“Identify and critically discuss instances of framing in news of the developed and developing world using examples drawn from two quality and tabloid newspapers.”

A presentation for an assignment in the ‘International Journalism’ module at UCLan

In this presentation, I will first be exploring the idea of ‘framing’ in news, referring to the different concepts on the idea. I will also make clear what I will be defining as the developed world and the developing world

Once I have defined this, I will critically discuss instances of this framing in two quality and two tabloid newspapers.

The two quality newspapers I have chosen are The I and The Guardian.

Whilst the two tabloids I have chosen are The Daily Mail and The Daily Mirror.

I believe that these choices gave me an interesting variety of stories and framing techniques to critically discuss.

The dictionary definition of framing is “the act, process, or manner of constructing anything.”

This cartoon is a great way of showing how framing can alter the way we see things in the media. I found this on twitter a while back in relation to the conflict in Palestine and although it’s quite an extreme example, it illustrates how the media can twist things to tell the story they want to.

Our seminar tutor Peter Anderson enhances the notion of framing with the idea of Story Boxes and Mind Boxes in The Future of Quality News Journalism — A cross-continental analysis.

“Story boxes are the ‘boxes’ into which information is selectively put for the audience to view as news stories. ‘Boxes’ are a more helpful metaphor than ‘frames’” and continues to say that this is “because they remind analysts that the box within which the story has been packed has to be opened by the audience before it becomes relevant.”

“The box’s packaging has to be of the right quality if it is to attract interest. If the audience does not go to the web page, print page, television/radio news programme or whatever that contains the story and ‘open the box’ within which it is contained, it has no impact.” (Anderson, 2014, 12)

This idea of story boxes gives an insight into why stories are framed the way they are. The information is “selectively put” in these boxes in order to interest the reader, certain aspects which may not be seen of interest are left out but ultimately it’s left to the audience to “open the box” and take their own meaning.

Mind boxes are more abstract.

“The notion of mind boxes sees the mind ‘at the heart of the box’ in a dynamic, often unpredictable interpretive role, trying to get to grips with reality that is mediated frequently by inaccurate or incomplete information.”

“The journalist as a watcher of the world around has their view framed by the news and social interactions that directly influence them and then, in turn, frames news for an audience, news that is influenced by the way that the world has been framed to them (as the news producers), the news values that have been framed by their news organization, and so forth.” (Anderson, 2014, 16)

This idea has framing as a never-ending process, everybody’s view of the world around them being influenced by something else and requiring the reader to try and take meaning from the ‘mediated reality’ that the framing process creates.

In Van Ginneken’s Understanding Global News, he says: “Why was this event reported? Would it also have been noticed if something similar happened in the outskirts of an African capital” (Van Ginneken, 1998, 7).

This is very much the attitude to reporting news in the UK, for a news story to be relevant it has to have some sort of British element to it or at least involve a developed ‘First World’ country.

In Van Ginneken’s (1998, 9) opinion, the ‘developed’ countries are the “’capitalist’ nations, primarily those of Western Europe and North America.” The ‘developing’ countries are “the rest of Asia (other than central Asia), Africa, Central and South America.” All the other nations are somewhere in the middle in a ‘semi-developed Second World’.

Now that I have explained framing, I will use examples from a few newspapers to help critically discuss the topic.

The front page of The i leads with a story framing migration in a positive light, it talks about how EU migrants can help the UK’s economy as they pay more tax could make the economy £20billion better off over the next decade.

The Guardian also leads with this story but then also has another story on the front page about some Libyans being sent ‘home’ after Sexual Assault allegations.

The Daily Mail, a tabloid newspaper with a reputation for being xenophobic lead with the Libya story, and framed it in a way to make the Libyans crimes seem worse because they’d been “invited” over hear to train and weren’t grateful for the opportunity. Also with it being a tabloid newspaper, it sensationalized the attacks and bullet pointed everything they did on the front page. It also made a point with the subheading “Dozens set to claim asylum” which just associates all Libyans and migrants with these select few criminals.

The Daily Mail also has the story about EU migrants but it is framed differently with the headline “Non-EU migrants take more from State than they put in.” This is focusing not on the positives that EU migrants can provide but the negative effect that migrants from developing countries cause.

The Daily Mirror didn’t have any international stories on the front cover and didn’t have many international stories in the newspaper at all. On page 7 there was a story from the developing world as there was an interview with an Indonesian man whose daughter was killed, however the story was only reported because the killer’s ex-girlfriend was a British model.

This links in nicely with Van Ginneken’s idea that events won’t be ‘noticed’ unless there’s some sort of relevance for the audience.

The i covers quite a lot of international news and has a dedicated ‘Around the World’ page however the subjects of the stories differ from the developed and developing countries. The stories from developed countries such as USA tend to be about politics, whereas stories from semi-developed or developing countries such as Ukraine, Syria and Palestine tend to be conflict-based.

However On Page 9, there is a graph from the Council of Europe which unusually frames UK in a poor light compared to the rest of Europe as it shows that England and Wales have double the amount of under 18 prisoners than anywhere else in Europe (France in 2nd place).

The Guardian has a dedicated international section but again the stories from the developing world tend to share the news value of negativity whilst the stories from more powerful countries get more coverage and tend to be about finance and politics.

In the Daily Mail, the only international stories are negative and are usually only included if there is a British element. For example there is a story about some British girls getting attacked in the developing country of Thailand, but it seems to be more focused on trying to create a sensational story about her bank rather than the actual attack. There is a standalone international story about a Mexican mayor but again it’s a negative one as it’s about him getting arrested.

Of course there’s also the front-page story about the Libyans and although the quality newspapers give credence to this story, they don’t give it anywhere near the attention that The Daily Mail does and it seems that stories are framed in such a way by this paper to incite negative racial response.

To conclude, The Daily Mail are story boxing these stories and as Anderson says: the packaging has to be of the right quality if it is to attract interest. This is what tabloid newspapers and in particular here, the Daily Mail are good at doing as it knows the demographic of its readership and panders to that, they also get off on being controversial as this sells newspapers and encourages its readers to ‘open the box’ if you will.