Comparing Visual Framing in Newspapers: Hurricane Katrina versus Tsunami

Visuals used after the Indian Ocean tsunami in 2004 and Hurricane Katrina in 2005 have gathered heated discussions because the images horrified audiences across the world. This study uses visual framing to compare how two American newspapers visually portrayed the first week of these two natural disasters.Literature ReviewA consistently growing body of research in the social sciences focuses on the concept of framing. Goffman1 defined framing as the principles of organization, which govern events-at least social ones-and our subjective involvement in them. Frames help individuals organize what they see in everyday life. He calls frames the schemata of interpretation a framework that helps in making an otherwise meaningless succession of events into something meaningful. To Entman,2 framing involves selection and salience. This study uses a consistent set of frames to examine the visuals of two natural disasters.Although the tenets of framing theory have been extensively applied in analyzing texts, the question of how issues are framed in the images that stand alone or accompany the text, is not examined frequently. Messaris and Abraham proposed three distinguishing characteristics of visual images that lend themselves to framing and how these properties may influence the framing of news issues and events. They are the analogical quality of images, the indexicality of images and the lack of an explicit propositional syntax in images.Analogical quality refers to the fact that associations between images and their meanings are based on similarity or analogy. Recognition of objects in photographs does not require prior familiarity with the particular representational conventions.3 Messaris and Abraham borrow the term indexicality from Peirce, as cited in Saint-Martin,4 who used it to differentiate photographs from other images. The lack of an explicit prepositional syntax refers to the fact that visual images do not have a set of conventions for making propositions such as cause-and-effect relationships. Prior research has demonstrated the use of visuals to depict issues differently-Messaris and Abraham,5 Entman,6 Gilens,7 Fahmy.8Research QuestionsThe research questions asked in this study were:RQ1:What were the salient frames used in the coverage of the tsunami and Katrina in The New York Times and The Washington Post?RQ2:Is there a difference between the depictions of the two disasters in terms of the salient frames used in the coverage?RQ3:To what extent did the newspapers show bodies in their photographs? Is there a difference in the portrayal of the dead between the two disasters?MethodThe purpose of this inquiry was to identify a consistent set of frames to determine how two U.S. newspapers visually covered the Indian Ocean tsunami and the Hurricane Katrina disasters. This study employed a content analysis of all photographs that were related to the two disasters during the first week. Most framing studies on visuals-Entman,9 Messaris and Abraham, 10 Iyengar11-have relied on both visuals and texts. However, following Fahmy's12 method, this study answered questions on the visual depiction of the disasters based only on the images. The study used both qualitative and quantitative measures to answer the research questions. Two major U.S. newspapers, The New York Times and The Washington Post, were chosen.A random sample of 264 images drawn in the first week's coverage of the diisasters was coded to assess inter-coder reliability. Two coders were trained by practicing coding on a sample of images from other natural disasters. Inter-coder reliability was calculated using Cohen's Kappa formula. 13 The percentage of agreement between the two coders was established at an average of 94.1 percent.ConceptualizationsFramesGeneric issues such as elections, poverty and crime recur across time and cultures,14 and a consistent set of frames can be developed to examine media content of such issues. …