Bringing Home the Crisis: How US Evening News Framed the 2011 Japan Nuclear Crisis. (21st November 2014) - Iannarino, Nicholas T.
Abstract Crisis communication scholars have used framing theory to argue that how the media characterizes varying aspects of a crisis can influence the public's perception of the event. While much of the crisis‐framing research has been content analysis‐driven, providing numbers and percentages of news stories that fit a certain story type, it is also important to examine how shifts in public opinion and policy may be indicative of and influenced by the ongoing discourse that news outlets use to characterize international crises. In this study, we use inductive analysis to describe the frames used by US evening network news to characterize the 2011 Japan nuclear crisis and outline how this coverage may have shaped and reflected public opinion and policy in the US during and following the crisis.