Talking about Poverty: News Framing of Who is Responsible for Causing and Fixing the Problem

Abstract

This study explores how the American news media frame the poverty issue, looking at the way the media present its causes and solutions. It also examines the notion of frame building, exploring the factors that may influence the media's selective uses of certain frames. Media attributions of responsibility are largely societal, focusing on the causes and solutions at the social rather than personal level. Liberal newspapers made more references than conservative papers to social causes and solutions. Television news is slightly less likely than newspapers to make social-level attributions.

Coverage of autism spectrum disorder in the US television news: an analysis of framing

“…This study also found that there are more episodically framed autism news reports than thematically framed ones, congruent with previous studies (Iyengar 1991;Kim, Carvalho, and Davis 2010;Mastin et al 2007). Episodic stories emphasize, for example, individual responsibility such as genes, older mother or father, brain functioning, sperm problems, misuse of pesticide, body's immune system, parents' stress, emotional struggles, and divorce and debt as a result of child's autism.…”

“…Dudo, Dahlstrom, and Brossard (2007) reported that avian influenza was covered more episodically than thematically in US newspapers. Even though episodic and thematic stories can be found in the same news, episodic news on TV news networks is probably still dominant (Kim, Carvalho, and Davis 2010).…”

Influences on the Construction of Health News: The Reporting Practices of Local Television News Health Journalists

“…News routines of individual journalists, or of a news organization, influence reporting on an issue, from how the issue is presented, to the prominence the issue receives (Corbett & Mori, 1999;Kim, Carvalho, & Davis, 2010;Lang & Lang, 1983;Tanner, 2004;Tanner & Friedman, 2011;Tanner, Thrasher, and Blake, 2012). The amount of time given to a news report, as well as the placement of that report (i.e., the ''lead'' story in a television newscast or a front-page story in a newspaper) is based on the traditional news values (e.g., impact, proximity, timeliness, conflict, oddity, prominence, and currency of an event) that news publishers and producers know will appeal to their audience (Shoemaker & Reese, 1996).…”

How the causes, consequences and solutions for problem gambling are reported in Australian newspapers: a qualitative content analysis

“…Once these initial characteristics of each article were coded we conducted qualitative analysis to provide more detail about the discourses used within frames. [42][43][44][45] Qualitative analysis involved open-ended reading and re-reading of the relevant sections of the articles (including the headlines and bylines) to identify key arguments, perspectives and themes. Data were initially coded by the lead author, with a random sample of 10% of all the articles coded by the co-authors to ensure consistency and reliability of data interpretation.…”