Framing European politics: A Content Analysis of Press and Television News

We investigated the prevalence of 5 news frames identified in earlier studies on framing and framing effects: attribution of responsibility, conflict, human interest, economic consequences, and morality. We content analyzed 2,601 newspaper stories and 1,522 television news stories in the period surrounding the Amsterdam meetings of European heads of state in 1997. Our results showed that, overall, the attribution of responsibility frame was most commonly used in the news, followed by the conflict, economic consequences, human interest, and morality frames, respectively. The use of news frames depended on both the type of outlet and the type of topic. Most significant differences were not between media (television vs. the press) but between sensationalist vs. serious types of news outlets. Sober and serious newspapers and television news programs more often used the responsibility and conflict frames in the presentation of news, whereas sensationalist outlets more often used the human interest frame.