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Abstract
This study proposes a dichotomous set of frames, the Blame Frame and the Explain Frame, to examine how the news media cover sudden tragic events. The Blame Frame affixes responsibility on human agents and foregrounds the pursuit of punishment and justice. The Explain Frame takes responsibility away from human agents and describes the tragedy in terms of natural or quasi-natural processes. The study argues that social identities of “prospective” agents predict the difference in framing: “deviants” and “aliens” are held culpable while local elites are deemed innocent, although these identities are themselves social and draw on prevalent cultural beliefs. Ultimately, both frames serve to reproduce social boundaries and reinforce the status quo. Empirical evidence comes from the ideological analysis of the coverage of April 2013’s Boston bombings and the West fertilizer plant blast in local and national newspapers.
DISCLOSURE STATEMENT
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.
Notes
1. The idea of blame attribution is not new to framing research (see Holton et al. Citation2012; Iyengar Citation1991). But this study offers a more thorough explication of the Blame Frame and especially differs from previous attempts by conceptualizing it in contrast to the Explain Frame.
2. Previous research under the rubric of “bad news,” such as a series of books by Philo and colleagues at the Glasgow Media Group, does not conceptualize such news as sudden, tragic events that disrupt the routine of life in a society. For instance, Philo and Berry (Citation2004) look at news about the Israeli–Palestinian conflict on British television, while Philo, Briant, and Donald (Citation2013) examine the coverage of refugees in British media as a long-standing concern. This scholarship is therefore not discussed in detail here.