Mass Communication and Society Proximity and Terrorism News in Social Media: A Construal-Level Theoretical Approach to Networked Framing of Terrorism in Twitter (original) (raw)
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This study investigates networked framing of terrorism news in Twitter by distinguishing three proximity effects (geographic, social, and temporal proximity) on audience and media institutional frames (i.e., episodic/thematic and space frames), based on Construal Level Theory. An analysis of tweets during the Boston Marathon Bombing and the Brussels Airport Attack finds that institutional and audience frames show similarity but do not always converge on Twitter. Similarities in the audience and institutional frames are attributed to a universal human tendency for social categorization, inherent not only in the minds of ordinary citizens but also that of journalists. Proximity effects, however, were more salient on audience frames than on institutional frames.
The significant and reciprocal link between Terrorism and News Media reportage was identified in the 1990s by the convergence of security and media studies (Picard, 1993). Working in the tradition of content analysis, early studies examined the way terrorism was framed in major news accounts with implications for the Huntington-Fukuyama hypothesis (Nacos, 2002). These studies pre-dated both the War on Terror and the rise of the Internet as a major (political) news source. This paper reinvigorates this early research by examining key frames in online news media via software-assisted media mapping. Frames are examined under the George Bush administration and then the current Barak Obama administration. The comparison contributes to understanding of the potential shift from the rhetoric of clash of civilizations towards discourse networks of the dignity of difference by rendering visible shifts in frames associated with terrorism that arguably are necessary for the advancement of the n...
The Harvard International Journal of Press/Politics, 2007
The 9/11 terrorist attacks and later attacks such as those in London and Madrid shocked the world and found their way into the newspapers of many countries.The authors study the international coverage of these events in the context of globalization versus localization and the creation of the dominant post-cold war frame of the War on Terror. Using automatic co-occurrence analysis based on the notion of associative framing, they investigate whether these events were mainly framed in a local or global way in the American, British, and Dutch press.The authors found that although proximity is still a strong determinant of attention for events, the framing of these events was more affected by the global event of 9/11 than by local considerations.
Framing terrorism: The news media, the government and the public
2003
Terrorism now dominates the headlines across the world-from New York to Kabul. Framing Terrorism argues that the headlines matter as much as the act, in political terms. Widely publicized terrorist incidents leave an imprint upon public opinion, muzzle the" watchdog" role of journalists and promote a general one-of-us consensus supporting security forces.
International Journal of Communication, 2019
The current study used structural topic modeling to investigate the ways in which news of the 2017 Quebec mosque shooting mobilized global public discourse on Twitter. The resulting globally generated Twitter conversations were divided into 9 relevant topics, the prevalence of which were examined based on geographic and informational proximity to the location of the incident. Tweets posted from locations geographically closer to the shooting location prevalently incorporated individual-oriented and conflict-focused storytelling. Conversely, tweets geographically farther from the incident prevalently featured macro-narratives that pointed to societal implications. This study also explored informational distance, which defines the ability to access to in-depth news sources. Results showed that there were topical differences between journalist/institutional tweets and laymen tweets. This study concludes that proximity influences global conversations related to hate crime news.
Media Watch, 2020
The period between 2014 and 2016 saw the rise of the radical Islamist terrorist group Islamic State (IS), which committed acts of terrorism in not only Syria and Iraq but also unleashed violence in the rest of the world. Twitter took the lead in being the source of receiving and giving quick updates on terror news. However, a key question that arises is about balanced coverage. Media made enormous efforts to humanize the terror attacks in the West, while what was happening in West Asia (Middle East) was constructed from a partisan political position. The researchers studied the coverage of the Beirut attack and the Paris attack, both of which took place in November 2015. The Twitter handles of Al Jazeera and CNN's Breaking News were used to conduct the study. The data analysis establishes that there was a clear imbalance while covering Islamic State attacks in Paris and Beirut, respectively. The Paris attack received far more coverage from both CNN and Al Jazeera in terms of quantum and nature of issues a ddr essed.
University of Denver Undergraduate Research Journal, 2021
Terrorist attacks often dominate news cycles as reporters seek to interpret the attack through their own desired framing tools. Since "humans are predisposed to attend to negative and threatening information" (Sui et al., 2017), news coverage of terrorist attacks receive a lot of attention thus, how the attack is framed can manipulate the narrative portrayed to the public. This study utilized the Nexus database to examine framing techniques used by a local and an international newspaper in reporting on the Atlanta Centennial Olympic Park bombings both before and after a subject was identified by the FBI. This paper explores how perpetrator identity, legitimacy in sources, and perceived future threats effected how the bombing was covered. Overall, once a suspect had been named, both news outlets utilized "othering" techniques to deemphasize the domestic terrorism label, the sources used became less qualified, and they stopped speculating about the possibility of another attack.
‘News media’-media events: Terrorist acts as media events
Communications, 2008
Based on longitudinal research on the media coverage of terrorist attacks, this article suggests a model of how the coverage of these attacks may be conceptualized as a media event and explores the function this serves within society. The main assumption of the model is that journalists change their ritual of news coverage when dealing with exceptional terrorist attacks; they abandon their usual normative professional frame that encompasses such activities as critical scrutiny of governmental actions, and assume a national-patriotic coverage frame that seeks to reestablish normality and restore order. The model can be useful in clarifying the media's role following terror event. While media run the risk of reinforcing the terror event by giving it the public stage its perpetrators seek, by acting as patriots and not as professionals, journalists subvert the message of the terrorists, so that instead of passing on a message of terror, dread, and alarm, the media give the attacked country and society a message of solidarity, partnership, and stubborn endurance against the terrorist threat. The model may also be useful for understanding media coverage of other crisis situations apart from massive terror attacks.
Social realities are discursive constructs, so that attitudes and representations are the reflection of an informative approach. In this sense, the cultural and linguistic gaps between different civilizations, together with a discursive construction of a war nature, could be creating the ground for a continuous confrontation between East and West. The present study analyzes the different rhetorical frames of the international news agencies Reuters, Al Arabiya, Al Jazeera and Associated Press about the terrorist attack at the Istanbul (Turkey) airport on July 28, 2016. A quantitative study of the figures speech and the most repeated topics in the headlines of the attack is carried out. The power of the media in public opinion and the construction of reality generate a discussion about how these news are spread and their effects. The objective is to compare the different rhetorical frames in both civilizations and to identify if stereotypes are projected and if this framing contributes to the spectacularization of the conflict. The main result is that there are no significant discursive differences, which leads to the conclusion that east-west rhetorical figures are used to produce a certain effect in the population, among those that highlight the euphemisms, dysphemisms, demonization and discursive polarization, resources that serve to emphasize fear and create even larger gaps of social significance.