Do you know what it means? A frame analysis of the 'New Orleans Times-Picayune's' articles for the year following Hurricane Katrina.

摘要

In this study, I wanted to take a first step to understand the way the local newspaper may have influenced the residents of New Orleans, displaced after Hurricane Katrina, to either return to the city or stay away through the paper's framing of information regarding the rebuilding of the city. The concept of framing holds that the way in which an issue is presented can influence how it is understood by the receiver, and the effect of a message is found not only in its content, but also in its presentation (Scheufele & Tewksbury, 2007).;The research question was, "To what extent did content exist in the New Orleans Times-Picayune (either in the articles themselves, headlines, or visual representations) that was likely to either encourage the displaced residents to return or discourage them from returning?" My method for answering this question was to examine what proportion of the articles contained content that was generally positive, generally neutral, and generally negative (the "tone") regarding the rebuilding of the city, and whether the corresponding headlines and any visual images presented the same tone as the content.;I found that 50% of the articles in the sample contained at least one instance of conflicting tone between the article, headline, and visual images, possibly confusing the displaced residents about the status of the city. However, I also found that more articles contained positive messages about the rebuilding process than negative. The apparent occurrences of negative framing were more subtle than I had expected to find.;KEY WORDS: framing, New Orleans, Katrina, newspaper, media