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ABSTRACT
The general public relies on news reports to guide their perceptions about crime. Previous research suggests that text elements in crime news reporting are framed in consistent packages for audience consumption, and that newspaper images exert a considerable influence on audience perception of news articles. The current study categorizes homicide articles into four themes and examines how thematic reporting relates to the likelihood of image inclusion. A sample of nearly 4,000 articles published in the Vancouver Sun was coded on a set of 107 variables relating to structural and content characteristics. Results show a significant relationship between image inclusion and the Sympathetic Victim theme, more so than for themes related to fear, sensational events, or media constructions of social issues.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.
Notes
1 This 12-year time period was not selected for any reason; the final wave of coding occurred in 2016 and resources were available to code back to 2004.
2 Indicators used to calculate the composite index scores were causal, meaning their relation to each other did not impact their ability to collectively account for the latent construct (the reporting themes). Testing for internal consistency using measurements such as Cronbach’s Alpha was deemed unnecessary (Bollen and Davis Citation2009).