Proportions of Perspectives in American and Finnish World News Articles on South Africa and Brazil

B R O A D E N I N G V I E W S I N T A B L O I D S A N D T A B L E T S Proportions of Perspectives in American and Finnish World News Articles on South Africa and Brazil Kirsi Cheas Broadening Views in Tabloids and Tablets Proportions of Perspectives in American and Finnish World News Articles on South Africa and Brazil Kirsi Cheas ACADEMIC DISSERTATION To be presented, with the permission of the Faculty of Arts of the University of Helsinki, for public examination in the Small Hall, University main building, on 5 January 2018, at 12 noon. ISBN 978-951-51-3930-6 (paperback) ISBN 978-951-51-3931-3 (PDF) Unigrafia University of Helsinki, 2017 Abstract My doctoral research creates and applies a methodology to systematically measure and compare the proportions of perspectives in world news. By perspectives, I mean news frames and the voices of people affiliated with a range of different political, cultural, and economic institutions (i.e., institutional fields), quoted or paraphrased in the news. My method also assesses the relative positivity of frames. I focus on American and Finnish world news articles concerning South Africa and Brazil as these countries prepared to host the FIFA World Cup, thereby receiving global media attention. My primary sample consists of print and online news articles published in The New York Times and Helsingin Sanomat between 2006 and 2014. In their pursuit for more global democracy, South Africa and Brazil, along with other nations in the so-called Global South, have demanded a greater voice in the international public sphere. Building on Pierre Bourdieu’s field theory and concept of symbolic violence, I examine what the proportions of perspectives in American and Finnish news reveal about the power relations between Southern and Northern countries and the institutions involved. By symbolic violence, I mean a certain institution’s ability to frame realities on behalf of another field, and doing so more voluminously than this object field is allowed to speak for itself. I also define other, more subtle forms of symbolic violence with a more qualitative approach. The findings of this research challenge the prevailing claims that the Global South is voiceless or marginalized in Northern news: in both American and Finnish news, Southern sources receive up to 70–80 percent of total quoting space, on average, to express their views. However, the Southern fields are also depicted much more negatively than the Northern fields. At an overall sample level, the negative framing concerning the South African and Brazilian political fields exceeds these fields’ total volume in speaking for themselves, leading to symbolic violence. My research also reveals that American journalists frame Southern institutions mostly in neutral or positive tones, while incorporating quotes from many Southern institutions that criticize realities in their own countries and the political field in particular. Moreover, I found that American journalists systematically use anonymous sources to impose negative views on the Southern political fields. While anonymous sources also abound in Finnish news, Finnish journalists still express their critical opinions toward Southern institutions more openly and explicitly than American journalists. My research also creates a connection between multidisciplinary and interdisciplinary research and multiperspectival and interperspectival forms of news. I argue that Finnish news resembles multidisciplinary approaches, as each Finnish news article tends to promote and contextualize the perspectives of only one or a couple of fields in a segmented way, whereas the big picture is created across different articles over time. American news is more similar to interdisciplinary approaches, due to the way that diverse perspectives are integrated already at the article level. While I found that the American form of news manages to reveal the complexity of the South African and Brazilian situations at the article level, which Finnish news does not, the views in American news articles are not developed as fully as in the Finnish news articles. My study concludes by providing concrete suggestions as to how the American and Finnish forms of news could be combined to create world news that abound in both depth and a larger quantity of diverse perspectives. Table of Contents Foreword i Acknowledgements v 1. Introduction: Proportions of Perspectives in Northern News on the South 1 Structural Similarities between South Africa and Brazil 6 Creating Context in the News: Broadening the Windows on the World 8 American and Finnish Media Systems and the Potential for Comparative Research 10 Structure of the Present Study 13 2. From Colonies to Complex Democracies: Historical Trajectories of South Africa and Brazil and Normative Standards for Northern Journalism 17 Conquest, Colonialism, and the Formation of Unequal Societies 17 The 20th Century in South Africa: Apartheid, Inequality, and the Cold War 22 The 20th century in Brazil: Dictatorships, Inequality, and the Cold War 30 Building Better Societies and Reducing Inequalities in South Africa and Brazil 35 South Africa and Brazil on the Global Stage: Successes and Challenges 38 Persistent Problems in the South and Normative Standards for Northern Journalism 44 3. Comparing American and Finnish World News: Media Systems and Sample 49 Globally Dominant Market Economy vs. Small but Knowledgeable Welfare State 50 American and Finnish World News: Review of Previous Research 58 Sample Selection Criteria and Proportionality 64 4. Frame Analysis: Measuring the Size of the Windows on the World 73 The Seven Frames and Their Positive and Negative Dimensions 75 Overlapping Dimensions of Frames 84 Coding and Counting the Size of Frames 88 On the Reliability of Manifest-Level Frame Analysis 94 5. Field Analysis: Measuring the Volume of Voices and Symbolic Violence 97 Identifying and Defining Global, National, and Local Fields 101 Coding and Measuring the Volume of Voices and Symbolic Violence 112 On the Reliability of Manifest-Level Field Analysis 117 6. Findings: Proportions of Frames, Fields, and Symbolic Violence in American and Finnish World News 119 Segmented and Overlapping Windows on the World 126 Negative Frames, Relative Distance, and Symbolic Violence 133 Anonymous Sources: Symbolic Violence Disguised 140 The Framer and the Framed: American and Finnish Rules of the Game 145 South Africa and Brazil Are Off the Map! Implicit Ideas and Perilous Praise 150 Context, Complexity, and Democracy: Interplay of Positive and Negative Frames 154 7. Creating Context in Northern News on the South: The American Interperspectival and the Finnish Multiperspectival Form of News 161 Multi- and Interdisciplinary Models for Creating Context in World News 164 Context, Relative Distance, and Symbolic Violence 167 Integrating Ideas: Interperspectivalness in American News 169 Context That Benefited Brazil: Symbolic Violence on the American Political Field 172 Segmenting Sentiments: Multiperspectivalness in Finnish News 179 Textual Segregation in Finnish News 185 Partial vs. More Complete Context: Comparison of the NYT’s and HS’s Coverage of the Transforming Favelas 190 Depth vs. Surface: Context in News Articles and Videos by YLE and CNN 197 Merging Media Systems and Intermediate Forms of News 201 The Changing Vision of the World in the American Journalistic Field 204 Homophonic Meets Polyphonic: Towards a Finnish-American Harmony 208 8. Dynamics and Relative Volume of Southern Subfields in Northern News 215 Dynamics and Relative Volume of Southern Political Subfields 217 Contesting Ideas in the African National Congress 219 Alliance of Agents in the Brazilian Workers Party 227 Segmented vs. Integrated Forms of Political Debate 233 Disguised Dynamics: Political Affiliation Unknown 235 Dynamics and Relative Volume of Underprivileged, Middle Class, and Wealthy Southern Individuals and NGOs 238 Citizens’ Frustration and Gratitude toward the Political Fields 247 Dynamics and Relative Volume of Southern Academic Subfields 252 Media’s Symbolic Violence with Academic Reason 253 Inequality and Political Constraints in the Academic Field 255 Dynamics and Relative Volume of Southern Journalistic Subfields 261 Responsibilities and Transparency in the Global Journalistic Field 264 Final Remarks: Ideas about Inequality and Distant Suffering Revisited 267 9. Conclusions: Proportions of Perspectives, Context, and Transparency in Northern News on the South 269 Objects of Framing, Anonymous Sources, and Symbolic Violence 271 The Multiperspectival and Interperspectival Forms of News 275 Toward Even Wider Views and Forms of Nonviolent Communication: Lessons Learned in the Research Process 278 Broadening Perspectives in the Field of Media Studies: Final Remarks and Suggestions for Further Research 282 REFERENCES CITED 287 APPENDICES 309 TABLES: Table 1: Items for identifying negative and positive dimensions of frames with excerpts from the NYT 80 Table 2: Overlapping dimensions of frames at the paragraph level with excerpts from the NYT 85 Table 3: Institutional fields and subfields 109 Table 4: Average number of news frames and institutional fields per article in the NYT and HS 119 Table 5 (Appendices): Proportion of articles where different fields are quoted and negatively framed 309 Table 6 (Appendices): Examples of positive and negative dimensions of frames in HS 311 Table 7 (Appendices): Core sample: Numbered list of NYT and HS articles 315 ILLUSTRATIONS: Illustration 1: Coding at the paragraph and article

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