Framing the Affordable Healthcare Act: Examining Alternative and Mainstream Media Approaches

In recent times few issues have been as contentious as the Affordable Healthcare Act. This study analyzed media frames between the New York Times and The Alternet.Org ( N = 1772), one mainstream newspaper and one alternative news site, for the year 2012, to examine how two media outlets, different in approach and operational size, reported on the Affordable Healthcare Care Act, to demonstrate that the conflict frame dominated news coverage in both the organizations. Conflict framing emphasizes strife between individuals, and groups, and engenders cynicism which reduces attention to substantive issues. While alternative media is often seen to operate in opposition to mainstream media values, in this case, both mainstream and alterative media chose similar frames of coverage and thus audiences had little recourse to information that could have ensured a better understanding of the policy and its impact.

Political Journalism

Political journalism constitutes one of the most prominent domains of journalism, and is essential for the functioning of democracy. Ideally, political journalism should function as an information provider, watchdog, and forum for political discussions, thereby helping citizens understand political matters and help prevent abuses of power. The extent to which it does is, however, debated. Apart from normative ideals, political journalism is shaped by factors at several levels of analysis, including the system level, the media organizational level, and the individual level. Not least important for political journalism is the close, interdependent, and contentious relationship with political actors, shaping both the processes and the content of political journalism. In terms of content, four key concepts in research on political journalism in Western democratic systems are the framing of politics as a strategic game, interpretive versus straight news, conflict framing and media negativity, and political or partisan bias. A review of research related to these four concepts suggests that political journalism has a strong tendency to frame politics as a strategic game rather than as issues, particularly during election campaigns; that interpretive journalism has become more common; that political journalism has a penchant for conflict framing and media negativity; and that there is only limited evidence that political journalism is influenced by political or partisan bias. Significantly more important than political or partisan bias are different structural and situational biases. In all these and other respects, there are important differences across countries and media systems, which follows from the notion that political journalism is always influenced by the media systems in which it is produced and consumed.

Depoliticisation as a securitising move: the case of the United Nations Environment Programme

Created in 1972, the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) has a normative mandate to promote the protection of the environment at the international level. However, since 1999, the organisation has been conducting field assessments in postconflict situations and addressing the role of natural resources in conflict, framing the environment as a security issue. To do so, the programme insists on its neutrality as a technical and ‘apolitical’ actor within the UN system. Considering depoliticisation as a political act, this article unpacks the concrete practices by which international organisations (IOs) enact depoliticisation. It further argues that IOs can perform securitising moves through practices and techniques presented as outside of the political realm. It draws upon the recent work on depoliticisation at the international level and reinforces studies considering the links between (de)politicisation and securitisation.

A Comparative Framing Analysis of Major Violations in the National Collegiate Athletic Association

The present study used framing theory to analyze reports and articles from 1998 through 2016 offered by the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) and various newspapers to analyze the relationship between social-control agents and how they speak to specific audiences (e.g., public and NCAA members) about instances of misconduct by Division I members. The concept of conflict framing (i.e., frame alignment, counterframing, and reframing) is featured. The research demonstrated that episodic framing is more widespread than thematic framing, but it is used differently for specific audiences. The study also found that thematic framing is highly correlated with the normative approach and confirms that media outlets used assorted conflict-framing strategies (e.g., frame alignment, counterframing, and debunking) to emphasize that information on cases was false, incomplete, correct, or filtered. Different uses regarding precedent are also acknowledged, along with coverage concerning the type of institution and location of newspaper (i.e., local or national).