“They Took It Down”: Exploring Determinants of Visual Reporting in the Toppling of the Saddam Statue in National and International Newspapers

Abstract

This cross-national research examines the visual framing of the toppling of the Saddam Hussein statue. It explores the influences of competing contextual variables and newspaper attributes on frequency and overall tone of photographs. The results of examinations of the coverage in 43 newspapers of 30 countries suggest one important difference across newspapers involved the number of photographs each newspaper published. Further, findings indicate U.S. newspapers overall ran more visuals depicting a victory/liberation frame than newspapers from coalition and non-coalition countries.

Notes

¹The coalition list included the following countries: Afghanistan, Albania, Australia, Azerbaijan, Colombia, the Czech Republic, Denmark, El Salvador, Eritrea, Estonia, Ethiopia, Georgia, Hungary, Iceland, Italy, Japan, Latvia, Lithuania, Macedonia, the Netherlands, Nicaragua, the Philippines, Poland, Romania, Slovakia, South Korea, Spain, Turkey, Britain, and Uzbekistan (“Caught in the Crossfire,” 2003).

² Wu (2000) defined geographic distance between two countries as the physical distance between the capitals of the two countries.

³Specifically, the researcher contacted region specialists at the Hispanic Division, the Asian Division, the African/Middle Eastern Division and the European Division at the Library of Congress.

Note. N = 256. Means are based on a scale of 0 to 1, where 0 = occupation (critical) frame, .5 = neutral frame and 1 = victory/liberation frame (favorable).

⁴Means were recalculated after excluding all images depicting the U.S. flag draped over the statue's head from the data set. The mean of the overall tone of U.S. coverage increased from .63 to .76. In other words, had the researcher coded these photographs as positive portrayals, the overall tone in U.S. newspapers would have been more representative of a victory/liberation tone of coverage.