Framing European politics: A content analysis of press and television news

We investigated the prevalence of 5 news frames identified in earlier studi es 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 surro unding the Amsterdam meetings of European heads of state in 1997. Our resul ts showed that, overall, the attribution of responsibility frame was most c ommonly used in the news, followed by the conflict, economic consequences, human interest, and morality frames, respectively. The use of news frames d epended on both the type of outlet and the type of topic. Most significant differences were not between media (television vs. the press) but between s ensationalist vs. serious types of news outlets. Sober and serious newspape rs and television news programs more often used the responsibility and conf lict frames in the presentation of news, whereas sensationalist outlets mor e often used the human interest frame.