Abstract
This study used content and textual analysis of four newspapers—the Bangkok Post, The Nation, Thai Rath and Matichon––between 1 November 2013 and the general election on 2 February 2014 to examine how they framed the Thai political crisis. The content analysis produced six dominant frames, namely, democracy, chaos (or anarchy), violence, social injustice, public disapproval and negative impact. Through these frames, the textual analysis portrayed how the elected government struggled to defend democracy as opposition protesters mounted civil disobedience and Bangkok shutdown campaigns to put pressure on it.
Introduction
In liberal democracies, non-violent social protest has been guaranteed by the constitution as a legal right of citizens to express their opinions. McCarthy and McPhail (1998) assert that since the late 1960s, there has been a gradual but persistent ‘institutionalization of protest’ whereby protest has ‘become a normal part of the political process, its messages seen as a legitimate supplement to voting, petitioning, and lobbying efforts to influence government policy and practice’ (p. 84). The mass media have played an important role in influencing the nature, form and development of social protest movements, as well as the ability of these movements to reach their goals. The mass media have become an instrument to attract public attention and mobilize public support for the protesters (Baylor, 1996). On the other hand, the media can exert control through negative news framing, which functions as a mechanism of social control to weaken the influence of social protests in public opinion (McLeod & Hertog, 1998) or by ‘manufacturing consent’ (Herman & Chomsky, 2002).
The recent continuing political crisis in Thailand involves a series of mass protests and demonstrations led by the anti-government People’s Democratic Reform Committee (PDRC) to overthrow the democratically elected government of Prime Minister Yingluck Shinawatra since November 2013. Prime Minister Yingluck was forced to dissolve the parliament and the general election held on 2 February 2014 was nullified by the constitutional court. Later, on 7 May 2014, the first female premier of Thailand was stripped of the post by the constitutional court for her interfering in the reshuffling of senior government officials.
The Thai political crisis, particularly the Bangkok shutdown, has attracted global attention (e.g., Fenn, 2014; Head, 2014; McKirdy, 2014; Silva, 2014). Analysts have made linkages to the ‘Arab Spring’, ‘Occupy Wall Street’, the ‘Color Revolutions’ and the European ‘indignados’ (Allagui, 2014; Xu, 2013; Yang & Ishak, 2012). Parallels have also been drawn between the protests in Thailand, Ukraine and Venezuela which showed some similarity in terms of methods and changes (Silva, 2014).
In view of the significance of social protest movements at national and international levels, this study seeks to analyze how the English- and Thai-language newspapers, namely, the Bangkok Post, The Nation, Thai Rath and Matichon, have defined or framed the current political crisis in Thailand during the 2014 general election. It also examined the internal and external factors which have influenced the frame-building process.
Literature Review
Theoretical Orientation: Framing
Sociologist Erving Goffman (1974) is generally credited with introducing ‘framing’ as an explanation of how individuals make sense of their everyday lives. In his classic work on framing, Goffman elaborates how individuals use interpretive schemata to process, organize and interpret information. Many media scholars use framing to explain how journalists make sense of news events (Reese, 2008).
According to Entman (1993), ‘To frame is to select some aspects of a perceived reality and make them more salient in a communicating text.’ Entman (1993) explains that media framing involves selection and emphasis. Journalists select certain elements of an issue and emphasize them while simultaneously ignoring or omitting other elements of the issues. He says frames perform four functions: (i) define problems (determine what a causal agent is doing with what costs and benefits, usually measured in terms of common cultural values), (ii) diagnose causes (identify the forces creating the problem); (iii) make moral judgements (evaluate causal agents and their effects) and (iv) suggest remedies (offer and justify treatments for the problems and predict their likely effects) (p. 52).
Along the same lines, Gamson (1989) states that the media frames journalists employ are ‘central organizing ideas’ that guide audience members’ interpretations of news reports (p. 157). Similarly, Reese (2001) says that frames are ‘organizing principles’ that provide ‘structure’ to news stories that help audiences make sense out of complicated issues (p. 6). To help explain the relationships among various concepts in framing, De Vreese (2005) has proposed the integrated process of framing which clearly distinguishes between frame-building and frame-setting. Taking De Vreese’s integrated process of framing as a conceptual framework, this study focuses on the frame-building process, rather than frame-setting, by examining the generic or editorial frames as used by the four English- and Thai-language newspapers.
In this study, attempts are also made to investigate both internal and external factors that influence the frame-building process by journalists and media professionals. According to De Vreese’s (2005) frame-building process, framing in the newsroom must undergo tests of both internal and external factors. The internal factors include newsworthiness and editorial policy, while the external factors usually cover news sources, frame sponsors and advocates. Gamson (1984) described frame sponsors as media sources that make efforts to frame information in news stories. They will make sure that stories are slanted and framed in ways consistent with their preferred framing (Hallahan, 1999). The frame advocates will always strive for greater visibility of their preferred frames than the alternative frames that are promoted by their competitors.
Previous Research
In the past few decades, considerable research has been undertaken on how the US media framed domestic social protests. A well-known study was conducted by Gitlin (1980) to analyze the media coverage of the anti-Vietnam War movement. Gitlin found that the framing devices used by the US media on the antiwar movement and demonstrators include trivialization (making light of protesters’ dress, appearance, age and language), marginalization (downplaying the representativeness of the movement), undercounting protesters, denying the movement’s effectiveness and exaggerating the threat that the movement posed to mainstream society by emphasizing the presence of communists in the protests.
Based on the literature survey, most previous studies showed that news framing of protests had been consistently negative. For example, Dardis (2006) examined news coverage of the US antiwar movement and found that media reports mainly adopted the themes to negatively frame the antiwar movement. Of particular interest, Boykoff (2006) studied the framing practices employed by mainstream mass media outlets in the United States in their coverage of the global justice movement during two major episodes of contention: the World Trade Organization protests in Seattle in 1999 and the World Bank/International Monetary Fund (IMF) protests in Washington, DC in 2000. The content analysis of prominent and influential newspapers and television networks rendered five predominant frames about the protests: violence, disruption, freak (focusing on the appearance and non-mainstream ideology of protesters), ignorance and amalgam of grievances. Recently, Xu (2013) proposed a typology of six framing/marginalization devices to media coverage of the Occupy Wall Street protest that started in New York in September 2011. These framing devices are lawlessness, show, ineffective goals, public disapproval, official sources and negative impact. The study also found that the five framing devices, except official sources, were associated with the overall tone of the coverage of the protest groups, explaining 65.5 per cent of the variability of the overall negative tone.
Despite the prevalence of negative frames in media coverage of social protests, some positive framing also emerged. For example, Nelson, Clawson and Oxley (1997) suggested that there could be contrasting frames for a single reality. They revealed two contrasting frames for the Ku Klux Klan––one framed the rally as a free speech issue and the other framed it as a disruption of public order. Similarly, journalists may frame protest and demonstration as an indication of democratic society or, on the contrary, chaotic society. Based on the study by Nelson et al. (1997), Park (2003) conducted a frame analysis of US television networks’ coverage of Korea and Japan to examine whether the US television networks framed demonstrations and protests in each country differently. As hypothesized, demonstration and protest stories in Korea tended to be framed in a chaos frame, while those in Japan were framed in a democracy frame. This means that US television news framed the demonstrations and protests in Korea negatively, while they framed the demonstrations and protests in Japan positively.
These previous studies provided useful guidelines for identifying predominant frames in the media coverage of Thailand’s social protest movements leading to the political crisis in 2014. Based on the studies by Boykoff (2006), McLeod and Hertog (1992), Park (2003) and Xu (2013), a list of news frames can be narrowed down to democracy, chaos, anarchy, violence, disruption, lawlessness, social injustice, show, public disapproval and negative impact. These frames often intersect in individual news stories, reinforcing each other. After reading all the 520 news articles in Thailand’s four mainstream newspapers, a final list of six dominant frames has been concluded inductively. They are democracy, chaos (or anarchy), violence, social injustice, public disapproval and negative impact.
Based on the research review, this study proposes the following research questions to achieve the earlier purpose:
RQ1: What was the frequency of occurrence of each news frame in the coverage of the political protests during the 2014 general election? RQ2: Was there any difference in the occurrence of news frames between English-language newspapers and Thai-language newspapers?
Methodology
Four mainstream newspapers were selected for the study, based on their credibility and wide circulation among readers. Among these four dailies, two were major English-language newspapers, namely, the Bangkok Post and The Nation; the other two were Thai language newspapers, namely, Thai Rath and Matichon.
Established in 1946, the Bangkok Post is currently owned by Post Publishing Public Co. Ltd. It is Thailand’s oldest newspaper in any language. Known as ‘the world’s window on Thailand’, the 68-year-old Bangkok Post has an internationalist view, which can be attributed to the fact that it employs more foreigners than Thais. Its editorial line is conservative. The Nation was established by journalists in 1971 and is strictly Thai owned. Presently, it is the flagship publication of the Nation Multimedia Group, producer of several newspapers, television channels, books, magazines and websites. The majority of The Nation’s staff are Thai, a major factor in its superior coverage of local news and analysis. Editorially, The Nation is usually more critical of the government than the Bangkok Post.
The most popular daily Thai language newspaper, Thai Rath, circulates throughout the nation’s urban and rural areas. Thai Rath prominently features sensationalist stories on crime and accidents. Thai Rath was founded in 1958 as a pro-government paper and is viewed as conservative within the Thai political context. Matichon is considered a ‘quality’ Thai language newspaper and an essential reading for Thailand’s educated classes. Matichon was founded in 1978 after the military coup in 1976. Its editorial line is moderate to progressive.
Sample
This study analyzed the census sample of news coverage from the four newspapers about social protest movements during the 2014 general election in Thailand. The census sample was chosen for this study as many scholars (Neuendorf, 2002; Riffe, Lacy & Fico, 2005) found the method suitable for research to examine a particular event or series of events. Data were collected during the period from November 2013 when the major anti-government protest led by the PDRC broke out until the general election was held on 2 February 2014. The units of analysis were news articles which comprised mainly news stories and columns. The articles were drawn by conducting a search in the IQNewsClip database using ‘PDRC-UDD Protest-Election’ as the keywords.
After double-checking every article and cleaning irrelevant articles, the selection process yielded 520 news articles about political protests and demonstrations related to the 2014 general election. Among these articles, 105 were from the Bangkok Post, 102 from The Nation, 149 from Matichon and 164 from Thai Rath.
Coding
This study uses the news article as a coding unit. According to Amstrong and Boyle (2011), Dardis (2006) and Xu (2013), an article was found to be a more efficient coding unit in capturing the content and themes of the coverage than a paragraph as a coding unit. Articles were coded for the presence or absence of the six news frames used in this study. The following are the news frames and their operational definitions:
Democracy: The news stories describe political protests and demonstrations with words, such as, defending democracy, democratization, elected government, support for election, political reform, right to vote, freedom of expression, one man one vote, peace building and conflict prevention. Chaos (or anarchy): The news stories describe political protests and demonstrations with words, such as, dictatorship, pro-communism, fascism, lawlessness, disruption, social disorder and power corrupt. Violence: The news stories describe the clash between protesters, police and military officers, reports of deaths and injuries, dramatization of violent acts and victims, the reference to coup d’état, revolution and civil war and the use of hate speech to create hatred and social divide. Social injustice: The news stories describe political protests and demonstrations with words, such as, the judiciary process, the rulings of the constitutional court and the courts of justice, double standards, legitimacy crisis, judicial coup and social inequality. Public disapproval: The news stories were coded as yes if their content claimed that the public (e.g., opinion polls), media or bystanders opposed, did not support, or did not pay attention to the protests or undercounted protesters to make claims that they were unrepresentative. Negative impact: The news stories were coded as yes when their content emphasized the negative impact of the protests, for example, the protests hurt business, tourism, trade, investment and economic growth; the protests threatened the traditional family and values or the protests harmed national interests.
When coding these frames frequently intersected. Some content could be coded as more than one frame.
Intercoder Reliability
To calculate intercoder reliability, the researcher served as the first coder and a communication graduate was chosen as the second coder and given a training session about the coding scheme. Wimmer and Dominick (2006) suggested that between 10 per cent and 25 per cent of the body of content should be tested. Accordingly, this study randomly selected 10 per cent of the news articles for calculating the intercoder reliability. Using Holsti’s (1969) formula (also cited in Wimmer & Dominick, 2006), it was found that the intercoder reliability for news frames was 0.90 which showed substantial agreement.
Frequency of Frames by Newspapers
Results
The result of the study is divided into two parts: content analysis and textual analysis of the newspaper coverage.
Content Analysis
To answer RQ1, the frequency of the occurrence of each news frame was determined. Table 1 contains the results of this analysis. The democracy frame emerged as the most widely used framing device of the protest during the 2014 general election with 49.03 per cent (n = 255). It was, however, closely followed by the chaos or anarchy frame with 48.46 per cent (n = 252) and the violence frame with 47.30 per cent (n = 246). The other three framing devices lagged far behind: the negative impact frame was ranked fourth with 25.19 per cent (n = 131), while the social injustice frame ranked fifth with 21.92 per cent (n = 114) and the public disapproval frame ranked sixth with 21.53 per cent (n = 112).
Similar patterns of frame occurrence emerged with the democracy frame as the most predominant frame, closely followed by the chaos and violence frames. Thai Rath, however, showed the opposite with the violence frame ranking first and the chaos and democracy frames being closely behind. This is understandable in view of the fact that most popular newspapers in Thailand tended to present sensational news stories, such as, crime and conflict, to appeal to readers’ human interest. The other three frames, negative impact, social injustice and public disapproval frames, followed far behind in every newspaper.
To answer RQ2, frames between the English-language newspapers and the Thai-language newspapers were compared. Table 2 presents the results of this analysis. There appeared some differences in the occurrence of news frames with particular reference to the democracy and violence frames. The two English-language newspapers displayed the democracy frame as the predominant frame with 50.24 per cent (n = 104), compared with 48.42 per cent (n = 151) for the Thai language newspapers. Both the Bangkok Post and The Nation have clearly supported democracy in previous editorial comments. The Thai language newspapers tended to highlight the violence frame with 48.88 per cent (n = 153), compared to only 44.92 per cent (n = 93) for the English-language newspapers, a reflection of traditional values and cultural norms about news coverage by Thai daily newspapers. However, both English- and Thai-language newspapers featured the chaos frame as the second predominant frame in the coverage of the political protests and demonstrations with around 48 per cent each. There appeared no difference in the occurrence of other news frames between the two groups of newspapers.
Comparison of Frames between English- and Thai-language Newspapers
Textual Analysis
The following textual analyses of the newspaper coverage help understand how the mainstream newspapers portrayed the political protests and demonstrations during the 2014 general election.
Democracy Frame
Democracy constituted the predominant frame, accounting for 49.03 per cent of all news coverage. People’s Democratic Reform Committee Secretary General Suthep called for protesters to take to the streets and march to Government House on 9 December 2013 in a ‘final battle’. He insisted that the prime minister stand down within 24 hours. In response to the intensive protests, Yingluck dissolved the parliament and insisted that she would continue her duties until the scheduled election in February 2014, urging the protesters to accept her proposal:
The government does not wish to see political conflict escalate into national division and violence. Returning power to the people by dissolving the House and calling a general election is a democratic and acceptable recourse. Let a majority of the people decide the direction and who they want to run the country. (The Nation, 10 December 2013, p. 1A)
In the post-government dissolution, on 17 December 2013, PDRC secretary general Suthep called for rallies with slogans demanding three conditions: (i) reform before election, (ii) establishment of a non-elected People’s Council to start a reform process for 12–18 months, and (iii) immediate resignation of Yingluck and the cabinet.
On 21 December 2013, the Democrat Party announced that it would boycott the election in February (Buranakanokthanasan, 2013).
Chaos Frame
The chaos or anarchy frame is the second predominant frame, accounting for 48.46 per cent of the total coverage by the four mainstream newspapers. The anarchy became widespread after Suthep and eight other Democrat members of parliament resigned from their positions on 11 November 2013 to lead the protest and engaged in ‘civil disobedience’ (Post Reporters, 12 November 2013, p. 2).
‘Bangkok Shutdown’ or ‘occupation of Bangkok’ had dominated the chaos or anarchy frame and attracted great attention from all mainstream mass media. On 13 January 2014, anti-government protesters began the Bangkok Shutdown campaign to further pressure the government, blocking seven major road intersections in the centre of the city at Chaeng Watthana, Lat Phrao, Victory Monument, Pathumwan, Ratchaprasong, Asok and Lumpini.
Reflecting the themes in all newspapers, the Post reported:
Thais are pragmatic. Shutting down the seven intersections in the city did not cause a crisis, as most people had prepared their personal travel and used public transport, leaving their cars at home or at arranged parking spots around the blocked intersections. (Post Reporters, 14 January 2014, p. 3)
All four mainstream newspapers put special emphasis on the coverage of the anti-election campaign designed to obstruct voting on 2 February 2014. Although PDRC announced that they would not block the election process, numerous news stories reported that they marched to disrupt the registration process on 22 December 2014 (Thai Rath, 23 December 2014). Anti-government protesters were shown to disrupt and obstruct the advance voting on 26 January 2014 (Bangprapa, 2014, p. 1; Thip-osod & Wangkiat, 2014, p. 1). They were also reported to have blocked the delivery of ballot boxes in addition to preventing people from submitting their votes (Intathep, 2014, p. 1; Nanuam, 2014, p. 1; The Nation, 3 February 2014).
Violence Frame
The violence frame, ranked third, occupied 47.30 per cent of the total news coverage of the 2014 general election. It dovetailed with the chaos or anarchy frame; the combination of both frames constituted the largest thematic frame in this study. Most violent acts erupted during the occupation of Bangkok and the no-election campaign to disrupt and obstruct the election process.
The most violent incident finally erupted on the eve of the 2 February general election as a gun battle erupted between pro- and anti-government supporters near IT Square in Lak Si district. On Sunday, 2 February 2014, the Bangkok Post displayed a news headline on its front page ‘Lak Si shoot-out puts poll on knife edge’ together with a picture of ‘a man identified by the Reuters news agency as an anti-government protester fires a rifle, hidden inside a sack (or popcorn bag)’.
Of particular concern is the wide use of ‘hate speech’ in the printed and broadcast media by protesters. Hate speech is considered as ‘symbolic violence’ because it ‘attacks a person or group on the basis of race, religion, gender, or sexual orientation’ (Nockleby, 2000). During the current political conflict, the Democrat Party’s own Thai language satellite channel, Blue Sky, became a big hit with its live reporting, commentator talk shows and signal links from the anti-government stages led by the PDRC. Similarly, the pro-government mass movement, the Red Shirts, ran its own channel, called Asia Update, which was very popular among rural audiences (Ashayagachat, 2014, p. 2).
Negative Impact Frame
The negative impact frame is ranked fourth, occupying 25.19 per cent of the total news coverage. During the 2014 political crisis, the four mainstream newspapers devoted about one-quarter of their news stories to cover the negative impacts of protests and demonstrations on national economy, tourism, business, international trade and investment.
The Bangkok Post, on 23 December 2013, reported that the Thai Baht dropped to a 3-year low of 32.65 per dollar due to the political unrest in the preceding months (Y-sing, 2013, p. B5). Bloomberg also recorded that the Thai currency lost 4.6 per cent over November and December, while the main stock index also dropped 9.1 per cent (Y-Sing, 2013, p. B5). In terms of tourism, Thailand’s Association of Domestic Travel reported a decrease of US$ 125 million worth of tourist revenue around Christmas and New Year compared to the same period in 2012.
Social Injustice Frame
The social injustice frame is ranked fifth, with 21.92 per cent of total news coverage. The frame centred around the controversial issue of ‘social injustice’ with particular reference to the proposed amnesty bill and the constitutional court’s rulings on the constitution amendment and the invalidation of the 2 February general election.
All the mainstream newspapers reported that the proposed amnesty bill, which triggered the current anti-government protests leading to the dissolution of the parliament, reflected a number of flaws and injustices raised by both the opponents and supporters of the government.
Public Disapproval Frame
The public disapproval frame is the last frame, with only 21.53 per cent of total news coverage. This frame mostly relates to news reports by the newspapers about public support for the protests as reflected in stories about protester numbers, opinion polls, statistics and other forms of public opinions.
Reports about the number of protesters turned out to be a sensitive and controversial issue. Usually, the anti-government PDRC would claim a much larger number of people attending their rallies in order to show mass support to put pressure on the government. The claimed figures were always undercounted by the pro-government group, the United Front for Democracy against Dictatorship (UDD), and vice versa. However, the mass media tended to downplay the size of protests, suggesting they were much lower than the claimed figures. Some newspapers later avoided citing a number of people attending the protests.
Conclusion and Discussion
This study examined how the mainstream newspapers framed the political crisis in Thailand during the 2014 general election. The newspapers under study consisted of two major English language dailies, namely, the Bangkok Post and The Nation, and the two Thai language dailies, namely, Thai Rath and Matichon. The current political crisis in Thailand evolved from the confrontation between anti-government protest led by PDRC and government supporter UDD since the year 2013. This study focused on the period from 1 November 2013 when the first major mass rally by the opposition party took place leading to the dissolution of the House of Representatives by the government on 9 December 2013 until 2 February 2014 when the general election was held as scheduled.
Six generic frames emerged inductively from the newspaper coverage, namely, democracy, chaos, violence, social injustice, public disapproval and negative impact. Among these news frames, the democracy frame was the most predominant frame with 49.03 per cent of the total coverage, followed closely by the chaos and violence frames with 48.46 per cent and 47.30 per cent, respectively. The other three frames lagged far behind; the negative impact frame was ranked fourth with 25.19 per cent, followed by the social injustice frame with 21.92 per cent and the public disapproval frame with 21.53 per cent. Following De Vreese’s (2005) integrated process of framing, it was found that the frame-building processes by the four mainstream newspapers have been considerably influenced by newspapers’ internal factors, such as, editorial policies, journalistic values and norms as well as external factors, such as, news sources, advocates and sponsors.
In view of these findings, it was widely feared that Thailand had been brought to the brink of a civil war. Despite the predominance of democracy during the period of this study, a wide range of threats loomed large to overthrow the elected government of Prime Minister Yingluck Shinawatra. These threats were evident at the prevalence of the violence and chaos frames as well as the presence of the social injustice frame (or double standards). As violence feeds itself, the resort to violent tactics by the anti-government protest led by PDRC as an attempt for the ‘people’s revolution’ had escalated into the ‘judicial coup’ and eventually the military coup as widely anticipated throughout the course of this study. As a result of these coups, the elected government was forced to dissolve the House of Representatives on 9 December 2013 and the general elections were held as scheduled on 2 February 2014 but the vote turnout was later nullified by the constitutional court on 21 March 2014. The first elected female prime minister was also stripped off her post on 7 May 2014 by the constitutional court and then, the military junta led by Army Chief General Prayuth Chan-ocha seized power on 22 May 2014. A series of these events could hardly occur by coincidence and this led many political observers to suspect the ‘conspiracy theory’ at work among the ‘am-mart’ or elite networks, the independent public agencies, the military and political interest groups. These conspiracy networks were reflected in the news-framing process as news advocates and sources of some mainstream newspapers showed favourable policies and attitudes towards the status quo elites. The situations appeared to fit well into the popular theory of ‘a tale of two democracies’ proposed by Laothamatas (1966) who argued that the rural masses elect vote-buying politicians, and the urban middle class, frustrated by the corrupt and inept nature of such argument, rally to bring them down by weight of social sanction, protest and persuasion.
Consistent with previous research (Boykoff, 2006; Dardis, 2006; Gitlin, 1980; McLeod & Hertog, 1998; Xu, 2013), media coverage of political protests and demonstrations tended to frame domestic protest activities in negative ways, thus creating negative impacts in Thai society. As shown in this study, over a quarter of the total news coverage by the mainstream newspapers (25.19 per cent) was given to the negative impact frame, as compared to more than one-fifth (21.53 per cent) of the total coverage for the public disapproval frame. McLeod and Hertog (1998) assert that negative news framing functions as a mechanism of social control to weaken the influence of social protests in public opinion. That is why most violent anti-government protests and their opponent groups failed to meet their goals by resorting to violent tactics.
All said, the study offers valuable lessons for journalism educators and students. Above all, journalism scholars have found the concept of ‘framing’ useful for examining media coverage of news. The concept of media framing presents a new paradigm to replace the older paradigm of studying the ‘objectivity and bias’ of the media. Once one begins to think of news coverage in terms of framing, the old concept of bias, commonly used in journalism, seems somewhat simplistic and narrow. Moreover, how the four mainstream newspapers in Thailand have ‘framed’ the political crisis can contribute to the existing body of knowledge and have academic and practical implications for Asia-Pacific region.
This study represents a short span of the ongoing political conflict in the history of Thailand. It is natural that the study has several shortcomings. Above all, the news media, particularly television, online and social media, played a very important role during the current political crisis. This framing analysis was limited to a few mainstream influential newspapers; it might not cover some other news frames which have appeared in online and television coverage.