AbstractsCommunication

Multimedia framing in U.S. newspapers' online coverage of the Iraq War

by Bartosz W. Wojdynski




Institution: University of North Carolina – Chapel Hill
Department:
Year: 2008
Record ID: 1828326
Full text PDF: http://dc.lib.unc.edu/u?/etd,1801


Abstract

This thesis examined the utilization of multimedia by U.S. newspaper Web sites in covering the Iraq War in 2007, and its role in framing aspects of the War. A total of 201 photo galleries, audio slideshows, interactive graphics, and interactive packages were analyzed from the 100 most-visited U.S. newspaper sites. Dominant textual and visual frames were coded for each story, along with framing dimensions including main subject, time and space. The study concluded that human interest framing dominated multimedia coverage, although the extent of such framing differed between multimedia story types. Nearly three-quarters of the stories (72.1%) utilized a human interest textual frame, and 81.1 percent of stories featured a human interest visual frame. Multimedia coverage of the war primarily told the stories of individual U.S. stories and their families. The results showed that newspapers with a larger online readership were more likely to feature multimedia coverage of the war.