudes toward refugees from Ukraine stand in stark contrast to restrictive policies and often negative attitudes toward refugees from Syria in Europe. By emphasizing certain aspects of reality whilst leaving out others, media framing plays an important role in the public image of both refugee groups. To better understand how the different refugee groups were framed in European media, we applied Latent Dirichlet Allocation (LDA) topic modeling and a thorough manual analysis and validation process to identify frames from the topic modeling results. We identified eleven generic and issue-specific emphasis frames in a sample of 84,623 newspaper articles from Germany, Spain, the UK, and Switzerland from 2014–2022. The frames were grouped into four overarching frame categories: Fate, Threat, Value and Context Frames. Syrian refugees were mostly portrayed negatively through Threat Frames and Context Frames, whereas more positive humanitarian and victimization perspectives were pronounced in Fate Framing of Ukrainian refugees. The findings indicate more negative and delegitimizing framing patterns in news coverage about Syrian compared to Ukrainian refugees.

Balancing news? Framing of threat and efficacy in leading Pakistani newspapers’ coverage of climate change

Balancing news? Framing of threat and efficacy in leading Pakistani newspapers’ coverage of climate change

The Framing of Minority Threat and Moralization to Criminalize Behavior: The Case of Cannabis in the Early 20th Century

Abstract Understanding why particular behavior is encoded in law or other systems of rules has been a core topic of sociology since its inception. Although differing rhetorical frames have been identified in policy debates, little research directly links such rhetoric and policy passage. Centering framing theory, we use the case of U.S. cannabis criminalization via mixed-methods content analyses of 9,707 nationwide newspaper articles and event history analysis of state-level criminalization to make several contributions. First, we go beyond describing rhetorical frames, demonstrating that core framing tasks were associated with spatial and temporal state-level cannabis law passage. Second, we emphasize that consolidation of two “master frames,” legal and racial, are particularly pertinent to criminalization and permit incorporation of rhetorical minority threat into framing. Third, an overreliance on population-based minority threat exists in the literature; however, threat can operate absent minority groups. While demonstrating the effect of vilification of Mexican people, we show that a heterogeneous “othering” of cannabis, by attaching threat to numerous minority groups, was significant for cannabis criminalization, regardless of minority groups’ actual presence. In addition to interrogating longstanding assumptions regarding cannabis criminalization, our analyses demonstrate the importance of framing and rhetorical racial threat in the social construction of law.

Juridico-political conditions of exceptional security measures: Turkey (1971-2002)

ABSTRACT Contemporary literature on security measures interfering with the rights and liberties regime often relies on an exceptionalist approach grounded in the norm-exception dichotomy. This perspective oversimplifies the juridical conditions of exceptional security measures, where the law and politics coalesce, as the relationship between the norm and the exception is not necessarily dichotomous. Through an examination of Turkey’s exceptional security measures from 1971 to 2002, this paper shows that the tension between political power and the law can unfold in diverse ways, even in countries where executive decision-making is constitutionally favoured, with norms and exceptions usually coexisting within the constitutional order. It argues that exceptional security measures are ingrained in state rule other than in the times of exception, challenging the limited explanatory power of the norm-exception dichotomy. Categorising every decision avoiding legal oversight as the Schmittian exception results in theoretically reductionist interpretations, overlooking the fact that such measures may have various juridico-political conditions. By analysing threat framing and the dispersion of political power, this study proposes a categorisation as to how norms and exceptions to the norms are created.

The rise of Housing Nationalism in Canada and transnational property ownership patterns

ABSTRACT We consider how housing acts as a potential realm where perception of crisis can activate reactionary nationalism, investigating how it differs from and interacts with other realms (e.g. jobs and wages, crime, and social welfare). We argue that housing produces distinct triggers for reactionary responses, and potentially results in different media framing, politics, and policy trajectories. We detail the rise of Housing Nationalism in Canada, following its spread from British Columbia, where we find that flexible framing of foreign threat often borrowed from other realms. By contrast, pinning Housing Nationalism to policy generally required more tractable definitions of foreignness, tied to surveillance and the application of penalties. We examine the roll out of policy responses associated with Housing Nationalism and lay out potential harms in terms of challenges to liberal ideals, including Canadian multinationalism, immigrant incorporation, and transnational ties. Finally we provide a baseline of Canadian transnational property ownership patterns, demonstrating that within the provinces where Housing Nationalism became most dominant, Canadian residents generally own far more properties abroad than the number of properties owned in Canada by residents elsewhere. Overall, the Canadian case demonstrates the utility of considering housing as a distinct realm motivating the rise of reactionary nationalism.

Threats, victims, or heroes? Media frames about migration in the United Kingdom and Brazil

Conservative media often frames migrants negatively, echoing discourses of othering driven by populist leaders. Previous studies have examined the intersections between media framing, migration, and populism, but comparative studies on migration framing including Brazil remain scarce. This study uses quantitative content analysis to explore media frames of news items published in the United Kingdom and Brazil. It aims to contribute new insights regarding migration media framing by comparing conservative news coverage of two countries that experienced a rise in populism wave in the last years. We found that new items in both countries tended to frame migration in similar ways, suggesting a pattern in two different contexts. Findings show the prevalence of negative framing over positive framing, with significant differences for victim frames, and non-significant differences for hero and threat frames. This study contributes by providing new insights into the intersections between media framing, migration, and populism.

How to Stay Popular: Threat, Framing, and Conspiracy Theory Longevity

Why do some conspiracy theories (CTs) remain popular and continue to spread on social media while others quickly fade away? Situating conspiracy theories within the literature on social movements, we propose and test a new theory of how enduring CTs maintain and regain popularity online. We test our theory using an original, hand-coded dataset of 5,794 tweets surrounding a divisive and regularly commemorated set of CTs in Poland. We find that CTs that cue in-group and out-group threats garner more retweets and likes than CT tweets lacking this rhetoric. Surprisingly, given the extant literature on party leaders’ ability to shape political attitudes and behaviors, we find that ruling party tweets endorsing CTs gain less engagement than CT tweets from non-officials. Finally, when a CT’s main threat frames are referenced in current events, CTs re-gain popularity on social media. Given the centrality of CTs to populist rule, these results offer a new explanation for CT popularity—one focused on the conditions under which salient threat frames strongly resonate.

Protecting Our (White) Daughters: U.S. Immigration and Benevolent Sexism

AbstractTo advocate for restrictive immigration policies, conservative U.S. politicians have advanced a narrative that Latino immigrants commit violent crimes against White women. This framing of immigrant threat builds on a long history of similar anti-Black discourse and activates racialized ideas about protecting femininity. I demonstrate how the identities of purported victims of immigrant crime connect attitudes about immigration with benevolent sexism—a superficially positive, protective attitude toward particular types of women. An original survey experiment shows that benevolent sexism is activated when victims of immigrant crime are White women. Using nationally representative survey data, I show that the benevolent face of sexism has a notable impact on the immigration attitudes of White Americans, particularly when it comes to the protectionist policy of policing of the U.S.-Mexico border.

Social Threat Framing on the Fundraising Performance: Evidence from Equity-based Crowdfunding Firms

Social Threat Framing on the Fundraising Performance: Evidence from Equity-based Crowdfunding Firms

Operation Zarb-e-Azb in the Global Wire Services: A Framing Analysis

Pakistan has become a victim of terrorism after its involvement in the ongoing war on terror. The country has lost thousands of civilians and security personnel in this American-led war. Though, Pakistan has always been treated negatively by the media organizations of elite nations. Operation Zarb-e-Azb was a combined military action of the Pakistan army against the armed insurgent groups in North Waziristan which was launched in the year 2014. The current study attempted to examine the framing of Operation Zarb-e-Azb in global wire services. For this purpose, AFP, AP and Reuters were selected. Through the technique of convenient sampling, a total of 300 news items from the entire period of operation were selected for analysis.Quantitative as well as qualitative content analysis and interpretive analysis have been used as a research design for this study. The results indicated that the global wire services framed the news stories of military operations in a positive way. The terrorism and militant threat frame was more dominant in global wires as compared to other frames. The results also revealed that the global wires framed this operation differently by representing the foreign policy and interests of their respective states.

Pandemic Politics: Immigration, Framing, and Covid-19

AbstractThe covid-19 pandemic has revived a longstanding, and understudied, trope in American politics: the association of immigrants with disease. There has been a great deal of scholarship on the economic, cultural, and criminal threat frames attached to immigrant groups in media coverage, but little to date has specifically examined how national and local sources have framed covid-19 in the context of immigrant communities. In this paper we analyze the prevalence of two different framings of the pandemic in national and local online news outlets over the first year of the pandemic: immigration as a public health threat to the nation, and covid-19 as a threat to immigrant communities within the nation. We find significant differences between national and local coverage, with the former more likely to frame immigration as a covid-19 threat, while local news outlets were more likely to discuss the threat the virus posed to already marginalized immigrant communities.

Visualizing the Pandemic: How the Front Pages of Local and National U.S. Media Used Images to Cover the Coronavirus Pandemic

This study explored how The New York Times and the Dallas Morning News used visuals on their front pages to frame the coronavirus pandemic in 2020 and 2021. Findings indicated that the Times was more likely to publish COVID-related images on the front page, use the threat frame in its images, and use photographs taken by staff photojournalists than sourced from wire services or freelancers. The two newspapers were equally likely to give prominence to COVID-related photos on their front pages, by publishing them above the fold. The implications of these trends are discussed.

Threat Framing of CPEC In Pakistani Newspapers: Post Dasu Attach Analysis

This research intends to study geostrategic and eco-political threats attached to China Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC) concerning Pakistani media coverage of Dasu attack in 2021. While 13 workers, including Chinese engineers were killed which resultantly resurfaced the security threat attached to this project. To analyze the media’s apprehension about the incident and framing trends, editorials of four leading newspapers, two English; Dawn and The Nation, two Urdu: Daily Jang and Daily Express, were selected with a duration from July 1, 2021 to November 30, 2022. Previous studies helped in determining to incorporate ‘threat frame’ to be analyzed in editorials which further lead to quantify its coverage frequency. The findings revealed that newspapers indicated towards threats of security, insurgencies, internal and external terrorism attacks with serious apprehension to be resolved. The findings also concluded that editorial manuscripts help in steering and determining geopolitical issues in constructive ways.

From “Axis of Evil” to “Iran Threat Network”: The Securitization discourse Constructed by the US. Elites Toward Iran

The US government and political elites have long regarded Iran as a threat to US interests, Middle East peace and Israel’s national security. However, the Iranian government has never actively launched any war since its establishment in 1979. In order to explain the “Iran Threat” discourse constructed by the US political elite, the process of discourse formation and proliferation, this article combines security and threat framing theories, and specifically interprets the corresponding materials and documents through the path of description- interpretation- explanation. It points out that the discourse of the American political elites against Iran is not based on facts, rather, the topics are full of ideological attacks and highly subjective extreme judgments. Take Bush as an example, he portrayed Iran as a supporter of terrorism after the 9/11 incident; on this basis, the intelligence and policy consultant agencies of the US government provide corresponding intelligence materials to support the Iranian threat theory. Through the construction of the Iranian threat discourse by political elites, the U.S. political circle has completed the first round of securitization of Iran, and the political topics related to Iran are almost restricted to the discourse system of threat theory, forming a kind of “threat framing” effect. The entire set of political discourses used by the United States against Iran can promote the implementation of policies of the US., and facilitating its policies against Iran to obtain a legal basis, continuing to isolate Iran in the Middle East and eventually overthrow its current government; at the same time, maintain strong US intervention in the Middle East, making Saudi and other countries dependent on the US due to security needs and maintaining US interests in the Middle East.

“The future of the internet hangs in the balance”: the perception and framing of political opportunity and threat in the contentious politics of data

ABSTRACT Opportunities are often conceptualized as ‘openings’ in a social movement’s external environment which can reduce the cost of collective action, while threat is a force which increases the cost of inaction. These concepts were originally formulated to describe the political contexts of traditional offline movements, therefore how are they perceived and framed by activists in the digital environment of data? This study utilizes qualitative thematic coding to examine the collective action frames in four years of archival texts from 2009 to 2012 of two highly adept data activist mobilizations: The Digital Rights movement and the Anonymous hacktivist collective. Analyses show that frames of opportunity appear with far less frequency than threat. For both cases, volatile opportunity frames regarding their online actions are very rare, especially in the Anonymous texts. It concludes by suggesting that highly leveraging the affordances of digital technology and data may lead to political opportunities losing some of their perceived salience as a mobilizing force, while cultural factors around data activism may simultaneously result in an increased perception of threats. This study shows the importance of understanding how data mediate contemporary collective action and calls for further development and synthesis of the structural and cultural aspects of both opportunity and threat in social movement theory.

The great replacement: Strategic mainstreaming of far-right conspiracy claims

This paper assesses how the ‘Great Replacement’ conspiracy theory (the idea that ethnically homogeneous populations in European nations are being ‘replaced’ by people of non-European origin) is articulated online by three different actors. By analyzing argument patterns and multimodal features of the cases, the paper shows that the conspiracy theory is a flexible political discourse that can be used strategically by both far-right and mainstream right-wing actors. It highlights the role of affect in online communication, and particularly how anti-immigration actors feed off circulating emotions such as insecurity and fear among the citizenry. The results show that processes of demographic change, caused by immigration, are negatively politicized through the use of pseudo-scientific sources, historic narratives of ethnic homogeneity, threat frames, visual fear appeals and other elements that constitute the wider conspiracy theory of an ongoing ‘replacement’ of native populations. The paper argues that the mainstreaming of conspiracy claims and theories related to immigration poses a threat, not only to democratic institutions and societies, but also to people of immigrant backgrounds.

The morality of security: A theory of just securitisation

The purpose of this introduction is to concisely present The Morality of Security: A Theory of Just Securitization so that those unfamiliar with this work are better able to engage with the symposium. The book develops a Theory of Just Securitisation outlining when securitisation is morally permissible. Securitisation, here, refers to more than a securitising speech act coupled with a legitimising audience's tacit or actual acceptance of the threat and defence framing. Arguably the question of the morality of securitisation is most pertinent when the same encompasses the use of measures and conduct that most reasonable persons would ordinarily (that is, in times when there is no relevant threat) consider unacceptable, largely because of the harm and/or the violence risked or entailed.

Framing Syrian refugees: Examining news framing effects on attitudes toward refugee admissions and anti-immigrant sentiment

This study investigates the effects of exposure to news frames on attitudes toward Syrian refugee admissions and anti-immigrant sentiment. Findings show that framing Syrian refugees, ranging from benefits, victims to a security threat did invoke changes of attitudes toward admitting Syrian refugees. Participants reading a benefit frame story expressed more favorable opinions on accepting Syrian refugees than participants in the threat frame condition. In contrast to the extant literature, arguing victim frame enhances positive attitudes, the findings suggested that participants, who were exposed to a victim frame story yielded stronger anti-immigrant sentiment than participants who read a threat frame story. These findings advance scholarship on media framing of refugees and its effect on anti-immigrant sentiment and have important refugee admission policy and advocacy implications.

Understanding Hong Kong nationalism: A topic network approach

AbstractDrawing on data from Facebook, this article examines how elements of nationalism discourse were invoked by political actors to advance their agenda. In this paper, a novel mixed‐method approach is introduced. The analysis begins with the quantitative phase, and topic modelling is used to identify the recurring themes in corpus. A topic network is generated based on the semantic association and centrality measures from social network analysis are used to identify the core topics in the discourse. In the qualitative phase, texts from the core topics are analysed discursively. The findings reveal that Hong Kong nationalism discourse includes three frames: the threat frame that constructs the overarching narrative of China Threat, the identity frame that engages with the debate on localism and nationalism and the action frame that discusses the actions to be taken in response to the threats.

Framing China’s mask diplomacy in Europe during the early covid-19 pandemic: seeking and contesting legitimacy through foreign medical aid amidst soft power promotion

This analysis discusses China’s soft power push in Europe, specifically focusing on mask diplomacy during the early stage of Covid-19 outbreak. Using a sample of 233 articles published by European-based news media such as the BBC, Euronews, Politico, French 24, and Der Spiegel, from March to September 2020, we argue that China’s mask diplomacy acted as two overlapping legitimacy-seeking tools, one that demonstrated the legitimacy of the CCP’s governance (authoritarian frame) and one that sought foreign gratitude and acceptance of China as a responsible global leader (leadership frame). We also argue, however, that China’s soft power effort was overshadowed by two other dominant frames found in the articles: compensation for the government's early cover-up (remedy frame) and infringement on EU solidarity and security (threat frame). Our results also show that European media tend to default to longstanding stereotypes of Yellow Peril and Orientalism. Most reports othering China as the source and spreader of Covid-19 critically portray China’s medical aid as propaganda and compensation, thereby undermining China's soft power efforts and their credibility. Additionally, the study opened up a minor, though rather novel, discussion on China's top-down management model's positive impact on handling the health crisis in China.