It is widely known that the public in the U.S. counts on the mass media to get information about political affairs these days (Pew Research Center 2010: 1), not only because it is hardly possible for people to gather all the political information they get from the media by themselves but also because political issues are usually very complex and difficult to compre-hend without any guidance (cf. Berinsky/Kinder 2006: 641). What the public knows about politics – which is the basis of public debate and can shape public opinion – therefore depends to a large extent on what journalists convey in the news (cf. Simon/Xenos 2010: 363; de Vreese 2005: 51). This is also a crucial fact for political actors because they have to take the media into account whenever they want to convey a message or opinion about a political con-cern to the public.
Among the most important messages from political actors to the people are presidential speeches because they very often include vital decisions for the country or new strategies in an ongoing conflict. By giving a speech to the nation a president can not only justify political plans but also shape those plans in a way that makes them worthy of support among the public and the Congress. Thus, a president’s “message is constructed in such a way as to contain certain associations rather than others” (Simon/Xenos 2010: 367) in order to accentuate aspects of the message that the president thinks are likely to attract support. This is called framing and serves the purpose of promoting a certain “interpretation and evaluation” of a political issue by an audience (Entman 2004: 26). However, unless people watch the speeches themselves, a president cannot entirely determine how the public perceives the content of a speech. Whether a presidential speech comes across the way a president communicated it, depends heavily on whether journalists pick up the president’s framing and put the emphasis on the same information that the president did. If the media doesn’t do that, the public might not judge the political matter the way a president intended, which could result in less support for a policy.
At a glance
- Grade: 1.0 (1.0 is the best grade)
- Original framing analysis coded 164 sentences from Obama’s speech
- Analysis selected 81 quoted or paraphrased sentences from ten news articles
- 17 sources in the bibliography
- 3 figures and 4 tables
Table of Contents
1 Introduction
2 Theoretical Background – Approaches, Definitions and Influences of Framing
3 Framing of Obama’s Speech and Conveyance in the News - Methodology and Results
3.1 Introduction to the Frame Categories
3.2 Frame Categories in the Speech and Its Coverage: Results of Analysis
3.3 Comparison of Results
4 Conclusion
Objectives and Themes
This study examines how The Washington Post conveyed President Barack Obama’s March 2009 speech on the strategy for Afghanistan and Pakistan. It asks whether the newspaper emphasized the frames established in the speech in the same proportions as the president or highlighted them differently.
- Framing in political communication and media effects research
- Presidential messages and journalistic news management
- Inductive identification and coding of speech frames
- Analysis of quotations and paraphrases in newspaper coverage
- Comparison of frame frequencies across the speech and news articles
Excerpt from the Book
3 Framing of Obama’s Speech and Conveyance in the News - Methodology and Results
The goal of this paper is to examine whether the news coverage of The Washington Post emphasized the aspects of Obama’s remarks on the Strategy for Afghanistan and Pakistan in the same proportion as the president did. The first step for this analysis was the examination of the speech itself as one part for a subsequent comparison. I used an inductive approach to identify the frames Obama applied in his speech, which means that I didn’t specify frame categories beforehand and analyzed the speech with regard to those categories but recognized new frames during my analysis, which I then added to the set of frame categories. This inductive way of analyzing ensures that no frame that might be specific for this speech is left out and gives a very detailed insight into what Obama tried to convey through his speech and how he did that. I used the functions of frames noted by Entman (1993: 52) to help identify and structure the frame categories in Obama’s speech. In the course of the analysis, I was able to identify nine different frame categories, which I will introduce in the results section.
I coded each of the 164 sentences of the speech according to the frame categories detectable in every sentence, and classified statements dealing with similar issues to the same categories. I neither included welcome or farewell statements, nor the acknowledgements to certain attendees of the speech and contributors to the strategy in the first two paragraphs, since I did not consider them relevant for the study. Each sentence could either be assigned or not be assigned to a frame category (0/1). Following Entman (cf. 1993: 52), I decided that one sentence could match more than one frame category, i.e. one sentence could invoke the later explained “Threat”-frame as well as the “Taliban Insurgents/Al Qaeda” frame. Then, I computed how many times each frame category was invoked in the speech to add them up to the total number of invocations of all frame categories. That allowed me to calculate the percentage of the application of each frame category compared to the total number of applications of frame categories. These numbers gave an insight into which frames Obama emphasized more and which less in his speech. Thus, I can conclude what Obama intended to convey in his speech and how he wanted the public to interpret and evaluate the new strategy.
Chapter Summaries
1 Introduction: The introduction sets out the research questions, explains the selection of the speech and newspaper, and outlines the study’s approach.
2 Theoretical Background – Approaches, Definitions and Influences of Framing: This chapter traces the development of framing research and discusses its relationship to media effects, agenda-setting, priming, and political communication.
3 Framing of Obama’s Speech and Conveyance in the News - Methodology and Results: The author explains the coding method and frame categories, presents the analysis, and compares the speech with its newspaper coverage.
4 Conclusion: The conclusion brings together the comparison and considers its implications for the communication of foreign policy and further research.
Keywords
media framing, political communication, presidential speech, Barack Obama, The Washington Post, Afghanistan, Pakistan, foreign policy, news coverage, content analysis, frame categories, public opinion
Frequently Asked Questions
What is the study about?
It examines how a newspaper conveyed the framing of a presidential speech about U.S. strategy in Afghanistan and Pakistan.
What are its central themes?
The study addresses media framing, presidential communication, journalistic selection, foreign policy, and the possible influence of news coverage on interpretation.
What is the main research question?
The author asks whether The Washington Post emphasized the frames in Obama’s speech in the same proportions as the president did.
What research method does the author use?
The author inductively identifies frame categories, codes sentences in the speech and references to it in news articles, and compares the proportions of the categories.
What does the main analysis cover?
It defines nine frame categories, presents their frequency in the speech and news coverage, and compares their relative prominence.
Which keywords characterize the work?
Key terms include media framing, political communication, presidential speech, news coverage, foreign policy, and content analysis.
Which speech and newspaper are examined?
The case concerns Obama’s March 27, 2009 speech on Afghanistan and Pakistan and subsequent coverage in The Washington Post from March 28 to 30.
How does the author select material from the newspaper articles?
The analysis selects sentences that quote or paraphrase the speech and assigns them to the same frame categories used for the corresponding presidential statements.
What does the comparison find?
The author finds that some frames were conveyed in roughly similar proportions, while the newspaper gave greater relative emphasis to military and civilian efforts.
- Quote paper
- Sophia Schulze (Author), 2011, Recalling Political Messages: About the Framing of a Presidential Speech and Its Subsequent News Coverage, Munich, GRIN Verlag, https://www.grin.com/document/206437
