Running head: SENSATIONAL AND HUMANITARIAN NEWS AND COMMENTS 1
Sensationalism and Humanitarian Content in Online Dutch Newspaper News and User Comments
A study of the text of refugee (crisis) related news articles and the comments posted to them on Facebook
Author: Esmeralda V. Bon Student number: 10340386 Thesis type: Master’s thesis School: Graduate School of Communication Program: Research Master’s programme Communication Science Supervisor: Dr. K. de Swert Completion date: 24 June, 2016
SENSATIONAL AND HUMANITARIAN NEWS AND COMMENTS 1
Acknowledgements
It is a pleasure to thank those who have made this thesis possible. First of all, I owe my deepest gratitude to Dr. De Swert, whose insightful comments, advice and critical remarks have guided my writing and whose patience knows no bounds. Second, I am immeasurably thankful to my parents. Their everlasting guidance and immense support have made me the academic I am today and they reduced the laborious task that thesis writing can be to a manageable, gratifying project. Third, I would like to thank my fellow students and friends who have been ever so supportive in these final months and who have also been an irreplaceable sounding board of knowledge about, amongst others, communication theory, communication science, research methods and (im)migration: Marieke, Saba, Joanna,
Xueyao, Osama, Daniela & Lars.
Running head: SENSATIONAL AND HUMANITARIAN NEWS AND COMMENTS 1
Abstract
Europe is challenged by an ongoing migrant crisis. How the media presents this crisis affects audience perception and agenda setting. This original study focuses on the use of human interest vs. humanitarian frames by a quality and a popular Dutch newspaper, the emotional neutrality of their news articles and the degree to which these feature issue elaboration. The first research question enquires: To what extent do the post-embedded- articles on refugees of Dutch newspapers on Facebook contain humanitarian and sensationalist elements? Simultaneously, to provide insight into the potential effects of these news portrayals, it is asked whether there are commonalities between the content of the articles and the content of the top 100 comments they received. The studied newspapers are
NRC Handelsblad (quality) and De Telegraaf (popular). After a literature review and the introduction of adapted scales, a content analysis of a sample of the Facebook post-embedded news articles of these newspapers (N = 109), published between January 1st, 2015 and April
22nd, 2016, and the top 100 comments to them (N = 5792) is reported. It is found that the news articles of the NRC feature more human interest framing, humanitarian framing, issue elaboration and emotionality than those of the Telegraaf, but that these differences are due to the types of news articles and the length of the articles written. The content of the comments is uncorrelated to that of the news articles and they therefore seem to be largely independent.
Striking study-specific observations are made about the presence of elements of sensation in quality refugee related news and the relation between the news articles’ and comment content.
Keywords ■ Humanitarian ■ Sensationalism ■ Framing ■ Refugee ■ Newspaper ■ Human Interest ■ Popular journalism ■ Quality journalism ■ Dutch ■ Content Analysis ■ Emotionality
Word count: 9.105 This excludes the title page, acknowledgements, abstract, footnotes, tables and references. SENSATIONAL AND HUMANITARIAN NEWS AND COMMENTS 1
Introduction
At the time of writing, Europe is facing an ongoing refugee crisis and refugee (crisis) related issues are high up on the public agenda (Kosho, 2016). The Dutch agenda is influenced by the news media (Boomgaarden & Vliegenthart, 2007), and the descriptions of these refugee (related) issues are subject to the frames they use, which affect subsequent discourse, creating a certain understanding among readers and watchers about the events covered and the information conveyed (Entman, 1993; Gitlin, 1980; Neuman et al., 1992).
They may even create a ‘change in judgment’ in viewers and readers (Iyengar, 1987, p. 816).
Thusly the frames employed in refugee related news affect public opinion (e.g. Van
Gorp, 2005; Kosho, 2016). Seemingly unfortunately, a general move towards tabloidization has been observed, which is characterized by sensationalism (Harcup & O’Neill, 2001;
Sparks, 2000). A frame that is commonly linked to sensationalism is the human interest frame
(e.g. Reinemann et al., 2011), which as defined by Semetko & Valkenburg (2000) brings a face to an issue or presents it primarily emotionally. This frame seeks to entertain and to grab attention by extensively narrating how people are affected by an issue (Bennett, 1995).
Another frame which focuses on people and how they are impacted is the humanitarian frame.
However, in contrast this frame focuses less on the trivial and more on aspects surrounding development assistance (e.g. Druckman, 2001) and it can be used for eliciting compassion
(Moeller, 1999; Tester, 2001). These frames may also foster social action, especially on social networking sites (Madianou, 2013). Thusly, the human interest and humanitarian frames are expected to at least differ with regards to their inherent sensationalism and purposes.
Based on the role and use of the aforementioned frames and the observed increase of sensation in the news, this project is concerned with how refugee (crisis) related news is presented. The first research question posed is: To what extent do the post-embedded-articles of Dutch newspapers on Facebook contain humanitarian and sensationalist elements? To SENSATIONAL AND HUMANITARIAN NEWS AND COMMENTS 2 provide an answer to this question two Dutch newspapers are selected, one classified as popular and the other as quality: the Telegraaf and the NRC Handelsblad respectively. The selected post-embedded-articles (N = 109) and the top 100 comments to them (N = 5792) are analyzed. The level of sensationalism present is measured by the introduction and use of adapted frames and scales for measuring the presence of human interest framing, humanitarian framing, issue elaboration and emotional neutrality. For the latter emotional neutrality – emotionality scale, an algorithm based sentiment analysis is employed.
Thereafter, to tap into the potential effects of the use of these frames in this context, a second research question is posed, namely: Are there commonalities between the content of the articles and the content of the top 100 comments posted in reaction? The aforementioned frames and scales are to be slightly adapted1 before their application to the measurement of the content of the comments. By providing an answer to these two questions this study reflects on the role of sensationalism in relation to the valuation of different types of journalism and introduces a differentiation between the human interest and humanitarian frame that may bring theoretical specification in this study and those that follow.
Theory
New and bad journalism: tabloidization and sensationalism
The link between entertainment and news has been contested for almost a century, with criticism being risen against yellow journalists in the 1920s and, for instance,
Habermasian critique in 1962 (Winch, 1997). Yet especially after the turn of the century a new journalism has been observed, one that features traces of tabloidization (Harcup &
O’Neill, 2001) and is fueled by capitalism (McManus, 1995; Örnebring & Jönsson, 2004).
1 It is, for instance, deemed problematic to code for the presence and type of human interest visuals in each of the top 100 comments to the news articles in the sample. The comment visuals do not seem to have the same purpose as the article visuals, as many of them represent ‘memes’ or other pictures with captions meant to convey a sarcastic message. This could, however, be an interesting topic for, and addition to, a future study (design). SENSATIONAL AND HUMANITARIAN NEWS AND COMMENTS 3
With tabloidization Sparks (2000), in a much-cited definition, specifically refers to ‘serious media’ starting to adopt tabloid news values, and these tabloidization elements are
“sensationalism, triviality, malice and plain, simple credulity (p. 1).He further characterizes the tabloid as follows:
“[the tabloid] devotes relatively little attention to politics, economics, and society and
relatively much to diversions like sports, scandal and much popular entertainment; it
devotes relatively much attention to the personal and private lives of people, both
celebrities and ordinary people, and relatively little to political processes, economic
developments and social changes” (p. 10).
One may read this definition as a valenced judgment, describing the tabloid as providing distractions from topics which are implicitly presented as more important to public life.
Tabloidization is as such seen as a negative phenomenon, a “crisis for democracy”, by elites and as constituting ‘bad journalism’ versus the ‘good journalism’ of the quality or broadsheet newspaper (Sparks, 2000, p. 10).
Yet some scholars underline that the distinction between quality and tabloid or popular newspapers is, in fact, not as clear-cut or defined, which suggests a more nuanced view might be in order. Winch (1997), for example, states that these ‘boundaries’ are “contextually contingent, local, and episodic, with the potential to become stable and widespread” (p. 10).
This means that a tabloid may not by definition be a tabloid, and vice versa. Furthermore, they also recognize the positive role that the tabloid may play. For example, Sparks (2000) also describes the tabloid as being “a vital source from which the people can generate their own meanings and thus empower themselves at the expense of the ‘power bloc’” (p. 25).
At the moment, regardless of the Western nation that the news media belong to, these new news values seem to have been adopted throughout the Western world and they appear to affect all news topics, but especially those that report on serious matters, such as pandemics SENSATIONAL AND HUMANITARIAN NEWS AND COMMENTS 4
(e.g. Vasterman & Ruigrok, 2013). Thusly, due to the rise of tabloidization, it is expected that serious matters are increasingly discussed and presented in trivial ways. Based on this assumption, an issue elaboration scale is introduced in the analysis of the sensationalism practiced by the NRC and the Telegraaf, the NRC being conventionally identified as a quality newspaper and the Telegraaf as a popular newspaper (see, f.i., De Haan 2011 and Schafraad,
Wester & Scheepers, 2013) 2.
While these newspaper labels are used for ensuring that two very different newspapers make up the sample, they should not be seen as definitional. As Meijer (2012) argues, quality journalism may not actually be quality journalism, for there is a discrepancy between how quality journalism is regarded and experienced and as such, the common-held view of ‘quality journalism’ may be flawed. Instead, the quality of quality journalism should be measured in terms of whether it meets what the audience values, which is “participation in the journalistic process” (Meijer, 2012, p. 766). One way in which the readers can participate is by posting comments on sites and web pages dedicated or run by the newspaper.
Human interest framing versus humanitarian framing
The news values of the tabloid – which as argued by scholars are on the rise – are linked to the human interest frame. Semetko and Valkenburg (2000), for instance, specifically note that especially those news outlets that feature sensationalist traits use human interest frames and Reinemann et al. (2011) is just one study in which the use of human interest frames is specifically linked to the rise of this new journalism that creates ‘soft news’. The human interest frame introduces a ‘human face’ into the article and it brings “an emotional
2 The author of this thesis conducted a small-scale content analysis on the reporting of the MH17 crash in these two newspapers, a year ago, focusing on the extent to which sensationalism was present. This study confirmed that the Telegraaf does contain more human interest framing in relation to some of the indicators of the conflict frame. This study not only provided inspiration for opposing the Telegraaf and NRC as newspapers in relation to sensationalism but it also showed that not all of the indicators of even the most adopted and accepted frames always apply to news items. Some cases may require different frames or different indicators. SENSATIONAL AND HUMANITARIAN NEWS AND COMMENTS 5 angle to the presentation of an event, issue or problem” (Semetko & Valkenburg, 2000, p. 95-
96). Semetko and Valkenburg (2000) also note that this frame is used for grabbing attention and they provide five indicators for measuring the extent to which news features human interest framing. The indicators that make up this frame can be found in the appendix.
Contrary to the human interest frame, the humanitarian frame – which also addresses how people are affected – has not been as widely adopted and applied. The humanitarian frame as presented by Druckman (2001) concerns text with a focus on “how increased assistance would ensure help for people who need it”3 (p. 1047). In turn, Mintz and Redd
(2003) in their paper about the use of framing in international relations describe an utterance by George W. Bush that contains references to the suffering of children in Afghanistan, a call for help and a reference to a humanitarian agency an instance in which a humanitarian frame is used (see appendix for this example).
These instances show that a humanitarian frame should at least contain a reference to development assistance and people in need. Since, to the best of the author’s current knowledge, there is not an existing thoroughly tried and tested indicator-based humanitarian frame and scale to date, a new humanitarian (effort) frame with a number of indicators is formulated and tested in this study. This frame includes the aforementioned necessary references and is further based on the well-accepted and widely adopted principles of humanitarian efforts by the International Federation of Red Cross/Red Crescent and other
NGO’s, as developed through practice. These principles, given by Spielberg and Adams
(2011) on pages 4 and 5, are listed in table 1.
3 Druckman (2001)’s example of a text using the humanitarian frame is: “In the next few weeks, the US Congress will likely accept one of two proposals that will alter the amount of federal assistance to the poor. One proposal is to increase assistance while the other is to decrease assistance. An increase in assistance to the poor would ensure help for many people who need it. A decrease in assistance would prevent people from receiving basic support. Do you think Congress should increase or decrease assistance to the poor?” (p. 1062) SENSATIONAL AND HUMANITARIAN NEWS AND COMMENTS 6
Table 1: The humanitarian principles as used and drafted by the Red Cross and other NGO’s 1 Agencies and individuals should operate with respect to culture and custom 2 Humanitarian response should use local resources and capacities as much as possible 3 The beneficiaries should be encouraged to participate in the humanitarian activity 4 Emergency response should strive to reduce future vulnerabilities 5 Agencies should be accountable to both donors and beneficiaries 6 Agencies should portray victims as dignified human beings, not hopeless objects of external assistance
The relevance of a humanitarian frame to European immigration issues is evident in Helbling
(2014), who also finds that references to morality are at the core of this frame, for which indicators will be added in this study. Since both frames concern how parties are affected by an event, but one in a superficial and another more in-depth, it is suspected that these news frames may be confused by the news audience, but also by scholars.
Ardèvol-abreu (2015), for example, addressing the coverage of humanitarian crises in
Africa, explains that the presence of humanitarian news in the media is due to the fact that journalism seeks to entertain. This raises the question to what extent humanitarian news and the humanitarian frame, in contrast to the human interest frame, overlap and it asks for theoretical specificity4. Nickels (2007), in turn, introduces a ‘human dignity’ frame in his study of ‘asylum discourse’, one that concerns images of suffering but also references to human rights and he thereby obscures the distinction between the human interest and humanitarian representations as defined in this study.
A way to distinguish between these two frames is by focusing on their different uses.
Snow and Benford (1988) have introduced three distinct purposes or ‘tasks’ that frames have, namely the ‘diagnostic’, to address the problem and who is responsible, the ‘prognostic’, to focus on a solution and the party that should provide it, and the ‘motivational’, to urge an audience to act. Whereas the humanitarian frame, as defined here, could be regarded to have
4 Because of this reason indicators which could create an overlap between the two frames were either adapted or removed, giving rise to a ‘core’ or stricter humanitarian frame. See the method section for an example of a removed indicator. SENSATIONAL AND HUMANITARIAN NEWS AND COMMENTS 7 one or multiple of these uses, the human interest frame is not likely to go beyond the diagnostic. In other words, it will only refer to the problem and maybe attribute responsibility.
As such, taking the traditional view of quality journalism as reporting issues as being of public concern, the humanitarian frame does indeed belong to the serious news media. This is also the case in Meijer’s (2001) alternative view of quality journalism, who sees ‘quality’ journalism as “instilling a sense of social cohesion”, as “expressing a sense of citizenship”, as
‘contributing’ to the ‘empowerment of citizens by calling them to action, and this “by establishing a basis for dialogue and collaboration rather than creation [of] a sense of confusion or rivalry” (p. 201). It also fits her later view of journalistic participation by the audience as the basis of quality journalism (Meijer, 2012).
Newspapers and audience interaction on social networking sites
Concerning audience participation, newspapers, whether local, regional or national, are increasingly turning towards social networks for getting into contact with users and readers, whether actual or potential (Ju, Jeong & Chyi, 2014). In theory this may lead to newspapers adopting a more personal stance and increase newspaper-user interaction, not least through likes, shares and comments (e.g. Guirado Zamora, 2012).
However, studies suggest that, also in the Dutch case, this move does not necessarily go hand in hand with increased engagement. For example, regarding the use of Facebook by
Dutch news media, Hille and Bakker (2013) have found that Facebook users ‘distribute’ news through liking and sharing rather than interacting with it. Others have concluded that the provision of likes seems to be the most common form of engagement between the refugee
(related) post-embedded articles of the newspapers on their pages and Facebook users, at least in Sweden and Spain (Guirado Zamora, 2012; Larsson, 20161). Unfortunately, although human interest articles receive likes the most frequently, these likes are, according to Larsson SENSATIONAL AND HUMANITARIAN NEWS AND COMMENTS 8
(2016)1, reactions of a passive audience that consumes the news rather than interacts with it.
This suggestion is supported by Ju, Jeong and Chyi (2014), who have found that there is only a moderate correlation between the amount of ‘likes’ to post-embedded news articles and actual site visits. They note that for popular and quality newspapers only a few readers access the news web site via Facebook compared to visitors from “other content sites” (p. 11).
Yet, when Facebook users do respond to the articles with written comments, the comments may be of a better quality than those posted on the news sites, in terms of not requiring moderation. For example, Hille and Bakker (2014), who like Larsson (20162) study the link between human interest news articles shared on Facebook by the newspapers themselves and the comments to them, conclude that there are less but higher quality comments on Facebook to the news articles of Dutch newspapers than on the newspapers’ own news sites, likely due to the anonymity that the latter provides.
This impact of anonymity on the content of comments to news articles is, amongst others, also pointed out by Reader (2012), Rowe (2013) and Santana (2014). Whereas Reader
(2012) argues that the quality of news site comments is higher if anonymity is not allowed and Rowe (2013) states that Facebook comments reflect greater civility due to the lack of anonymity, Santana (2014), who studied anonymous comments on comment boards to immigration news, believes that online comments generally feature incivility.
This incivility can be removed by the newspapers that still perform a gatekeeping function as they have the power to moderate the comments that are being posted (Hermida &
Thurman, 2008). One may expect that those comments that fit the newspaper’s stance are most likely to be kept. After all, in their study on the framing of immigration and integration
Roggebrand and Vliegenthart (2007) have found that the media are selective and support those voices that fit ‘hegemonic’ frames. Thusly newspaper-user interaction and the content of the comments available are moderated by the newspapers themselves. SENSATIONAL AND HUMANITARIAN NEWS AND COMMENTS 9
Framing effects, emotional neutrality and emotion
If the authors of these comments, the commenters, have read and respond to a news article with a particular frame, the content of their comments is thought to be affected, for frames can cause changes in understanding and perception (Entman, 1993; Gitlin, 1980;
Iyengar, 1987; Neuman et al., 1992), and comments reflect opinions and attitudes. Emotions play a role in sensational, humanitarian content and in light of framing effects.
First, the use of emotions in relation to sensationalism again concerns the quality of journalism, as the deviation of a newspaper article from emotional neutrality has been regarded as characterizing less-than-quality news (Bird, 2009), which is about distracting readers with the trivial, with scandals and other, tabloid news values mentioned earlier. It is also related to the human interest frame, which concerns news reports that grab attention not least by having an ‘emotional angle’ (Semetko & Valkenburg, 2000).
Second, concerning humanitarian news and emotions, Tester (2001) focuses on TV news when referring to compassion fatigue as it occurs in response to the overexposure to negative, humanitarian occurrences and how it affects viewers, stating that “compassion fatigue is becoming so used to the spectacle of dreadful events, misery or suffering that we stop noticing them. We are bored […] and we are left unmoved” (p. 13). Those static images in the newspaper articles to be analyzed in this study could have a similar effect.
Third, regarding framing effects, recent studies acknowledge the role of emotions in the reception of news frames. For example, Lecheler, Schuck & De Vreese (2013) indicate that news frame effects are mediated by a number of positive and negative emotions, such as enthusiasm and anger and state that “exposure to news frames that bear emotional relevance will invoke emotional reactions” (p. 202). This is also observed in Iguarta, Moral-Toranzo and Fernández (2011) and Lecheler, Bos and Vliegenthart (2015). These studies conclude that emotions play a role in the reception of a number of immigration related news frames. SENSATIONAL AND HUMANITARIAN NEWS AND COMMENTS 10
Based on these findings one can imagine the level of emotional neutrality vs. emotionality of a news article to play a role in how – and to what extent – the refugee related news message is received. Thusly, an emotional neutrality – emotionality scale, based on the application of an algorithm-based-sentiment analysis, is adopted in this study for measuring the extent to which the news article and comment content is emotional. It is expected that traces of the emotionality of the news article will be present in the user comments to the
Facebook post-embedded newspaper articles, although there will surely be discrepancies between the article and comment content. After all, Druckman (2001), for example, notes that the effects of news frames are mitigated by source credibility. Therefore the trust of a commenter in the news source could affect the extent to which the emotionality overlaps.
Hypotheses
Based on the insights gathered from this literature review it is expected that the quality newspaper focuses less on the trivial and on emotions and more on the substance of issues with emotional neutrality, in contrast to the popular newspaper. Following these expectations, a number of hypotheses have been formulated. The first set of hypotheses concerns the sensationalist content of the news articles of the newspapers and is based on the popular vs. quality newspaper distinction.
H1: A quality newspaper (NRC) features more issue elaboration than a popular newspaper (Telegraaf) H2: A quality newspaper (NRC) employs less human interest framing than a popular newspaper (Telegraaf) H3: A quality newspaper (NRC) employs more humanitarian framing than a popular newspaper (Telegraaf) H4: A quality newspaper (NRC) features more emotionally neutral articles than a popular newspaper (Telegraaf)
SENSATIONAL AND HUMANITARIAN NEWS AND COMMENTS 11
Next, to investigate in a rather exploratory fashion whether one can speak of interaction between the journalist and the commentators five more hypotheses will be tested. First, it will be asked whether the between-newspaper differences of the scale and frame values are reflected in the comments:
H5: The differences in the framing and scale values found between the two newspapers will be reflected in the comments to their articles
After gaining this preliminary insight into how the articles and comments may relate, the correlations between the content of the articles and comments will be computed, to establish to what extent there are commonalities between the content of the news articles and the comments to them:
H6: The presence of markers of issue elaboration in the comments is affected by the presence of markers of issue elaboration in the news articles. H7: The presence of human interest framing in the comments is affected by the presence of human interest framing in the news articles. H8: The presence of humanitarian framing in the comments is affected by the presence of humanitarian framing in the news articles. H9: The level of emotionality of the comment text is affected by the level of emotionality of the newspaper articles.
Method Pilot Study
In February and March, 2016, a pilot study was carried out to investigate whether humanitarian and human interest frames are actually featured in the Facebook post-embedded news articles by Dutch news providers. Only some news outlets posted about refugee related issues frequently and while the NOS, the Dutch national public service broadcaster, was initially taken as one of the news providers for this study, the digital news articles of its commercial counterparts posted about refugee (crisis) related issues very infrequently. The SENSATIONAL AND HUMANITARIAN NEWS AND COMMENTS 12 online newspaper was subsequently chosen as the medium of interest. The online news article selection criteria originally derived from the analysis of 20 purposively sampled Facebook post-embedded NOS news articles were adapted to the online newspaper medium. See the appendix for an overview of these selection criteria.
Out of the Dutch newspapers with a Facebook platform, the NRC is the quality newspaper that posts refugee related news articles the most often and the Telegraaf is the popular newspaper that meets this criterion. These newspapers are also conventionally used for studying the differences between quality and popular newspapers (e.g. Schafraad, Wester
& Scheepers, 2013), which means that there are established expectations regarding their news content. After selecting these newspapers the news article selection criteria were updated to take into account medium-specific, content and formatting differences5.
Sample, data collection and codebook construction
The Facebook post-embedded online news articles of the Telegraaf and NRC, posted between January 1st 2015 and April 22nd, 2016 by these newspapers on their own Facebook pages, were sampled. The titles of these Facebook posts were accessed via the Facebook graph API. If the titles contained one of the keywords6 the news article content was examined.
The remaining articles were numbered chronologically and from this sampling frame of 544 articles, 150 articles per newspaper were chosen by number generator assisted random selection. Out of these, 57 were coded for the NRC and 52 for the Telegraaf7 (N = 109) as
5 Three NRC articles and three Telegraaf articles were examined to create these updated scale indicators. These six articles were later subjected to the content analysis and included in the final sample. 6 See appendix for these keywords. In cases where the title was ambiguous – which happened to be quite frequently, the social media posts were accessed and the articles were skimmed for the presence of keywords in the body of the article. For further information about this selection process, see the appendix. 7 Two extra NRC articles were added to ensure that the amount of articles with comments in the sample was exactly the same. Out of the 57 articles of the NRC 52 have comments and for the Telegraaf 52 articles with comments were coded respectively. Coding these news articles including the top 100 comments to them took about 40 minutes on average and thusly the coder spent almost the entire month of May on coding the sample. SENSATIONAL AND HUMANITARIAN NEWS AND COMMENTS 13 well as the top 100 comments to each of these articles (N = 5792)8. See table 2 in the appendix for more sample information. Meanwhile, the codebook used for the content analysis of this study was subjected to several revisions, based on the pilot study and feedback from the thesis supervisor, fellow students and news readers. It was also continuously updated with examples and exceptions to ensure that the coding remained consistent.
Measures and Operationalization
The codebook has two main sections: one for analyzing the online newspaper article content and the other for analyzing the top 100 comments to the article. At the beginning the coder is asked to confirm that the article meets the selection criteria, to ensure its relevance to the study. Thereafter, the coder is presented with a number of basic categorization variables, which consist of the date, the newspaper (Telegraaf or NRC), the article ID, the type of news article and the identification of the issue (theme)9. The newspaper variable makes it possible to compare the results between the two newspapers, without necessarily splitting the dataset10.
Following these basic categorization variables the theory and pilot study based scale variables for measuring issue elaboration, human interest framing and humanitarian framing are introduced. Their application descriptions can be found in the codebook in the appendix.
The first set of these variables consists of the following issue elaboration indicators: quantitative problem definition, qualitative problem definition, causes of the issue/crisis, past
8 Some Telegraaf articles received more than 2000 Facebook comments. It was impossible to code all of these. Instead, only the top 100 comments would be coded, because 1) these reflect the most liked comments and 2) tis is the order in which comments are retrieved through the Facebook graph API. Since this study includes a sentiment analysis of the comments, the text of which needs to be accessed through the API, it is important that the first 100 comments are (more or less) the same on Facebook and in the comment list that the API tool returns. Readable comments are those comments with textual content. These can be read by the algorithm. 9 The difference in the amount of likes that the NRC and Telegraaf Facebook pages have received and the extent of interaction on their pages is probable to affect the amount of likes, the amount of comments and the content of the comments that the posts that embed the articles receive. On June 20th, the NRC had 121.456 fans (users who like the page) and the Telegraaf had 308.871 fans. The amount of comments the articles in the sample have received are given in the appendix and this information – about the likes and comments – has not been taken into account for this study, but these factors could be interesting and worthwhile to investigate in future research. 10 While in reality this distinction between newspapers is also made to distinguish between the popular and quality newspaper, one should not assume that the newspapers necessarily reflect these expected labels. As a result, this distinguishing variable simply denotes the newspaper from which the articles are being coded. SENSATIONAL AND HUMANITARIAN NEWS AND COMMENTS 14 development of the issue/crisis, mention of consequences, local or international impact of the issue, mention of (alleviating) plan/treatment, mention of solution for the issue/crisis, attribution/mention of responsibility for an issue and attribution/mention of responsibility to act. If present, these elements are added up to each other (present = +1, dominant = +2) and the final number expresses how elaborate the refugee (crisis) related crisis is described in the news article. This scale is identical for the newspaper articles and the comments.
The second set of the variables measure human interest framing and it is preceded by a control question, which inquires whether there is the mention of an individual, party or parties involved in a refugee (crisis) related crisis, development or issue. If so, to measure the prominence of the human interest frame, these indicators were coded for their absence, presence and dominance: a human example signifying the (refugee (crisis) related) issue, a mention of how a party or parties are affected by the issue, expressions of feelings of dislike and objection with regards to the issue, expressions of feelings of compassion, sympathy and liking with regards to the issue, and human interest (audio-)visuals. These visuals are images of: a disaster site, refugees as the affected party/individual, visible emotions, injured or dead parties/individuals, and a protest. For every such visual present, one point is added. If present, these elements are summed (present = +1, dominant = +2) and the final number expresses the extent to which human interest framing is present in the article or comments. Some indicators are based on Semetko and Valkenburg (2000)’s human interest frame (see appendix), and the article and comment scales are not identical, for comment visuals were not taken into account.
Considering the nature of the case study, which taps into a refugee crisis, and the human interest and humanitarian frame comparison, two extra human interest indicators were added: ‘emergency rhetoric’ and ‘scandalization’. These were likewise coded for their absence, presence (= +1) and dominance (= +2) and whereas emergency rhetoric refers to the SENSATIONAL AND HUMANITARIAN NEWS AND COMMENTS 15 presentation of an issue as one of urgency, scandalization provides the explicit portrayal of a situation or issue as being scandalous or outrageous.
The third set of variables consists of humanitarian frame indicators and concern humanitarian references, humanitarian calls or humanitarian rhetoric. These references and calls are: reference to/call for solidarity or empathy, reference to/call for respecting culture and custom, reference to/call for the use of local resources and capacities for solving a refugee
(crisis) related issue and a reference to a humanitarian agency/agent. These indicators, largely based on the Red Cross Code, were tested for relevance in the pilot study, coded for presence
(= +1)11 and summed to indicate the level of humanitarian framing present. While some studies include victimization as a humanitarian frame indicator (e.g. Watson, 2009), this indicator is excluded because it relates to the human interest frame12. Instead, recognizing the prominence of morality as an indicator of the humanitarian frame in Helbling (2014) and its expected inherent link to calls for assistance, two humanitarian rhetoric indicators were added: reference to morality and reference to immorality. Collectively the humanitarian frame indicators are identically applied to the analysis of the newspaper articles and the comments.
Finally, the emotional neutrality - emotionality of the articles and comments is measured using sentiment analysis, a computational method for analyzing big data that concerns the use of dictionaries for establishing to extent to which text features positive and negative emotions (Mostafa, 2013). More specifically, the SentiStrength algorithm as provided for Dutch text is employed, which returns two values, one for the presence of positive sentiment (1 to 5 scale), and the other for the presence of negative sentiment (-1 to -5 scale). The highest absolute value (5) indicates that there is a very strong positive or negative sentiment present. In other words, it represents an extreme level of positive emotionality (5)
11 The pilot study results indicated that it was unlikely that the humanitarian frame would be as present as the human interest frame and therefore only the presence (and not the dominance) of these indicators was coded. 12 The human interest frame already includes an indicator for coding references to how people are affected, which is close in interpretation to victimization. For the sake of theoretical differentiation this indicator was not included for the humanitarian frame. SENSATIONAL AND HUMANITARIAN NEWS AND COMMENTS 16 or negative emotionality (-5). A value that lies close to 0 indicates emotional neutrality. The emotional neutrality – emotionality scale is created by adding the absolute positive and negative values and by subtracting 1, which gives rise to a 9-point scale. See the appendix for a description of how the article and comment text was preprocessed for the analysis.
Intercoder Reliability
To check the reliability of the variables and indicators, a second coder was asked to code 30 articles from the final sample. This second coder, a social science research MSc alumna, with the immigration specialization, was given the opportunity to ask questions after reading the codebook and before she started with the coding13. To assess inter-coder reliability Krippendorff’s alpha was used. This test, conducted in SPSS with a macro, only consisted of the 36 items used for coding the content of the newspaper articles. Those variables that received an insufficient reliability are marked grey in table 2 and were removed from the applicable scales. The reference to respecting culture and custom indicator could not be measured for the newspaper articles because it did not occur in the sample, but was kept in for determining the level of humanitarian framing in the comments.
Table 2: The Krippendorff alpha values of the items tested Basic categorization items Α Control: Embedded article by news outlet about refugees 1 Newspaper: Telegraaf or NRC 1 Type of embedded article 0.54114 Presence of issue statement 1 Sensationalist items (& scales) Α Non-sensationalist items (& scales) Α Human Interest Frame Issue Elaboration Control: Involved parties 0.548 Quantitative problem definition 0.534 Human example 0.541 Qualitative problem definition 0.368 How affected 0.167 Causes of the issue/crisis 0.528 Expression of dislike present 0.590 Past development of the issue/crisis 0.567 Expression of like present 0.563 Mention of consequences 0.666 Disaster visual 0.35615 Impact 0.356
13 Coding the articles took this coder approx.11 hours in total, spread over four days. Each article took 20-30 minutes to code. The comments were not coded for the reliability test. As she did not code the comments to the newspaper articles, it took her less time to code these thirty articles than the primary coder of this study. 14 This variable is kept in because it is expected that this variable scores low due to the rarity of certain values. 14 Binary variable with very few cases in which a disaster visual is present, expected to be low. SENSATIONAL AND HUMANITARIAN NEWS AND COMMENTS 17
Affected party visual 0.515 Mention of plan/treatment 0.647 Visible emotion visual 0.35616 Mention of solution 0.505 Injured or dead party/indiv. Visual 1 Attribution of responsibility to act 0.660 Protest visual 0.841 Attrib. of responsibility for issue 0.682 Scandalization 0.636 Humanitarian Frame Emergency rhetoric 0.517 Reference to morality 0.614 Reference to immorality 0.527 Reference to solidarity or empathy 0.764 Ref. to respecting culture and custom 0.636 Ref. to use of local resources & capacities 0.605 Ref. to a humanitarian agency/agent 0.710 Call for solidarity or empathy 0.786 Call to respect culture and custom - Call to use local resources & capacities 0.655
Data Analysis
To answer the research questions and to test the hypotheses, statistical tests were performed and, as mentioned, a sentiment analysis was conducted. The statistical tests, which were preceded by normality tests, when applicable17, concerned a multitude of independent samples t-tests with bootstrapping, simple and multiple (logistic) linear regressions and correlational analyses including Pearson’s r, Spearman’s rho and Fischer’s exact test. For the sentiment analysis a program was written in python and run in a virtual machine.18
Results
The extent of the framing and emotional neutrality in the articles, by newspaper
The first set of hypotheses, formulated to answer the first research question, concerns the degree of issue elaboration, human interest framing, humanitarian framing and emotional neutrality in the newspaper articles. It is hypothesized that the NRC, as the quality newspaper, employs more issue elaboration, less human interest framing, more humanitarian framing and greater emotional neutrality than the Telegraaf, the popular newspaper. To test these
17 See appendix for kurtosis and skew values. The emotionality and humanitarian framing of the NRC comments may be non-normally distributed. It is expected that these values are due to the consistently lower amount of NRC comments in general and in the sample (to be discussed), creating less opportunity for the presence of frame elements and emotionality and thereby causing scale values to center around 0 and exceptions to be more prominent. The skew and kurtosis underline that some NRC comment content results are especially tentative. 18 See appendix for a link to the script. If unavailable, contact the author at [email protected]. SENSATIONAL AND HUMANITARIAN NEWS AND COMMENTS 18
hypotheses, independent samples t-tests were computed. An overview of the results of these
independent samples t-tests can be found in table 3.
Table 3: The framing and sentiment (values) compared by newspaper Newspaper 95% CI for Mean NRC Telegraaf Difference M SE n M SE N T df Issue elaboration 4.82 0.29 57 2.90 0.25 52 -2.70 -1.13 -4.98** 106 Human interest fr 1.75 0.18 56 1.11 0.13 46 -1.08 -0.21 -2.92** 97 Humanitarian fr 1.54 0.19 57 1.00 0.15 52 -1.02 -0.07 -2.27* 102 Emot. neutrality 4.95 0.16 57 3.62 0.19 52 -1.78 -0.85 -5.33** 106 – emotionality * p < 0.05, ** p < 0.01
First, the differences between the scores of the two newspapers on the issue elaboration scale
were compared. This is an 8 point scale with the qualitative-problem-definition and impact
indicators removed, as the inter-coder reliability test indicated that these may be too
dependent on interpretation. On average, the news articles of the NRC feature greater issue
elaboration than the news articles of the Telegraaf (p < 0.01). Thus, there is a difference in the
extent to which an article features issue elaboration, based on the newspaper and the null
hypothesis that there is no difference between the groups can be rejected. Hypothesis 1 that
the quality newspaper features greater issue elaboration can be confirmed.
Second, concerning the human interest frame, the indicators that received low
Krippendorff Alpha values (see table 2) were removed, creating an 8 point scale. As can be
read from the table, on average the news articles of the NRC feature more human interest
framing, than the news articles of the Telegraaf (p < 0.01). It can thus be said that the
newspaper that the article belongs to does affect the extent of human interest framing. The
null hypothesis that there is no difference between the groups can be rejected. Hypothesis 2
that states that the NRC employs less human framing has to be rejected. In fact, the opposite
is true: the NRC features more human interest framing. SENSATIONAL AND HUMANITARIAN NEWS AND COMMENTS 19
Third, regarding the humanitarian frame19, measured on a 9 point scale, the news articles of the NRC feature more humanitarian framing than those of the Telegraaf (p < 0.05).
Thus, the newspaper that a news article belongs to affects the extent of humanitarian framing used. The null hypothesis that there is no difference between the groups can be rejected and hypothesis 3 that the quality newspaper employs more humanitarian framing is confirmed.
Fourth, the differences between the scores of the two newspapers on the emotional neutrality - emotionality 9 point scale were calculated. The results of these tests indicate that the newspapers significantly differ on this variable. On average, the news articles of the NRC feature greater emotionality than the news articles of the Telegraaf and the null hypotheses that there are no differences between the groups can therefore be rejected. However, hypothesis 4 that the NRC is more neutral and therefore features more emotional neutrality is rejected. In fact, the opposite is true: the articles of the Telegraaf are more neutral than those of the NRC.
Predictors of the articles’ framing and emotional neutrality/emotionality
These independent samples t-tests were followed by the computation of a number of multiple linear regressions to determine the main predictor of the scores on these scales.
While the interaction between the news article and newspaper variables could be tested due to collinearity issues20, the following model comparisons argue in favor of the news article type being the primary predictor. As it turns out, rather than the newspaper, it is often the type of news article – whether it is a regular news article or a different kind of news article, such as a background report or an interview – and the article length that affect the framing and scale scores. The newspaper only plays a role as a predictor for the extent of issue elaboration. In
19 For the humanitarian framing scale, no indicators were removed on the basis of the Krippendorff alpha values. 20 Due to this low amount of non-regular news articles in the Telegraaf it was not possible to calculate the extent of the interaction between the news article and the newspaper by means of inserting the interaction effect in a multiple linear regression (the interaction was not shown due to collinearity. SENSATIONAL AND HUMANITARIAN NEWS AND COMMENTS 20 the appendix a table can be found which contains an overview of the multiple regression results for the performance of the newspaper, news article and the rescaled article length21 as predictors of the values on the four scales: the human interest frame, the humanitarian frame, the issue elaboration scale and the emotional neutrality – emotionality scale. Below the best fitting simple and multiple predictor models derived from these multiple regressions have been included, in table 4.
Table 4: Best fitting models with news article, newspaper and rescaled article length as the predictors of the frame and scale values Scale/Frame B SE b b* Sig. Adj. R2 Issue elaboration Constant 1.63 0.60 Newspaper 0.15 0.04 0.39 0.000* Article length 0.97 0.43 0.22 0.028* 0.28 F (2,106) = 22.16, p < 0.001 Human interest frame Constant 2.33 0.19 News article -1.24 0.23 -0.48 0.000*** 0.22 F( 1,100) = 29.70, p < 0.001 Humanitarian frame Constant 0.73 0.15 Article length 0.10 0.02 0.47 0.000*** 0.21 F( 1,107) = 30.00, p < 0.001 Emotional neutrality – emotionality scale Constant 4.77 0.33 News article -1.28 0.31 -0.39 0.000*** Article length 0.09 0.02 0.35 0.000*** 0.43 F( 2,106) = 43.06, p < 0.001 * p < 0.05, *** p < 0.001
For the human interest frame values the news article is the primary predictor. The type of news article – regular or non-regular – predicts 22% of the variance in human interest framing. Next, concerning the humanitarian frame values, article length is the primary predictor. Whereas the variance in the humanitarian frame values is for 21% explained by article length, the issue elaboration values are significantly predicted by the newspaper and
21 The original article length variable where 800 words gave a value of 800 and 1400 words a value of 1400 has been divided by 100 to make sure that the coefficient values of the article length-variable are on a similar scale as the others. SENSATIONAL AND HUMANITARIAN NEWS AND COMMENTS 21
article length variables, which together predict 28% of the variance. Lastly, concerning the
emotional neutrality – emotionality of the news articles, the variance in these values is
predicted for 43% by the type of news article and the article length.
From these results it becomes clear that, with the exception of the issue elaboration
values, rather than the newspaper the type and length of the news article predict the values
received on the framing and emotionality scales featured in this study.
The between newspaper differences for scale and frame values of the comments
The second set of hypotheses, formulated to answer the second research question,
concerns the relationship between the content of the newspaper articles and the content of the
comments posted in response to them. First, hypothesis 5 states that the news article content
and comment content similarly differ between newspapers. In other words, it is expected that
the comments to the NRC articles will also feature more human interest framing,
humanitarian framing, issue elaboration and emotionality than the comments to the Telegraaf
articles. To test this hypothesis a number of independent samples t-tests were computed and
the results are found in table 5.22
Table 5: The framing and sentiment (values) of the comments by newspaper Newspaper 95% CI for Mean NRC Telegraaf Difference M SE n M SE N T df Issue elaboration 2.00 0.24 52 4.46 0.24 52 1.78 3.14 7.21*** 102 Human interest fr 1.52 0.15 52 3.56 0.14 52 1.64 2.44 10.11*** 102 Humanitarian fr 0.73 0.14 52 3.88 0.24 52 2.59 3.72 11.11*** 82 Emot. neutrality – 2.15 0.09 52 2.37 0.06 52 0.01 0.44 2.08* 86 emotionality * p < 0.05, *** p < 0.001
22 To answer this research question and the ensuing hypotheses the 5 newspaper articles of the NRC that do not include any comments were removed from the sample as well as the ‘comment’ versions of the article content indicators that received low Krippendorff alpha values. Here it has to be pointed out that there is a slight difference between the indicators of the human interest scales: the human interest framing scale of the news article content contains visual indicators and the comment scale does not and the humanitarian scale for the comments has more indicators with specific foci. These differences between the comment and article content scales are based on practicality and the (non)-occurrence of certain aspects. SENSATIONAL AND HUMANITARIAN NEWS AND COMMENTS 22
From table 6 it can be read that the comments to the Telegraaf feature more human interest framing, more humanitarian framing, greater issue elaboration (p < 0.001) and greater emotionality (p < 0.05). Each of these findings is the opposite of what would be expected if there is a relationship between the content of the articles and the content of the comments to them. These results therefore go against hypothesis 5: while there are significant between- newspaper differences on these scales, the NRC article comments feature in fact less issue elaboration, less human interest framing, less humanitarian framing and less emotionality.
Content correlations between the articles and the comments
For each newspaper separately a Pearson product-moment correlation coefficient was computed to assess the relationship between the frame and emotionality values of the newspaper articles and the frame and emotionality values of the comments, as tested in hypotheses 6 to 9. Those variables which were previously removed for being too dependent on interpretation, such as the impact, ‘how-affected’ and qualitative-problem-definition variables/indicators, are not included in these correlational tests and results.
Furthermore, due to the relative infrequency of the dominant presence of a number of remaining frame elements the indicators were recoded from ordinal into dichotomous, binary indicators for denoting the presence or absence of a certain element. Because of the fact that the phi coefficient is the same as the Pearson correlation for dichotomous, binary variables, the Pearson correlation coefficients were computed for determining whether there is a relationship between the content of the newspaper articles and the comments on the basis of the presence and absence of these indicators. These results can be found in the appendix.
When an element does not occur for one of the newspapers either in the articles or comments, then no statistics have been computed and there are no results in the table.
Following the results, there are three elements or indicators whose occurrence in the newspaper articles and in the comments seems to be related. These are the reference to SENSATIONAL AND HUMANITARIAN NEWS AND COMMENTS 23 respecting-culture-and-custom and reference-to-using-local-resources in the Telegraaf and the
Telegraaf comments and the mention of a solution in the NRC and the NRC comments.
Before adopting these correlations as a fact, however, Fischer’s exact test needs to be employed, since this test is more rigid and takes into account the possibility of a correlation when cells in a factorial design brought about by correlating two dichotomous or binary variables contain less than 5 cases. These results can be found in table 6.
Table 6: The Fischer exact test results of the three aforementioned item pairs Item pair Fischer’s exact tests’s p-value Reference to respecting culture and custom, Telegraaf 0.079 Reference to the use of local resources, Telegraaf 0.021* Mention of a solution, NRC 1.00023 * p < 0.05
These results indicate that there is only a correlation between a reference to the use of local resources in the news articles and in the comments to these news articles in the Telegraaf. The
Pearson correlation coefficient for this indicator pair is 0.35, indicating a medium effect.24
This one element or indicator was subsequently subjected to Pearson correlational analyses to find out whether there are any independent variables that, in the case of the
Telegraaf, are significantly correlated with it. It is found that for the independent variable of the reference to the use of local resources, two of the other scale variables significantly correlate. These variables are the reference to a humanitarian agency in the news article (r =
0.29, p = 0.04) and the reference to respecting culture and custom in the news article (r =
0.31, p = 0.03). These variables were added as predictors to the simple binary logistic regression model of the reference-to-use-of-local-resources indicator pair, of which the results are reported in table 7.
23 This result is due to the fact that there is no NRC article in which such a reference to a solution is present. 24 This effect size is based on 0.3 as the threshold for a medium effect, as determined by Cohen (1992). SENSATIONAL AND HUMANITARIAN NEWS AND COMMENTS 24
Table 7: The binary logistic regression results of the reference to local resources pair 25 B SE b 95% CI for Odds Ratio Included Lower Odds Upper Constant -1.72 1.91 [-3.33, -0.89] Reference to use of local 1.62* 2.09 1.36 5.04 18.68 resources in the articles [0.30, 3.19] Note. R2 = .11 (Cox & Snell) .16 (Nagelkerke). Model X2 = 6.22, p = 0.013, * p < 0.05
These results of the simply binary logistic regression indicate that the odds of there being a reference to the use of local resources in the comments is 5.04 times greater when such a reference is present in the articles than when such a reference is absent. Adding the aforementioned significantly correlated indicators to the model does not lead to any model improvement: the model chi-square improvements are non-significant when adding these predictors and interactions (see table 826).
Table 8: The Multiple Binary Logistic Linear Regression Models tested Model 1: Reference to the use of local resources Model 2: Ref.to the use of local resources + Ref. to a humanitarian agency Model 3: Ref. to the use of local resources + Ref. to a humanitarian agency + interaction Model 2, X2 (1) = 0.09, p = 0.76 Model 3, X2 (1) = 1.02, p = 0.31 Model 1: Reference to the use of local resources Model 2: Ref. to the use of local resources + Ref. to respecting culture and custom Model 3: Ref. to the use of local resources + Ref. to respecting culture and custom + interaction Model 2, X2 (1) = 0.37, p = 0.55 Model 3, X2 (1) = 1.52, p = 0.22
Thus, whilst based on the non-significant correlation results, hypotheses 6, 7 and 9 have to be rejected, there is partial support for hypothesis 8: there is a humanitarian indicator that does
25 The Hosmer and Lemeshow goodness-of-fit statistic could not be calculated due to the categorical predictor. 26 Concerning the respecting-culture-and-custom-variable, although every cell is populated, the latter variable does not have more than 5 cases in each cell, which can be problematic when calculating a logistic regression. While for completeness’ sake this variable is included as a potential predictor in table 9 and results are given, it is not considered any further. SENSATIONAL AND HUMANITARIAN NEWS AND COMMENTS 25 predict the presence of the identical humanitarian indicator in the comments, namely that of the reference to the use of local resources. The inclusion of extra predictors does not improve the model and it can therefore be said that on the basis of the indicators in this study there does not seem to be a model that better predicts the presence/absence of a reference to the use of local resources than the use of local resources variable itself.
Conclusion and Discussion
Following the research questions that i) asked about the differences between a quality and a popular newspaper on a set of sensationalism and humanitarian framing scales and ii) the correspondence in content between these news articles and the comments they receive, the main findings of this study are as follows. The articles of the quality newspaper NRC feature more issue elaboration, human interest framing, humanitarian framing and emotionality than those of the popular newspaper Telegraaf. These differences are mostly predicted by news article type and/or article length and thusly the distinction between the quality and the popular newspaper seems largely irrelevant for when sensationalism is concerned. Moreover, the content of the comments to the Facebook post-embedded articles do not seem related to the articles in terms of the measured indicators and scales, with the exception of the reference-to- the-use-of-local-resources indicator, for the Telegraaf, suggesting that the comments are either largely unaffected by, or independent from, the Facebook post-embedded news articles.
Thus, as expected, the NRC articles feature more issue elaboration and humanitarian framing. The level of issue elaboration depends on newspaper type and article length, and the extent of humanitarian framing depends on the type of article and article length. The fact that the NRC features more issue elaboration was expected, as Scholten and Ruigrok (2006) have found that the NRC is the Dutch newspaper that focuses the most on ‘issue news’27 and the
27 Scholten and Ruigrok (2006) focus on the coverage of politics in the Dutch news and these types of news should be seen in relation to politics. Whereas – what they refer to as – ‘issue news’ concerns the attention for SENSATIONAL AND HUMANITARIAN NEWS AND COMMENTS 26
Telegraaf more on conflict. The fact that the NRC uses more humanitarian framing should be interpreted with caution, for these indicators were rarely featured in the articles analyzed. In a previous study of regional newspapers it was noted that, at least in asylum seeker (center) coverage, a frame surrounding moral values and social prescriptions was ‘barely registered’
(d’Haenens & De Lange, 2001, p. 859). Although this is an older study, together with the thesis’ findings this could suggest that the humanitarian frame is uncommon to Dutch news.
Some of these findings were unexpected. First, it was concluded that the traditionally- viewed quality newspaper NRC employs more human interest framing. Second, it was found that the NRC’s news articles feature more emotionality than those of the Telegraaf. Of course, an emotional story is not necessarily a sensational story, but the presence of emotions can indicate sensationalism and therefore be linked to the popular newspaper (St. John III &
Johnson, 2012). Thusly, the NRC articles include two sensational aspects, which may indicate that they depict refugee news in a more sensationalistic way than the Telegraaf.
However, to differentiate, the articles of the NRC provide a more elaborate description of refugee (crisis) related issues, which makes it more likely for the human interest frame elements to occur as well as the articles to deviate from emotional neutrality. The NRC articles are also longer, they have 852 words on average, whereas the Telegraaf has 209 words on average, and they feature more background reports or, in other words, non-regular news articles. The type of news article – regular or non-regular – is found to largely affect the presence of humanitarian, human interest and issue elaboration elements and emotional neutrality, more so than the newspaper. While the NRC scores higher than the Telegraaf on sensationalism, the NRC publishes more background articles on refugee issues (N = 19;
the substance of policies, conflict news focuses on support and criticism between politicians, horse race news focuses on the horse race and evaluative (‘evaluatie’) news concerns evaluative utterances regarding politicians or political parties. SENSATIONAL AND HUMANITARIAN NEWS AND COMMENTS 27
29.7%), than the Telegraaf (N = 2; 3.7%)28. Thus the news article type should be considered as a factor affecting the presence of sensationalist elements in the news article.
Concerning the relation between article and comment content, based on the results we can cautiously conclude that these are largely unconnected. Only for the Telegraaf the absence and presence of a reference to the use of local resources is the news article and in the comments is correlated positively. It was unexpected that there is no such correlation between the article content and comment content for the NRC, as Reader (2012) observed that when it is impossible to post comments anonymously, the quality of the comments “closely approximate[s] the quality of the news media” (p. 565).
This scarcity of correlations between the news article content and the comments suggests that there may be little to no framing effect. Explaining the absence of a phenomenon tends to be more challenging than its presence. As Lecheler, Bos and
Vliegenthart (2015)’s findings suggests that refugee related news frames and emotions would have an emotional effect, an absence of any effects could be indicative that the commenters did not actually read the news article concerned. However, at the same time Van Gorp (2006) has argued that an audience may simply be unaware of the emotionality of these news articles and the media in general, which is why ‘media literacy’ should be improved (p. 242).
Another reason for missing correlations could be the absence of comments by i) those concerned with privacy and the lack of anonymity on Facebook (Reader, 2012) or ii) those who are already involved in commenting on the news site (Hille & Bakker, 2014). Meijer and
Groot Kormelink (2014) state that rather than “considerations of personal reputation, also in connection to privacy, appear to lead to a certain self-restraint in digital social news use” (p.
12). Interacting with news on Facebook may not be the most desirable place for doing so.
28 Due to this low amount of non-regular news articles in the Telegraaf it was not possible to calculate the extent of the interaction between the news article and the newspaper by means of inserting the interaction effect in a multiple linear regression (the interaction was not shown due to collinearity). The Telegraaf almost exclusively posts regular news articles , whereas for the NRC is only the case in half of the time. . SENSATIONAL AND HUMANITARIAN NEWS AND COMMENTS 28
What is more, the fact that commenters question the credibility of the newspapers, as observed by Druckman (2001) in his study of the effects of, amongst others, the humanitarian frame, could present another explanation. Among the sampled comments were expressions of dislike and objection directed towards the article, journalist and the newspaper, with some commenters questioning the quality of the newspaper and its journalism.
Meanwhile, a limitation of this study is the discrepancy between the amount of regular and non-regular news articles of the newspapers, which makes it difficult to determine whether the differences between the newspapers’ articles are due to newspaper characteristics and conventions or, more specifically, because of the type of news articles published. It is also unclear whether the majority of Telegraaf articles are always regular news articles. Perhaps this type of article is mostly used for refugee (crisis) related news and maybe the randomly created sample just happens to include a disproportionate amount of regular news articles.
Another limitation is the rather dissimilar amount of comments posted to the newspapers’ Facebook post-embedded articles (see appendix). The higher amount of comments to the Telegraaf translates into a greater chance that these comments feature the scale elements. As such the scale scores of the Facebook comments to the Facebook post- embedded-articles of the Telegraaf are predisposed to being higher than those of the NRC.
Furthermore, in the intercoder reliability test most indicators received an alpha value between 0.5 and 0.6, which with leniency is seen as indicating weak but sufficiently reasonable reliability29. The results should therefore be seen as tentative. Differences in language skills and political knowledge, potential issues to reliability (Peter & Lauff, 2002), are unlikely to have played a role. Krippendorff’s alpha was employed because it takes into account how indicators are measured (Hayes & Krippendorff, 2007).
29 This while Krippendorff (2004)1 and Krippendorff (2004)2 argue that indicators above .667 are acceptable only if the findings do not have great implications. Many of the codebook variables are nominal and dichotomous, which means that the alpha value is lower and that one can be more lenient with the results. See appendix for a link to the reliability test datasets. If unavailable, contact the author at [email protected]. SENSATIONAL AND HUMANITARIAN NEWS AND COMMENTS 29
Finally, the last limitation of this study concerns generalizability. This study only included the online versions of two national newspapers and a study of different newspapers would give dissimilar results. In fact, in the sampling stages of this study it became evident that there are large differences regarding the social network use of the newspapers as well as their coverage of the refugee crisis. Between-newspaper differences are therefore to be expected and should be contextualized30. The study of the refugee (crisis) issue related coverage of more newspapers would provide supplementary support for the results of this study and could be used for truthfully testing the humanitarian frame and its indicators.
However, regardless of these limitations and even without the feedback from the newspapers concerned, this study has touched on the link between sensationalism and newspaper types, using human interest framing, humanitarian framing, issue elaboration and emotional neutrality scales. It presents an elaborate and original picture of how refugee
(crisis) related issues are dealt with in the media in a varying sensational manner, and makes the following, specific contributions. First, by including the human interest frame and by contrasting it to the humanitarian frame this study responds to the criticism by Vliegenthart &
Van Zoonen (2011) on the missing reflection and adaptation of previous frame theorizations.
The findings of future studies on framing (effects) and immigration could help delineate the human interest and humanitarian news frames further. They could contribute to the specification of the frame criteria and provide further insight into the quality of these news representations, for the sake of the audience, democracy and the refugees.
Second, like Burgers and De Graaf (2013), this study contributes to developing journalism and political communication research by presenting an approach for the identification of sensational elements in news text. The fact that a traditionally and
30 To contextualize the findings, the newspapers were contacted. The Telegraaf did not respond. Contact was established with the NRC’s ombudsman, domestic and foreign news correspondents. They received a report of the results in early June, but did not respond within the time period allocated to this study, due to holidays and commitments, causing them to be out of office. This report (which is in Dutch) can be found in the appendix. SENSATIONAL AND HUMANITARIAN NEWS AND COMMENTS 30 conventionally regarded quality newspaper, the NRC, scores higher on sensational characteristics than the popular newspaper, the Telegraaf, goes against expectations and provides support for Meijer (2012)’s critique of labeling journalism.
However, linked to the presence of emotionality and emotional neutrality are the concepts of subjectivity and objectivity, the latter one of which is an ideal. Maras (2013) suggests that on the basis of problematic interpretations and applications of the objectivity concept it may be time to ‘reinvent’ the norms and values of journalism (p. 288) and Lanosga
(2012), likewise seeing objectivity as problematic, being ‘unrealistic’ and ‘forced’, refers to
‘investigative reporting’ as “a competing ideology within the objectivity framework”, one that requires subjectivity (p. 43). Perhaps it is the in-depth reporting style of the NRC that requires a dimension of emotionality that an algorithm cannot measure.
Yet on the basis of having found such a clear presence of emotionality and the use of human interest framing, one may ask whether sensationalism and tabloid news values really are antithetical to quality journalism and to being informed about matters of public interest, and whether it is still the provision of non-sensational, non-emotional truth that journalism should aim for. It could be time to update the journalistic norms and values, as suggested by
Maras (2013). The notion of what constitutes a quality newspaper and quality journalism, in light of sensationalism, should be challenged both by practitioners and researchers, and the scales introduced in this study, can be tested in, and serve as inspiration for, future research31.
Ultimately, by applying these scales to both the article and comment text this content analysis, challenged by the liquidity of contemporary, digital news (Deuze, 2008; Karlsson, 2012)32, has presented a more nuanced insight into the Dutch online journalistic practices of today, whether popular or of quality.
31 Concerning the emotional neutrality – emotionality scale, Dutch news has been subjected to a sentiment analysis, but its use in this framing, sensationalism and quality journalism context is novel. Strauss, Vliegenthart & Verhoeven, 2016, f.i., examine the impact of valence of Dutch stock market news in a corporate context. 32 Karlsson (2012) especially underlines how content analyses of liquid news are challenged by the fact that digital information changes frequently, leaving no traces. This is a problem when dealing with dynamic content. SENSATIONAL AND HUMANITARIAN NEWS AND COMMENTS 31
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SENSATIONAL AND HUMANITARIAN NEWS AND COMMENTS 0
APPENDIX
Sensationalism and Humanitarian content in Online Dutch Newspaper News and User Comments
A study of the text of refugee (crisis) related news articles and the comments posted to them on Facebook
SENSATIONAL AND HUMANITARIAN NEWS AND COMMENTS 1
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Content Page(s)
1: LIST OF KEYWORDS…………………………………………………………………………………… 2 2: SEMETKO AND VALKENBURG (2000)’S HUMAN INTEREST INDICATORS……….…2 3: SAMPLE DESCRIPTIVES……………………….…….……………………….…….………………..…2 4: HUMANITARIAN FRAME EXAMPLE (P. 205) ……………………….…….……………………..….3 5: SELECION CRITERIA OF ARTICLES FOR INITIAL, PURPOSIVE SAMPLE…………………...3 6: PREPROCESSING APPROACH OF THE TEXT FOR SA, iPYTHON FILE LINK000………...3 - 4 7: CODEBOOK…………………………………………..……………………………………………….5 - 25 8: THE KRIPPENDORF’S ALPHA RELIABILITY VALUES………………………………….………26 9: NORMALITY TESTS FOR THE SCALES, PER NEWSPAPER…………….………………………27 10: PEARSON CORRELATION COEFFICIENTS FOR THE NEWS ARTICLE – COMMENT INDICATOR PAIRS……..………….……..………….……..………….……..………….……..…..…27 - 28 11: OVERVIEW OF THE AVERAGE ARTICLE & COMMENT SENTIMENTS……...... …..…28 - 30 12: MULTIPLE LINEAR REGRESSION RESULTS, DIFFERENT MODELS…………..……….30 - 32 13: THE REPORT OF THE RESULTS SENT TO NRC JOURNALISTS (DUTCH) ……...…….32 – 37
Note. For accessing the extra files – data sets, csv files, etc. – as mentioned in the thesis, please go to the following web page: https://www.dropbox.com/sh/u4ciu3jlhz66dkn/AACmLHbOQxYj1j87ZbA5oagSa?dl=0 SENSATIONAL AND HUMANITARIAN NEWS AND COMMENTS 2
SECTION 1: LIST OF KEYWORDS
Vluchteling Asielzoeker Vluchtelingencrisis Lampedusa Bootvluchteling Immigrant Migrant Calais (jungle van) Keulen AZC Asielzoekercentrum Heumensoord Syriër Grenzen Vluchtelingendeal UNHCR Lesbos Opvangcentrum Gelukzoeker Illegale migratie
SECTION 2: SEMETKO AND VALKENBURG (2000)’S HUMAN INTEREST INDICATORS (p. 100)
Does the story provide a human example or “human face” on the issue? Does the story employ adjectives or personal vignettes that generate feelings of outrage, empathy-caring, sympathy or compassion? Does the story emphasize how individuals and groups are affected by the issue/problem? Does the story go into the private or personal lives of the actors? Does the story contain visual information that might generate feelings of outrage, empathy- caring, sympathy, or compassion?
SECTION 3: SAMPLE DESCRIPTIVES
Total sample size of (partially) coded articles: N = 114 Total sample size of fully coded articles: N = 109 Total sample size with articles with comments: N = 104
Sample size with(out) comments, Telegraaf: N = 52 Sample size with comments, Telegraaf: N = 52 Sample size of Telegraaf comments: N = 4933 Readable comment average out of 100, per article: N = 95 (94.87)
Sample size with(out) comments, NRC: N = 57 Sample size with comments, NRC1: N = 52 Sample size of NRC comments: N = 859 Readable comment average out of 100, per article: N = 17 (16.52)
SENSATIONAL AND HUMANITARIAN NEWS AND COMMENTS 3
SECTION 4: HUMANITARIAN FRAME EXAMPLE, GEORGE W. BUSH (P. 205)
I want to make a special request to the children of America. I ask you to join in a special effort to help the children of Afghanistan. Their country has been through a great deal of war and suffering. Many children there are starving and are severely malnourished. One in three Afghan children is an orphan. Almost half suffer chronic malnutrition. And we can, and must, help them. We’ve created a special relief effort that will be supervised by the Red Cross. We are asking every child in America to earn or give a dollar that will be used to provide food and medical help for the children of Afghanistan. You can send your dollar in an envelope, marked “America’s Fund for Afghan Children”, right here to the White House, 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, Washington, DC. This is an opportunity to help others, while teaching our own children a valuable lesson about service and character.
SECTION 5: SELECTION CRITERIA OF ARTICLES FOR INITIAL, PURPOSIVE SAMPLE (PILOT STUDY)
. The news articles were selected if: 1. They contained references to an event or consequence relating to the European refugee crisis 2. They were published in 2015 3. They featured the keywords as included in the keyword list in this appendix (section 1).
SECTION 6: PREPROCESSING APPROACH OF THE TEXT FOR THE SENTIMENT ANALYSIS iPython files (and other data files) available at: https://www.dropbox.com/sh/u4ciu3jlhz66dkn/AACmLHbOQxYj1j87ZbA5oagSa?dl=0
Regarding the preprocessing for the sentiment analysis and as aforementioned, using regular expressions I split up the different articles in the document. I also removed the date from the newspaper articles and replaced punctuation, capitalization, etc., with the goal of getting to the raw text and subjecting this text to the sentiment analysis. The sum of the positive and SENSATIONAL AND HUMANITARIAN NEWS AND COMMENTS 4 negative sentiments behind these raw texts was averaged for each of the newspapers. Besides the sentiments of the newspaper articles themselves, the sentiments of the top 100 comments to each of the posts in which these articles were embedded and the average sentiment of these comments were also calculated, per newspaper article. As such, the internal math operations such as calculating the mean, summing and rounding were used in conjunction with the sentiment analysis.
Section 7 starts on the next page
SENSATIONAL AND HUMANITARIAN NEWS AND COMMENTS 5
SECTION 7: CODEBOOK
CODEBOOK of
News framing of the European refugee crisis
A study of the humanitarian representations of the European refugee crisis in Dutch news as republished on social media
SENSATIONAL AND HUMANITARIAN NEWS AND COMMENTS 6
CONTENT
1. EMBEDDED ARTICLE BY NEWS OUTLET ABOUT REFUGEES? 2. BASIC CATEGORIZATION OF THE EMBEDDED NEWS ARTICLE
2.1 Newspaper 2.2 Date 2.3 Identification of the news story 2.4 Type of embedded article 2.5 Identification of issue (theme)
3. GENERAL CONTENT OF THE EMBEDDED NEWS ARTICLE
3.1 ISSUE STATEMENT AND ELABORATION 1
3.1.1 Quantitative problem definition 3.1.2 Qualitative problem definition
H1 INVOLVED PARTY/PARTIES H1.1 A human face or human example signifying the issue H1.2 Mention of how individuals are affected by the issue/problem
3.2 ISSUE STATEMENT AND ELABORATION 2
3.2.1 Causes of the issue/crisis 3.2.2 Past development of the issue 3.2.3 Mention of consequences 3.2.4 Location of the crisis 3.2.5 Local or international impact
3.3 MARKERS OF PEACE JOURNALISM
3.3.1 Mention of alleviating plan/treatment 3.3.2 Mention of plan/treatment for solving the issue/crisis
OPJ1 Peace/conflict orientate and solution orientated OPJ2 People or elite orientated 1 OPJ3 People or elite orientated 2 OPJ4 Solution or victory orientated 1 OPJ5 Solution or victory orientated 2 OPJ6 Us vs. Them
3.3.6 Attribution/mention of responsibility for an issue 3.3.7 Attribution/mention of responsibility to act
H2 VALENCE H2.1 Expressions of feelings of dislike and objection H2.2 Expressions of feelings of compassion and affection
H3 HUMAN INTEREST VISUALS
3.4 FEATURES OF HUMANITARIAN FRAMING 1: REFERENCES SENSATIONAL AND HUMANITARIAN NEWS AND COMMENTS 7
3.4.1 Reference to solidarity or empathy 3.4.2 Reference to respecting culture and custom 3.4.3 Reference to the use of local resources and capacities as an emergency response 3.4.4 Reference to humanitarian agencies or agents
3.5 FEATURES OF HUMANITARIAN FRAMING 2: CALLS TO THE READER
3.5.1 A call for solidarity or empathy 3.5.2 A call to respect culture and custom 3.5.3 A call to use local resources and capacities
3.6 HUMANITARIAN AND HUMAN INTEREST RHETORIC BY JOURNALIST
3.6.1 Emergency rhetoric 3.6.2 Reference to morality 3.6.3 Reference to immorality 3.6.4 Scandalization
4 SPEAKER
4.0 Presence 4.1 Function/Role of speaker 4.2 Public role/Private role
5 COMMENTS & REACTIONS
5.1 Presence of non-verbal reactions 5.1.1 Amount of likes 5.1.2 Amount of shares
5.2 Presence of verbal comment(s) 5.2.1 Amount of verbal comments 5.2.2 Presence of the following markers: Markers of Human Interest Markers of Issue Elaboration Markers of Peace Journalism Markers of Humanitarian Frame Markers of Humanitarian and Human Interest Rhetoric
SENSATIONAL AND HUMANITARIAN NEWS AND COMMENTS 8
1.0 EMBEDDED ARTICLE BY NEWS OUTLET ABOUT REFUGEES?
Question: Does the text belong to the news outlet and mainly refer to (an issue related to) the current refugee crisis or refugees, in the Netherlands or abroad?
References to refugees, asylum seekers or illegal residents should be made in the title or in the body of the text of the news article. If a refugee (crisis) related issue is just a sub-topic of the article then it should not be included in this sample (code ‘no’). If there is no text but just a video fragment then we cannot speak of an article and this piece of news should not be included in the sample. Similarly, if there is an article featuring text but this text simply accompanies a video, do not include this article in the sample. However, an article that does have an accompanying video but where the focus lies on the text can be included. In this case treat the information given in the video as being on the same level as the text (do not treat it as a different medium). This means that if the video talks about a change or development that you may code for the presence of a ‘past development’ marker and that the speakers in the video (other than the journalist) should also be included as speakers.
Examples: 1. The article talks about a demonstration against the construction of a refugee center in a small town. This article belongs in the sample. 2. The article is about an offense in Cologne (Köln) which concerns refugees as the perpetrators. This is, however, revealed after the article you’re coding has been published. Because there is no explicit reference to the refugee status of the perpetrators in the article itself, this article does not belong in the sample. 3. The article mentions how newspapers are getting rid of their comment sections due to the rise of negative reactions to news stories, which is attributed to the increase of refugee (crisis) news. The journalist talks about the consequences that this has for the future of newspapers. This article does not belong in the sample. a. Excerpt: “De migrantencrisis maakt het erger: reaguurders die schelden. De Gelderlander stopt daarom de reactiemogelijkheid en sluit aan bij een trend.” 4. Another example of an article that should be excluded from the sample: a. “In het kritische nummer vraagt Lange Frans zich hardop af waar het heen gaat met Nederland en de maatschappij. Zo rapt hij onder meer over de zwartepietendiscussie en de vluchtelingen kwestie "Het land van, jij mag hier jouw geluk niet zoeken", zo klinkt het.” 5. An article about illegal residents that are not linked to the current refugee crisis should not be included either. Thusly, an article about the general inability to send Moroccan illegals back to Morocco due to a lack of documentation is not relevant.
1. Yes 2. No If no end of survey
2.0 BASIC CATEGORIZATION OF THE EMBEDDED NEWS ARTICLE
2.1 NEWSPAPER
Please indicate the newspaper who has posted the newspaper article that you are coding. In this study two newspapers have been included: Telegraaf and NRC Handelsblad. Please select the one that applies.
SENSATIONAL AND HUMANITARIAN NEWS AND COMMENTS 9
2.2 DATE
Please provide the publication date of the newspaper article that you are coding. This date can be found adjacent to the title of the newspaper article. Please follow the format DD/MM/YYYY.
Example: 21st of November 2015 = 21/11/2015
2.3 IDENTIFICATION OF THE NEWS STORY
Each news article has been given an ID number based on the sampling frame used for this study. All the articles by the newspapers – NRC and Telegraaf – embedded in Facebook posts on their respective Facebook pages, posted between January 1st 2015 and April 22nd 2016, were sampled for this study. From this sampling frame, with between 200 and 350 potentially relevant articles depending on the newspaper, 150 were selected and these are available for coding. Each of these articles has a chronological ID number and this ID number should be added to the online coding form. While the coded sample consists of no more of 150 news articles per newspaper, the newspaper articles do have ID’s in the 200s and 300s because they were sampled from the main sampling frame (N > 500). For the Telegraaf, the news article IDs start with a T and for the NRC Handelsblad these news article IDs start with an N. In both cases these identifying letters (T and N) are followed by the chronological number, for instance:
The 25th article of the Telegraaf, which has been selected for the 150 sub-sample, is ‘T25’. The 234th article of the NRC, which has been selected for the 150 sub-sample, is ‘N234’.
2.4 TYPE OF EMBEDDED ARTICLE
Please indicate the type of embedded newspaper article that you are coding. Sometimes the newspaper provides a clue of what type of article you are dealing with, explicitly mentioning the fact that it is a ‘reportage’, ‘interview’ or ‘column’. In most cases, however, you have to consider the content and characteristics of the story for deciding on the article type.
Note of caution: while the newspapers in this study do often indicate when the article in question is a reportage, you should not regard this characterization as leading. In this study the reportage, the feature and the background report are taken together as one category because this concerns longer, in-depth articles. This means that news stories not explicitly referred to as a reportage may also belong to this category.
News story: a largely factual report about a recent event that has occurred. Feature/Reportage: this is often a larger article and does not constitute just factual reporting. The behind the scenes is taken a look at, the story is analytical, in-depth. Interview: in this case at least one question is explicitly included in the article and there is a clear indication that what follows is a written answer of what another (= not the actor who asked the question) has said in response. Column/Editorial/Guest author: there tend to be explicit markers indicating whether the news article you are coding is a column or an editorial (in Dutch: ‘column’, ‘editorial’, ‘rubriek’). In case this is not clear by explicit markers but you know that you are dealing with a column, please code the news article as a column as well. A column is a subjective piece of text. It does not have to revolve around a recent phenomenon or development, but it often does. The columnist tends to write from his or her personal perspective and experiences. Letter to the editor: the letter to the editor concerns an opinion piece (often marked as an ‘opinie’) written by a reader of the newspaper (who can be a layman or an expert) about either an article published by the newspaper or a phenomenon or development in the news. An opinion piece is very subjective and these pieces will be difficult to miss. Analysis: in case the news article is explicitly marked as an analysis and completely factual, please choose this code. The analysis differs from the feature/reportage because it has no SENSATIONAL AND HUMANITARIAN NEWS AND COMMENTS 10
subjectivity whatsoever and there is a dominant quantitative rather than qualitative problem definition. (Factual) overview: Sometimes the NRC posts a news article explicitly marked ‘overview’. This type of news article is rare but looks more like a FAQ than like a news article. Q&A: Sometimes the NRC posts a explicitly marked Q&A article. This is a peculiar article in which there is interaction between the editor/journalists and readers. This type of article will probably not be taken into account in the analysis of the final sample. Other: this is a catchall category. If there is no category that fits the news article that you are coding, please use this category and please characterize the newspaper article at the end of your coding of this article (in the remarks box).
At this stage another coding category is given, namely that of the ‘photo reportage’. This study is not specifically concerned with these types of news articles and this code is mostly included to make sure that there is no confusion between the reportage and the photo reportage. If this category is selected the survey ends.
2.5 IDENTIFICATION OF ISSUE (THEME)
What kind of issue is being mentioned in the article? Multiple answer categories may apply. Please code for the presence of these issue topics.
1. Housing and living circumstances (incl. refugees demonstrating against them): This category includes refugees demonstrating against their living and housing circumstances. Examples of issues relating to these circumstances are the discriminatory treatment of gay refugees and comfort issues at the asylum seeker centers (AZC’s). 2. Deaths/Casualties (refugees): This category should be selected if the news article covers deaths or casualties among refugees, and this can be here or there (everywhere) and these deaths or casualties do not have to be recent. 3. Protest against refugees or AZC’s: This theme should be selected when the news article mentions a protest event or march against a refugee related issue. Oftentimes this issue will be the protest against the construction or placement of an asylum seeker center (AZC) in a certain area. In case the article covers an event at which locals can ask for information about the arrival of refugees in a certain area or, f.i., the construction of an AZC and clearly showcase disagreement, then you can should code for the presence of this theme as well. 4. Rate of immigration/Amount of refugees: Please select this category when the newspaper article talks about the rate of immigration or the amount of refugees. It does not matter whether this rate is presented as affecting a particular country or an entire continent (Europe) and it also does not matter whether the article distinguishes between ‘real’ refugees and economic refugees. Both count. 5. Crime by refugees: This category should be selected if the news article covers acts of crime by refugees. It therefore includes deaths or casualties presented as caused by refugees. An example of a news topic that should be coded under this theme is the rape of women by refugees or petty theft. 6. War: Select this category when the article deals with war or physical altercations between two nations, peoples or political organizations. Thusly, you will use this code when the article refers to the war in Syria, but you would also code for the presence of this theme when there is a clash between the Turkish army and the Kurds. In case of doubt, consider the scale of the violent event. A fight between two individuals should not be coded as a war, but a fight between two political organizations or parties that are not presented as being insignificant does count. 7. Political negotiations: SENSATIONAL AND HUMANITARIAN NEWS AND COMMENTS 11
Please use this category when the newspaper article discusses political negotiations. Necessary for coding this category are the involvement of a political actor (= an actor with political power, this could include NGO’s) in a discussion or a debate about some sort of treatment or plan. The political power of the (at least) two actors does not have to be equal: a discussion between a politician and a local journalist will also count. Negotiations between two locals without any political power should not be a reason to code for the presence of the theme ‘political negotiations’. However, a discussion between Merkel and Hollande does belong to this theme. 8. Terrorists and fighters: Select this category when the newspaper article refers to terrorists (e.g. IS) or fighters (e.g ‘Syrië-vechters) in connection to a refugee related issue. An example of such a connection is the suspicion that terrorists are among the refugees migrating to Europe. 9. Humanitarian assistance/volunteers helping out: Select this category when the article refers to humanitarian agencies (not merely in passing) or volunteers helping out. This often concerns the provision of emergency aid, food, drinks, clothes and language classes and courses to the refugees. 10. Immigration process: If the article you are coding concerns the immigration process and procedures, such as the amount of time it takes to get a residence permit, the times and occasions that refugees have to move or how much money this costs, then you should select this category. Articles like these tend to be factual (if they go into depth then they likely concern living and housing circumstances (as well)). 11. Integration: If the article focuses on how refugees adapt to their new situation (the new country, the new culture, etcetera) or treatments for having them adapt (= integrate), please code this category. 12. Deaths and casualties, non-refugee In case the deaths and casualties of individuals who are not refugees concerns the topic of this news article, please choose this theme. As the news article should be about refugee (crisis) related issues, this often means that the deaths and casualties are reported as having been caused by refugees. An example of when this theme should be used is an article about a murder committed by a refugee in a Swedish ‘AZC’. 13. Other: Only code this category if you feel none of the other themes applies. Please indicate at the end of the survey what you think the topic of this news article is.
3.0 GENERAL CONTENT OF THE EMBEDDED NEWS ARTICLE
In the article the journalist, writing on a humanitarian crisis, includes the mention of an issue and potentially elaborates on this issue, by for instance including references to its consequences and a plan for alleviating or solving this issue related to the crisis. When certain of these elements are emphasized in such a way that the news is personalized, dramatized or emotionalized or contains a human face, we can speak of the article featuring a human interest portrayal. Sometimes only a person is mentioned but at other times a more detailed problem or issue description is provided.
What elements does the journalist’s article contain? What kind of information is given in the article?
SENSATIONAL AND HUMANITARIAN NEWS AND COMMENTS 12
3.1 ISSUE STATEMENT AND ELABORATION 133
When talking about an issue a more specific problem may be mentioned. As such, a problem is defined and this can be done in two different ways, namely by the provision of a quantitative definition of the issue (e.g. amount of refugees) or the provision of a qualitative description of the issue.
3.1.1 QUANTITATIVE PROBLEM DEFINITION (NCCR Democracy, see footnote 33)
Quantitative definition: a quantitative definition is given of a problem by the explicit mention of changes in, f.i., the amount of people affected or the duration of the issue or crisis. This is a numerical message. While hypothetical numbers, rates and amounts are acceptable and should be regarded as indicators of a quantitative problem definition, there has to be some indication that the numbers given are not purely made up. This is based on one’s own judgment. For example, when there is someone who says that he’s expecting 3403464 refugees to come to his house, you should not regard this as a quantitative problem definition as this is not a realistic number or amount.
Examples: 1. "De miljoenen euros!" if there is no indication that it may cost millions of euros and if the focus is on conveying indignation rather than an exact amount of costs, then this should not be counted as a quantitative problem definition.
Does the article include a quantitative problem definition of the refugee crisis or of a refugee related issue? Note that an article can contain both a quantitative and qualitative problem definition and these can both be dominant.
1. Yes, dominant 2. Yes, present 3. No
3.1.2 QUALITATIVE PROBLEM DEFINITION (NCCR Democracy)
Qualitative description: an example is given of a problem, development, situation, etc. relating to the crisis. These are problems that, f.i., relate to moral matters, definitional or conceptual problems and politics. Often groups of people (or single individuals) are mentioned in relation to these issues. These descriptions tend to take the form of a narrative and are often found in background reports.
Does the article include a qualitative problem definition of the refugee crisis or of a refugee related issue? Note that an article can contain both a quantitative and qualitative problem definition and these can both be dominant.
1. Yes, dominant 2. Yes, present 3. No
33 Most of the issue statement indicators and descriptions have been inspired by a codebook used in research about populism conducted at the NCCR Democracy Department of the University of Zurich. To the best of the author’s knowledge this codebook (last updated in February, 2016) has not been used in a publication yet and it therefore could not be cited/referred to with a reference. Therefore, for more information about these specific indicators and their descriptions, please contact the researcher at [email protected]. Naturally these indicators have been adjusted to fit this study, its scales and its topic. In this study, the issue elaboration indicators in specific are largely inspired by the NCCR codebook, but the constructed scale is novel and so is the inclusion of extra indicators, such as the mention of an impact. More indicators in this codebook were inspired by other studies (indicated by the source name in the title of the description), but the scales are again just the creative, original work of the researcher. SENSATIONAL AND HUMANITARIAN NEWS AND COMMENTS 13
If quantitative or qualitative definition is yes, the following human interest (H) markers are coded. H1 INVOLVED PARTY/PARTIES (HUMAN INTEREST CONTROL)
Is there the mention of an involved party or parties in the article?
There is a difference (conceptually) between affected and involved parties. Naturally, an individual or party that is presented in a news story as being involved in a refugee (crisis) related issue or development can implicitly be viewed as being affected by the issue. For studying the level of human interest framing in the news articles we are interested in references to how parties are affected, but this code is included later. Here, at this point, it is just important that you code for the presence of a party that is involved in a refugee related issue or development.
If an involved party is merely mentioned, code ‘yes present’. If effects or circumstances affecting an individual or party are mentioned, then code ‘yes, dominant’.
1. Yes 2. No
H1.1 A HUMAN FACE OR HUMAN EXAMPLE SIGNIFYING THE ISSUE (Semetko & Valkenburg, 2000)
Does the story provide a human example or human face on the issue?
Code if there is the mention of a concrete individual (just by name or a simple description such as age or gender) who is connected to the issue and when there is no reference to how s/he is affected by the consequences of the issue. In practice this generally concerns visuals in which an example of an affected party is depicted, with or without his or her name (e.g. a photograph of a victim). .
Examples: 1. “Mr. El-Kwawawy has come to the Netherlands two years ago. He is from Egypt and used to be a salesman.” 2. A photograph of a young refugee who has drowned trying to cross the Mediterranean Sea.
Do not include: 3. “Ahmed is one of the people who has had to live in the refugee center for months, with no water and bread” (consequences are mentioned)
Answer categories: 1. Yes, in the text. 2. Yes, through (audio)visuals (e.g. a photograph or a video) 3. Yes, in the text and through (audio)visuals 4. No
H1.2 MENTION OF HOW INDIVIDUALS ARE AFFECTED BY THE ISSUE/PROBLEM (NCCR Democracy; Semetko & Valkenburg, 2000)
Does the news article give information about how a group or an individual is affected (in terms of consequences by a cause) by the issue, problem, development or situation related to refugees or the refugee crisis? If there is the mention of emotions, then code ‘yes, dominant’. If there is information regarding how these individuals are not affected, then you should still code for the presence of the mention of how people are affected by the issue/problem.
Example: SENSATIONAL AND HUMANITARIAN NEWS AND COMMENTS 14
1. “Due to the lack of refugee housing, refugees are now forced to spend more time on the streets.” 2. “The retirement funds of the elderly keep getting cut because of the welfare state trying to provide for the refugees!”
Answer categories: 1. Yes, dominant 2. Yes, present 3. No
3.2 ISSUE STATEMENT AND ELABORATION 2
The next set of questions/codes goes further into the extent to which the newspaper article elaborates on a refugee (crisis) related issue or crisis. It asks whether the following elements are addressed: the causes of the issue/crisis, its past development, its (potential) consequences and its (potential) local or international impact.
3.2.1 CAUSES OF THE ISSUE/CRISIS (NCCR Democracy)
Is there an explicit mention of a (potential) cause or causes of the issue or development related to the refugee crisis? An example could be the reference to developments in Syria as a cause for an increase or decrease in the rate of refugees asking for asylum in the Netherlands.
You should also code ‘yes’ when the journalist states that a cause or that the causes are unknown.
1. Yes 2. No
3.2.2 PAST DEVELOPMENT OF THE ISSUE/DEVELOPMENT (NCCR Democracy)
Does the journalist mention the development of the crisis or of a reported issue related to the crisis? This is the case when the journalist focuses on the problem and how it has developed up till the moment the news article has been both written and published. S/he contextualizes the development by introducing numerical or narrative information (quantitative vs. qualitative). This does not concern future developments. If the article refers to (elements of) the past development of an issue being unknown, then please also code ‘yes, present’.
Examples: 1. “Dit jaar komen er 20% meer vluchtelingen dan vorig jaar”. code as a reference to a past development of the issue 2. "het is de eerste keer dat deze cijfers gepubliceerd worden" not a reference to a change or development, so do not code for the presence of a reference to a past development of the issue
1. Yes, dominant 2. Yes, present 3. No
3.2.3 MENTION OF CONSEQUENCES (NCCR Democracy)
Does the journalist mention the (future/pending/expected) consequences and effects of the refugee crisis or the issue relating to the crisis? Consequences can be the impact on other problems or parties related to the topic of refugees and the refugee crisis. Often the mention of consequences will be coded together with the reference to the past development of the issue. If the journalist or the speaker in the text refers to the consequences as being unknown, also code for the presence of a mention of consequences (and even a dominant presence if this is the focus of the news article). SENSATIONAL AND HUMANITARIAN NEWS AND COMMENTS 15
These references to consequences have to be explicit. If the article makes you think about the consequences of the issue then this does not mean that it actually contains a mention of consequences.
1. Yes, dominant 2. Yes, present 3. No
3.2.4 LOCATION OF THE CRISIS
This is an open code and asks the coder to indicate the main country or location where the refugee related issue has occurred. This has to be done in English and country codes (such as NL and BE) are accepted, as are full country names. If (though unexpected) no location is given for the reported issue or crisis and location can be derived from the context, please code: ‘None’. Please code for the country and not the city or region. In case of the EU, code EU.
3.2.5 LOCAL OR INTERNATIONAL IMPACT
Are the effects of the issue/problem, on the people or person presented as local or international? Local entails within a region or a nation. International refers to an impact that involves multiple countries. If there is no reference to a past development or consequences of this issue, then it is likely that there is no reference to any local or international impact in the news story. In that case you may choose the answer category ‘Not applicable’. If in one news story both the consequences for the home country and the international community (or multiple countries) are mentioned, code ‘Both’.
Examples: 1. “Ik roep alle bijstandsmensen op die nauwelijks rond kunnen komen,stap naar de rechter!!!” No clear indication to whether the ‘bijstandsmensen’ are domestic or international, yet there is clearly a reference to an impact. Please look at the rest of the article (the context) to figure this out.
2. Local 3. International 4. Both 5. Not applicable (no reference of impact)
3.3 MARKERS OF PEACE JOURNALISM
Peace journalism is concerned with the references and focuses on war and peace, conflicts and solutions. How do the newspaper articles sampled refer to the refugee-related war and peace, conflicts and solutions?
At a first glance the focus of refugee (crisis) related news seems to have shifted from war related reports to reports about domestic conflicts and reconciliatory efforts for treating/solving the arrival and integration of refugees. As a result less newspaper articles report on the war and more report on, for instance, demonstrations against the construction of AZC’s (Asylum Seeker Centers). Consequently, rather than focusing on the greater labels of war and peace, these markers are used for analyzing the references to conflicts and reconciliation in the news articles to (be) coded.
3.3.1 MENTION OF (ALLEVIATING) PLAN/TREATMENT (NCCR Democracy)
The text may name a treatment or plan for addressing or alleviating a refugee crisis related issue or development that is currently being executed, under discussion, or is being proposed. Code for the presence of a mention of an (alleviating) plan or treatment when there is at least one reference in the SENSATIONAL AND HUMANITARIAN NEWS AND COMMENTS 16 text of an approach to address a refugee (crisis) related issue and this approach, plan or treatment does not have to be explicitly referred to as being alleviating. Code ‘yes, present’ if such a plan or treatment is mentioned in the article and code ‘yes, dominant’ if the article revolves around this plan or treatment (indicative of the dominance of the plan or treatment would be a mention of it in the article’s title). If there is no reference to a treatment or plan, code ‘no’.
Does the article include the mention of an approach, plan or treatment for addressing or alleviating the issue or crisis?
1. Yes, dominant 2. Yes, present 3. No
3.3.2 MENTION OF PLAN/TREATMENT FOR SOLVING THE ISSUE/CRISIS (NCCR Democracy)
The text may name a treatment or plan for solving a refugee (crisis) related issue or development that is currently being executed, under discussion, or is being proposed. Code for the presence of a mention of a plan or treatment for solving a refugee related issue or development when there is at least one reference in the text to this approach, plan or treatment. This approach, plan or treatment has to explicitly be referred to as a solution to a refugee related issue or development or there has to be a clear indication that this plan/treatment/approach will present more than a temporary fix to an issue. Code ‘yes, present’ if such a plan or treatment is mentioned in the article and code ‘yes, dominant’ if the article revolves around this plan or treatment (indicative of the dominance of the plan or treatment would be a mention of it in the article’s title). If there is no reference to a treatment or plan, code ‘no’.
Does the journalist mention a plan or treatment that is currently being used, under discussion or has been proposed, for solving the issue or crisis?
1. Yes, dominant 2. Yes, present 3. No
If answer is ‘yes’ to 3.3.4 and 3.3.5, code OPJ 1-6. If not, skip to 3.3.5 (Attribution of responsibility)
OPJ1 PEACE/CONFLICT ORIENTATED OR SOLUTION ORIENTATED34 (Perez de Fransius, 2014)
Does the journalist focus on a conflict, mentioning the parties and explaining the issues and/or positions involved (= peace/conflict orientated), or does the story focus on solutions for the refugee crisis instead? In this case treatments and plans belong to the solution orientation focus.
Examples: 1. “Whilst Merkel is interested in this deal because she wants to stay in power, Erdogan wants to satisfy his peoples” peace/conflict oriented 2. “This deal will have the result that 100.000 refugees will get permission to travel to Europe legitimately, meaning that illegal immigration will be curbed” solution oriented 3. “Whilst Merkel is interested in this deal because she wants to stay in power, Erdogan wants to satisfy his peoples. This deal will entail that 100.000 refugees will be able to legally migrate to Europe, which will help curb illegal immigration” No clear orientation (could be both, but there cannot be two foci) code ‘unclear’
34 The peace journalism indicators have been inspired by Perez de Fransius (2014), p. 77, and are originally from Lynch and McGoldrick (2005); Perez de Fransius, M. (2014). Peace journalism case study: US media coverage of the Iraq War. Journalism, 15(1), 72–88. http://doi.org/10.1177/1464884912470313 SENSATIONAL AND HUMANITARIAN NEWS AND COMMENTS 17
4. “300 refugees are now being housed in the AZC in Rosmalen” neither. There is no reference to a conflict and the fact that this is a solution is not mentioned.
The story is: 1. Peace/Conflict orientated 2. Solution orientated 3. Unclear 4. Neither
OPJ2 PEOPLE OR ELITE ORIENTATED 1 (Perez de Fransius; 2014)
Here the following groups of elites are recognized: The political elite (administrative, judicial and executive) Supranational institutions (EU, UNO, IMF) Foreign governments Financial elite (Banks/Stock Market) Economic elite (corporations) Educational elite (professors, other experts)
If an actor from one of these groups is included in the news article that you are coding, pleas code ‘yes, present’. If there is no such actor present, please code ‘no, absent’.
1. Yes, present 2. No, absent
If answer is ‘yes’, code OPJ3. If not, skip.
OPJ3 PEOPLE OR ELITE ORIENTATED 2 (Perez de Fransius; McGoldrick)
Does the journalist only address the elite as having the capacity to potentially create or bring peace? This includes references to these elite people as alleviating actors or as having the potential to alleviate an issue.
1. Yes 2. No
OPJ4 SOLUTION OR VICTORY ORIENTATED 1 (Perez de Fransius, 2014)
Does the text include a mention to a peace initiative? Here a peace initiative is defined (by the added scholars, Perez de Fransius and McGoldrick), as any initiative, plan or occasion for solving a war (large-scale) or a conflict (small-scale, f.i. between two individuals).
1. Yes 2. No
OPJ5 SOLUTION OR VICTORY ORIENTATED 2 (Perez de Fransius, 2014)
This indicator is taken from Perez de Fransius (2014) and it asks whether the news article text includes a mention to resolution, reconstruction or reconciliation? This resolution, reconstruction or reconciliation would, f.i., be mentioned as taking place, as a potential consequence of a mentioned event or plan or as an (impossible) goal.
1. Yes 2. No
SENSATIONAL AND HUMANITARIAN NEWS AND COMMENTS 18
OPJ6 US vs. THEM (Perez de Fransius, 2014)
In the news articles, actors may be mentioned in the first or third person. This concerns a distinction in perspective that can be seen as the expression of a self-perception of belonging to a group and the perception of another party as being ‘the other’ (‘them’). This distinction between two parties, one of which is regarded as one’s own and another as ‘the other’ facilitates , and is indicative of, opposition and contributes to polarization.
Examples: 1. “Us Dutch don’t get any extra help when we’re unemployed, so why do those refugees get so much aid?” 2. “They don’t know what they’re talking about and should be stopped. We should let them know that we do not agree with this!”
Does the text of the article feature an us vs them distinction?
1. Yes 2. No
3.3.6 ATTRIBUTION/MENTION OF RESPONSIBILITY FOR AN ISSUE (NCCR Democracy)
The article may include the attribution or mention of responsibility for a refugee (crisis) related issue, development or treatment. An example of such an attribution is the mention that someone has made a mistake that affects the refugee crisis or one of its related issues. This attribution or mention has to be explicit, so do not code for the presence of this variable when you believe that a mentioned actor is or was responsible. In case the responsibility of an actor is the focus of an article (a mention in the headline of the article would be indicative of this), code ‘yes, dominant’. If this attribution or mention is simply present (e.g. mentioned in passing), code ‘yes, present’. If there is no such attribution or mention of responsibility, code ‘no, absent’.
Does the article feature a mention or attribution of responsibility (to an actor)?
1. Yes, dominant 2. Yes, present 3. No, absent
3.3.7 ATTRIBUTION/MENTION OF RESPONSIBILITY TO ACT (NCCR Democracy)
The article may include the attribution or mention of responsibility to act for combating, treating or solving a refugee (crisis) related issue or development. An example of such an attribution is the mention that someone has to come up with a plan that solves the issues that refugees have with eating Dutch food at the refugee centers. This attribution or mention has to be explicit, so do not code for the presence of this variable when you believe that a mentioned actor is or was responsible to act. In case the responsibility of an actor is the focus of an article (a mention in the headline of the article would be indicative of this), code ‘yes, dominant’. If this attribution or mention is simply present (e.g. mentioned in passing), code ‘yes, present’. If there is no such attribution or mention of responsibility, code ‘no, absent’.
Does the article feature a mention or attribution of responsibility to act (to an actor)?
1. Yes, dominant SENSATIONAL AND HUMANITARIAN NEWS AND COMMENTS 19
2. Yes, present 3. No, absent
H2 VALENCE: HUMAN INTEREST EXRESSIONS
The previous human interest codes/questions have addressed whether a human interest frame is (probably) present in the news article that is being coded. The next human interest variables contribute to establishing the extent of the human interest framing in the newspaper article ‘under coding’.
H2.1 EXPRESSIONS OF FEELINGS OF DISLIKE AND OBJECTION (NCCR Democracy; Semetko and Valkenburg, 2000)
Here we are interested in expressions or descriptions of feelings of dislike, antipathy, or disagreement. Does the news article employ any of these adjectives or expressions? These have to be used for describing or referring to 1) an actor who is affected by, or otherwise involved in, the refugee crisis or a refugee (crisis) related issue/treatment/development or 2) a refugee (crisis) related issue/treatment/development. As a rule of thumb, when you recognize negative emotions in the text then you can be sure that these count as expressions of feelings of dislike and objection. Furthermore, expressions of dislike and objection are related to expressions of criticism. If the criticism is aimed at a person, then you can code it as an expression of a feeling of dislike and objection. If the criticism is aimed at a specific characteristic of a plan or issue and includes an evaluative aspect then it is also an expression of a feeling of dislike and objection. However, if there is some general criticism that is not targeted at someone and it is not clear what the person or party mentioning it specifically dislikes, then you should not code for the presence of an expression of a feeling of dislike and objection (see example 4).
Examples: 1. “That uninformed Minister Dijkhoff does not know what he is talking about.” expression of dislike 2. “This treatment should not be adopted at all!” expression of objection 3. “"Dat dit soort onmensen nog mogen aanblijven en niet tot levenslang worden veroordeeld verbaasd mij elke dag. Walgelijk. " expression of dislike 4. “Verre van ideaal” this alone is not an expression of dislike or objection. It only indicates that the person does have some criticism. 5. "Hij vindt ieder incident er één te veel" if the article is about such incidents or an incident occurring, then this definitely counts as an expression of dislike and/or objection. 6. “Hij verkoopt onzin” expression of dislike (targeted criticism)
Does the text include adjectives or descriptions that express feelings of dislike or objection?
Answer categories: 1. Yes 2. No
H2.2 EXPRESSIONS OF FEELINGS OF SYMPATHY OR AFFECTION (LIKING) (NCCR Democracy; Semetko and Valkenburg, 2000)
Does the text include any adjectives or descriptions that express feelings of sympathy or compassion with regards to those involved in (= solving or treating a refugee related issue) or those affected by an issue, treatment or development relating to refugees or the refugee crisis or an expression of liking with regards to a treatment, approach or plan that improves the living and housing circumstances of refugees.
Example: SENSATIONAL AND HUMANITARIAN NEWS AND COMMENTS 20
1. “These refugees are witty and willing to help.” 2. “How would you feel if you were forced to leave your home and confront all these challenges to find a safe place to live?”
Answer categories: 1. Yes 2. No
H3 HUMAN INTEREST VISUALS
Please indicate whether the following human interest visuals are present. These visuals can be presented as a static picture (an embedded photograph) or as part of an embedded video.
- Image(s) of disaster site - Image(s) of refugees as the affected party/individual - Image(s) of visible emotion - Image(s) of injured or dead parties/individuals - Image(s) of protest
3.4 FEATURES OF HUMANITARIAN FRAMING 1: REFERENCES35
In this section you will be asked to code for the presence of a number of humanitarian framing characteristics. In principle, a text contains a humanitarian news portrayal when references to humanitarian action (development assistance) are made. Here development assistance and humanitarian action are given a broader definition. Any form of humanitarian assistance, such as volunteers helping out with fundraising but also by helping refugees integrate, will be regarded as cases of humanitarian action.
3.4.1 REFERENCE TO SOLIDARITY OR EMPATHY (RED CROSS PRINCIPLES, Spielberg & Adams, 2011)
Does the news article contain references to solidarity or empathy? Note that a call for solidarity or empathy is not the same as a reference to solidarity or empathy. A reference to solidarity or empathy is any reference to people staying together, of people uniting (solidarity), or a reference to people taking care of each other (empathy). Note that these references to solidarity or empathy have to be in relation to refugees and/or the refugee crisis.
Example: 1. “I can’t leave these people behind. They are suffering.” 2. “We are working together to make sure that everyone has a fresh meal and place to stay.”
Please code for the presence of a reference to solidarity or empathy in relation to refugees and/or the refugee crisis (Yes/No).
3.4.2 REFERENCE TO RESPECTING CULTURE AND CUSTOM (RED CROSS PRINCIPLES, Spielberg & Adams, 2011)
This is/was meant to be a humanitarian framing indicator. However, most often you will come across references to the domestic culture and customs and that these should be respected against refugees and the consequences of immigration, and not the other way around. This code really is about culture, custom and conventions of a country, people or other group (social, religious, etc.).
35 Most of these indicators are based on the principles drafted by the Red Cross and other NGO’s, as mentioned in the thesis. SENSATIONAL AND HUMANITARIAN NEWS AND COMMENTS 21
Please code for the presence of a reference to respecting culture and custom (Yes/No).
3.4.3 REFERENCE TO THE USE OF LOCAL RESOURCES AND CAPACITIES FOR SOLVING A REFUGEE (CRISIS) RELATED ISSUE (RED CROSS PRINCIPLES, Spielberg & Adams 2011)
In the text a call is made to the use of local resources and capacities for solving an issue related to refugees or the refugee crisis (Yes/No). Since we are interested in the country level, local resources concern resources that are local, regional and also national.
3.4.4 REFERENCE TO A HUMANITARIAN AGENCY OR HUMANITARIAN AGENT (RED CROSS PRINCIPLES, Spielberg & Adams, 2011)
Does the text include a reference to a humanitarian agency, a humanitarian agent or simply any individual or party that provides humanitarian assistance for refugees or assists them with integrating? (Yes/No)
3.5 FEATURES OF HUMANITARIAN FRAMING 2: CALLS TO THE READER
When an actor in a newspaper article makes a call to a reader or another actor he asks him/her to act in some way. In this case we are interested in whether or not the newspaper articles contain calls to the readers or actors to act in some way in relation to a refugee related issue or development or the refugee crisis in general. Does the newspaper article feature any of the following calls?
3.5.1 A CALL FOR SOLIDARITY OR EMPATHY (RED CROSS PRINCIPLES, Spielberg & Adams, 2011)
Does the article include calls for solidarity or empathy on behalf of the readership or mentioned actors? This does not explicitly have to be a call made to the reader. It can also be a reference to the need for solidarity or empathy, embedded in the story. The distinction between a reference to and a call for solidarity or empathy is that the former focuses on the occurrence of solidarity or empathy and the latter on the desirable occurrence (so the solidarity or empathy is not in existence/given/in action yet).
Examples: - “These people need help.” - “Dominees deden een oproep tot verdraagzaamheid.”
Dos this newspaper article include a call for solidarity or empathy in relation to the refugee crisis or a refugee related issue? (Yes/No) Multiple calls = dominant, one call = present
3.5.2 A CALL TO RESPECT CULTURE AND CUSTOM (RED CROSS PRINCIPLES, Spielberg & Adams, 2011)
Example: 1. “The Dutch customs, such as our tolerance of gays, should be respected by those being hosted in AZC’s”.
Does the newspaper article include a call to respect culture and custom in relation to the refugee crisis or a refugee related issue? (Yes/No) Multiple calls = dominant, one call = present.
3.5.3 A CALL TO USE LOCAL RESOURCES AND CAPACITIES (RED CROSS PRINCIPLES, Spielberg & Adams, 2011)
SENSATIONAL AND HUMANITARIAN NEWS AND COMMENTS 22
Example: 1. “We have to construct an AZC right next to the border to process these refugees.” 2. “Local volunteers should help the refugees integrate.” Does the newspaper article include a call to the use of local resources and capacities in relation to refugees or a refugee (crisis) related issue? (Yes/No). Multiple calls = dominant, one call = present. In this case calls to use local resources and capacities against refugees are not included, because this would not be in line with the provision of humanitarian assistance (and therefore would not belong to humanitarian framing). The local in the use of local resources depends on the scale of the issue (of what is being solved). In case the article refers to a national issue and how to solve it by using local resources and capacities, then any national action is regarded as domestic. In principle, any measure that is not international can be regarded as local.
3.6 HUMANITARIAN AND HUMAN INTEREST RHETORIC BY JOURNALIST
3.6.1 EMERGENCY RHETORIC (NCCR Democracy)
Emergency rhetoric concerns descriptions and references to a certain situation, development or issue as being impossible to bear, as representing an emergency and as causing (or likely to cause) suffering. A speaker or the journalist asking for an immediate resolution or solution is also an example of emergency rhetoric.
Examples: 1. “How langer dit antwoord uitbiljft, hoe hoger de emoties oplopen.” emergency rhetoric 2. “Laten we eerst de ouderen opvangen.” not emergency rhetoric, no indication of urgency 3. Minister Maas riep politieke en maatschappelijke organisaties op duidelijker stelling te nemen tegen racisme en vreemdelingenhaat, ,,voordat de eerste dode valt''. clear indication of emergency rhetoric. 4. “We gaan naar de hel” emergency rhetoric (also an expression of dislike)
Does the article concerning a refugee (crisis) related issue, development or treatment include emergency rhetoric? Emergency rhetoric is dominant when there are more than two cases and merely present when there is just one.
1. Yes, present 2. Yes, dominant 3. No, absent
3.6.2 REFERENCE TO MORALITY
Morality refers to good behavior. The use of morality in the context of refugees and the refugee crisis can concern references to moral values and norms in support of doing or participating in a certain act. Moral questions count as references to morality.
Example: 1. “It is our duty to help.” duty reference to morality 2. “Je mag hier altijd zonder begeleiding lopen” this is not a case of morality. There is no reference to values, conventions or customs. This is simply a reference to regulation. 3. “Ze moeten onze normen en waarden respecteren.” norms and values, reference to morality 4. "En terecht, zo hoort het ook." reference to morality, because there is a reference to what is the right behavior. 5. “Van vrouwen blijf je af” reference to morality
SENSATIONAL AND HUMANITARIAN NEWS AND COMMENTS 23
Does the article concerning a refugee (crisis) related issue, development or treatment include a reference to morality? This is dominant when there are more than two cases and merely present when there is just one.
1. Yes, dominant 2. Yes, present 3. No (absent)
3.6.3 REFERENCE TO IMMORALITY (NCCR Democracy)
Immorality refers to bad acts or, in other words, bad behavior. A situation, issue, development, etc., is linked to norms and values and presented as being a ‘violation’ of some standard/virtue/value/norm/….
Example: 1. “ “We should stop this injustice.” reference to immorality (values), value = justice 2. “Dit mag niet.” not a reference to immorality (not clear enough), this could just be a case of regulation. 3. “Dat is mensonterend” reference to immorality, value = respecting humanity 4. “Meten met twee maten” reference to immorality because implicit reference to unequal treatment. 5. "Dan ben ik een racist." reference to immorality
Does the article concerning a refugee (crisis) related issue, development or treatment include a reference to immorality? This is dominant when there are more than two cases and merely present when there is just one.
1. Yes, dominant 2. Yes, present 3. No (absent)
3.6.4 SCANDALIZATION (NCCR Democracy)
Scandalization is a form of rhetoric that refers to an issue, event, phenomenon, etc., as being absolutely unacceptable or as constituting a scandal, referring to misbehavior (and therefore somewhat linked to the reference to immorality). Rhetorical questions may have features of scandalization, so pay special attention to these as well.
Example: 1. “But then they went against what they had promised and didn’t provide pain relief!” scandalization 2. “Ik heb er geen woorden voor.” scandalization 3. “Dat vind ik niet kunnen.” not presented as scandalous or outrageous enough. 4. “Dat zou niet zo mogen zijn!” scandalization 5. “Het is misselijkmakend.” scandalization 6. “Dat kan niet” only scandalization if clear from the context that it is being said because of ethical concerns (and not because something is simply not feasible).
Does the article concerning a refugee (crisis) related issue, development or treatment include scandalization? This is dominant when there are more than two cases and merely present when there is just one.
1. Yes, dominant 2. Yes, present 3. No (absent) SENSATIONAL AND HUMANITARIAN NEWS AND COMMENTS 24
4.0 SPEAKER
4.0 PRESENCE
A speaker is a real person who either speaks for himself or represents an organization. He utters words himself, which are represented in the news article by the presence of quotation marks or through paraphrasing. This person does not have to be identified and can be anonymous. To identify whether a speaker is present you have to look at the following markers: 1) the presence of quotation marks; 2) the presence of verbs such as ‘zegggen’ and 3) the use of the word ‘volgens’.
1. Present 2. Absent
4.1 FUNCTION/ROLE OF THE SPEAKER
This is an open field. Here the function/role of the speaker is clarified, as specified in the article. It is possible to mention more than one function, if applicable. These functions do not have to be very specific. Example function categories are: professor / analyst / politician/ refugee / local / humanitarian agent / policeman.
4.2 PUBLIC ROLE/PRIVATE ROLE
One writes ‘PU’ if the speaker is represented by his, or her, public role, which means that s/he is included as either an employee or a representative of a party, organization or company. This can be deduced from the description of the speaker and from what s/he says. The public and private role can co-occur.
One writes ‘PR’ if the speaker is represented by his, or her, private role, which means that s/he is represented as a private person, as speaking from his/her personal perspective. The social or family life or personal relationships or perhaps hobbies of the individual are mentioned.
If both the public and private role of the actor is referred to in the text, give ‘PR/PU’.
5.0 COMMENTS & REACTIONS
Do not take into account criticism launched at the news outlet. Only take into account responses to the refugee related news (the content, the issues) and those comments that are posted in response to the article. Comments to comments are not to be analyzed in this study.
In some cases commenters repeatedly comment the same message to several Facebook post embedded articles. In this case it is clear that the comments are not a response to the content of the newspaper article. These repetitive, unrelated comments should be ignored. In case there are 3 of these among the 100 you are supposed to code, just code the 97 left.
5.1 PRESENCE OF NON-VERBAL REACTIONS
Since the sample covers part of 2016 and 2015, it has been decided to exclude the more recent reaction options, such as the crying emoji. After all, before sometime in early 2016 these extra reaction options were not available. Because of this reason, in this case only likes and shares will be taken into account as non-verbal reactions to the social media posts.
The presence of these reactions is coded with either yes (present) or no (absent).
SENSATIONAL AND HUMANITARIAN NEWS AND COMMENTS 25
5.1.1 AMOUNT OF LIKES
This is an open field. Here the amount of likes to the social media post is reported.
5.1.2 AMOUNT OF SHARES
This is an open field. Here the amount of shares of the social media post is reported.
5.2 PRESENCE OF VERBAL COMMENT(S)
Here the presence of verbal or written comments to the social media posts that embed the news articles is coded. These comments are either present (yes) or absent (no).
5.2.1 AMOUNT OF VERBAL COMMENT(S)
This is an open field. Here the amount of verbal comments to the social media post is reported.
Some posts have more than a 1000 comments. The comments will be capped at 100 and numbered chronologically.
5.2.2 CODE FOR THE PRESENCE OF THE FOLLOWING MARKERS
Do the first 100 comments to the social media post contain any of the following characteristics? If so, code ‘yes’ (present). If not, code ‘no’ (absent).
HUMAN INTEREST A person is linked to the issue as an example of an affected individual by the refugee Yes/No crisis or a refugee crisis related issue It is mentioned how a person or people are affected by the issue Yes/No There is at least one expression of a feeling of dislike or objection Yes/No There is at least one expression of a feeling of sympathy or compassion Yes/No ISSUE ELABORATION A quantitative problem definition: non-hypothetical rates and numbers Yes/No A qualitative problem definition: moral, political and conceptual issues Yes/No Reference to the location of the crisis/issue Yes/No Reference to the local or international impact of the issue/crisis Yes/No Reference to a cause or causes of the issue/crisis Yes/No Reference to a past development of the issue Yes/No Mention of possible consequences of the crisis issue Yes/No PEACE JOURNALISM (OPJ) Mention of an alleviating plan/treatment in relation to the issue/crisis Yes/No Mention of a plan/treatment for solving the issue/crisis Yes/No Focus on the conflict, mentioning the parties and explaining the issues or positions Yes/No involved Focus on solutions Yes/No Mention of elite actors Yes/No Mention of elite actors as possible peace makers Yes/No Reference to peace initiatives Yes/No Mention of resolution, reconstruction or reconciliation Yes/No Us vs. them distinction: refugees Yes/No SENSATIONAL AND HUMANITARIAN NEWS AND COMMENTS 26
Us vs. them distinction: governments, peoples, bevolkingsgroepen… (added late) Yes/No Attribution of responsibility to act (added late) Yes/No Attribution of responsibility for the issue Yes/No Distinction between refugees and economic immigrants (added late) Yes/No Sarcasm, cynicism and ridicule (added late) Yes/No HUMANITARIAN FRAMING Reference to humanitarian agencies or agents Yes/No Reference to solidarity and empathy Yes/No Reference to respecting culture and custom Yes/No Reference to the use of local sources and capacities as an emergency response (added Yes/No late) Call for solidarity or empathy with own (added late) Yes/No Call for solidary or empathy with refugees Yes/No Call for respecting culture and custom Yes/No Call for the use of local resources and capacities as an (emergency) response against the Yes/No refugees or refugee related issue Call for the use of local resources and capacities as an (emergency) response for the sake Yes/No of refugees (added late) HUMANITARIAN/HUMAN INTEREST RHETORIC Emergency rhetoric Yes/No Reference to morality Yes/No Reference to immorality Yes/No Scandalization Yes/No
SENSATIONAL AND HUMANITARIAN NEWS AND COMMENTS 27
SECTION 8: KRIPPENDORF’S ALPHA RELIABILITY VALUES
Table 1: The Krippendorff alpha values of the items tested
Basic categorization items α Control: Embedded article by news outlet about refugees 1 Newspaper: Telegraaf or NRC 1 Type of embedded article 0.54136 Presence of issue statement 1 Sensationalist items (& scales) α Non-sensationalist items (& scales) α Human Interest Frame Issue Elaboration Control: Involved parties 0.548 Quantitative problem definition 0.534 Human example 0.541 Qualitative problem definition 0.368 How affected 0.167 Causes of the issue/crisis 0.528 Expression of dislike present 0.590 Past development of the issue/crisis 0.567 Expression of like present 0.563 Mention of consequences 0.666 Disaster visual 0.35637 Impact 0.356 Affected party visual 0.515 Mention of plan/treatment 0.647 Visible emotion visual 0.35638 Mention of solution 0.505 Injured or dead party/indiv. visual 1 Attribution of responsibility to act 0.660 Protest visual 0.841 Attrib.of responsibility for issue 0.682 Scandalization 0.636 Humanitarian Frame Emergency rhetoric 0.517 Reference to morality 0.614 Reference to immorality 0.527 Reference to solidarity or empathy 0.764 Ref. to respecting culture and custom 0.636 Ref. to use of local resources & capacities 0.605 Ref. to a humanitarian agency/agent 0.710 Call for solidarity or empathy 0.786 Call to respect culture and custom - Call to use local resources & capacities 0.655
Note. This table shows the Krippendorff’s alpha of the items in the codebook
36 This variable is kept in also because it is expected that this variable scores low due to the rarity of certain values. 36 Binary variable with very few cases in which a disaster visual is present. This value could therefore have expected to be low.
SENSATIONAL AND HUMANITARIAN NEWS AND COMMENTS 28
SECTION 9: NORMALITY TEST RESULTS FOR THE SCALES, PER NEWSPAPER Scale Skewness Kurtosis Telegraaf Issue elaboration (article) 0.667 0.250 N = 52 Human interest framing (article) 0.530 -0.208 Humanitarian framing (article) 0.805 -0.129 Emotionality (article) 0.656 0.420 Issue elaboration (comment) -0.501 -0.382 Human interest framing (comment) -0.322 -0.841 Humanitarian framing (comment) 0.130 -0.506 Emotionality (comment) 0.946 0.301 NRC Issue elaboration (article) 0.545 0.806 N = 52 Human interest framing (article) 0.877 0.353 Humanitarian framing (article) 0.996 0.796 Emotionality (article) -0.266 0.136 Issue elaboration (comment) 0.728 -0.355 Human interest framing (comment) 0.870 1.411 Humanitarian framing (comment) 2.351 4.634 Emotionality (comment) 0.951 2.169 Note. For skewness and kurtosis the value threshold -2/+2 is taken (George & Mallary, 2010)
Reference George, D., & Mallery, M. (2010). SPSS for Windows Step by Step: A Simple Guide and Reference, 17.0 update (10a ed.) Boston: Pearson.
SECTION 10: PEARSON CORRELATION COEFFICIENTS FOR THE NEWS ARTICLE – COMMENT INDICATOR PAIRS
Table 5: The correlation results between the content of the newspaper articles and the content of the comments
NRC Telegraaf Pearson r p Pearson r P Human interest fr. Human example - - 0.28 0.04 Expressions of dislike39 0.06 0.68 - - Expressions of liking 0.32 0.02 0.09 0.51 Scandalization 0.11 0.42 0.11 0.45 Emergency rhetoric 0.37 0.12 0.12 0.42 Humanitarian frame Ref to sol. or emp. -0.09 0.52 0.15 0.30 Ref to resp. culture - - 0.32* 0.02 Ref to use local res. -0.15 0.30 0.35* 0.01 Ref. to hum. agency -0.01 0.96 0.19 0.19 Call to sol or emp. -0.08 0.58 0.06 0.68 Call to resp. culture - - - -
39 For the Telegraaf this correlation could not be computed because every comment contains an expression of dislike. SENSATIONAL AND HUMANITARIAN NEWS AND COMMENTS 29
Call to use local res. - - -0.11 0.44 Reference to morality -0.14 0.30 -0.13 0.34 Ref.to immorality -0.06 0.68 -0.04 0.78 Issue elaboration Quantitative prob. def. 0.16 0.25 0.25 0.07 Mention of cause(s) 0.06 0.64 -0.04 0.77 Mention of past dev. 0.13 0.34 -0.08 0.60 Mention of conseq. 0.26 0.06 0.17 0.23 Mention of treatment -0.09 0.50 0.25 0.07 Mention of solution 0.28* 0.03 0.16 0.26 Mention of att. to act 0.09 0.52 0.02 0.88 Mention of att. of resp. -0.14 0.29 0.10 0.47 Sentiment Spearm. rho p Spearm. rho p Positive sentiment 0.01 0.94 -0.11 0.43 Negative sentiment -0.15 0.27 0.10 0.50 Neutrality - Extremism -0.07 0.62 0.02 0.89 * p < 0.05
SECTION 11: OVERVIEW OF THE READABLE COMMENTS
NRC
Comments to NRC articles in the sample Out of the max 100 comments sampled, there are 13 comments (with readable content) to N1. Out of the max 100 comments sampled, there are 29 comments (with readable content) to N102. Out of the max 100 comments sampled, there are 25 comments (with readable content) to N109. Out of the max 100 comments sampled, there are 4 comments (with readable content) to N11. Out of the max 100 comments sampled, there are 7 comments (with readable content) to N124. Out of the max 100 comments sampled, there are 3 comments (with readable content) to N14. Out of the max 100 comments sampled, there are 3 comments (with readable content) to N142. Out of the max 100 comments sampled, there are 10 comments (with readable content) to N148. Out of the max 100 comments sampled, there are 3 comments (with readable content) to N157. Out of the max 100 comments sampled, there are 12 comments (with readable content) to N165. Out of the max 100 comments sampled, there are 12 comments (with readable content) to N17. Out of the max 100 comments sampled, there are 0 comments (with readable content) to N171. Out of the max 100 comments sampled, there are 2 comments (with readable content) to N174. Out of the max 100 comments sampled, there are 2 comments (with readable content) to N182. Out of the max 100 comments sampled, there are 2 comments (with readable content) to N187. Out of the max 100 comments sampled, there are 3 comments (with readable content) to N198. Out of the max 100 comments sampled, there are 12 comments (with readable content) to N204. Out of the max 100 comments sampled, there are 3 comments (with readable content) to N208. Out of the max 100 comments sampled, there are 31 comments (with readable content) to N21. Out of the max 100 comments sampled, there are 55 comments (with readable content) to N211. Out of the max 100 comments sampled, there are 2 comments (with readable content) to N214. Out of the max 100 comments sampled, there are 4 comments (with readable content) to N217. Out of the max 100 comments sampled, there are 4 comments (with readable content) to N219. Out of the max 100 comments sampled, there are 6 comments (with readable content) to N220. Out of the max 100 comments sampled, there are 17 comments (with readable content) to N228. Out of the max 100 comments sampled, there are 10 comments (with readable content) to N244. Out of the max 100 comments sampled, there are 3 comments (with readable content) to N26. Out of the max 100 comments sampled, there are 10 comments (with readable content) to N265. Out of the max 100 comments sampled, there are 32 comments (with readable content) to N279. SENSATIONAL AND HUMANITARIAN NEWS AND COMMENTS 30
Out of the max 100 comments sampled, there are 37 comments (with readable content) to N285. Out of the max 100 comments sampled, there are 12 comments (with readable content) to N288. Out of the max 100 comments sampled, there are 7 comments (with readable content) to N3. Out of the max 100 comments sampled, there are 7 comments (with readable content) to N30. Out of the max 100 comments sampled, there are 4 comments (with readable content) to N304. Out of the max 100 comments sampled, there are 9 comments (with readable content) to N309. Out of the max 100 comments sampled, there are 7 comments (with readable content) to N316. Out of the max 100 comments sampled, there are 23 comments (with readable content) to N32. Out of the max 100 comments sampled, there are 5 comments (with readable content) to N328. Out of the max 100 comments sampled, there are 48 comments (with readable content) to N332. Out of the max 100 comments sampled, there are 19 comments (with readable content) to N336. Out of the max 100 comments sampled, there are 19 comments (with readable content) to N339. Out of the max 100 comments sampled, there are 44 comments (with readable content) to N36. Out of the max 100 comments sampled, there are 7 comments (with readable content) to N47. Out of the max 100 comments sampled, there are 6 comments (with readable content) to N52. Out of the max 100 comments sampled, there are 1 comments (with readable content) to N56. Out of the max 100 comments sampled, there are 71 comments (with readable content) to N66. Out of the max 100 comments sampled, there are 72 comments (with readable content) to N68. Out of the max 100 comments sampled, there are 2 comments (with readable content) to N70. Out of the max 100 comments sampled, there are 5 comments (with readable content) to N73. Out of the max 100 comments sampled, there are 86 comments (with readable content) to N77. Out of the max 100 comments sampled, there are 30 comments (with readable content) to N81. Out of the max 100 comments sampled, there are 28 comments (with readable content) to N85.
The 52 NRC articles have 859 readable comments. Thus, there is an average of 16.51923076923077 comments per article.
De Telegraaf
Comments to Telegraaf articles in the sample Out of the max 100 comments sampled, there are 100 comments (with readable content) to T103. Out of the max 100 comments sampled, there are 95 comments (with readable content) to T107. Out of the max 100 comments sampled, there are 98 comments (with readable content) to T11. Out of the max 100 comments sampled, there are 42 comments (with readable content) to T164. Out of the max 100 comments sampled, there are 100 comments (with readable content) to T113. Out of the max 100 comments sampled, there are 100 comments (with readable content) to T115. Out of the max 100 comments sampled, there are 100 comments (with readable content) to T119. Out of the max 100 comments sampled, there are 38 comments (with readable content) to T126. Out of the max 100 comments sampled, there are 100 comments (with readable content) to T130. Out of the max 100 comments sampled, there are 100 comments (with readable content) to T134. Out of the max 100 comments sampled, there are 100 comments (with readable content) to T137. Out of the max 100 comments sampled, there are 100 comments (with readable content) to T147. Out of the max 100 comments sampled, there are 99 comments (with readable content) to T150. Out of the max 100 comments sampled, there are 100 comments (with readable content) to T152. Out of the max 100 comments sampled, there are 100 comments (with readable content) to T153. Out of the max 100 comments sampled, there are 100 comments (with readable content) to T155. Out of the max 100 comments sampled, there are 100 comments (with readable content) to T158. Out of the max 100 comments sampled, there are 91 comments (with readable content) to T159. Out of the max 100 comments sampled, there are 91 comments (with readable content) to T161. Out of the max 100 comments sampled, there are 77 comments (with readable content) to T162. Out of the max 100 comments sampled, there are 98 comments (with readable content) to T168. Out of the max 100 comments sampled, there are 88 comments (with readable content) to T172. Out of the max 100 comments sampled, there are 100 comments (with readable content) to T176. Out of the max 100 comments sampled, there are 100 comments (with readable content) to T177. Out of the max 100 comments sampled, there are 99 comments (with readable content) to T179. Out of the max 100 comments sampled, there are 100 comments (with readable content) to T18. Out of the max 100 comments sampled, there are 100 comments (with readable content) to T184. Out of the max 100 comments sampled, there are 100 comments (with readable content) to T26. Out of the max 100 comments sampled, there are 100 comments (with readable content) to T27. Out of the max 100 comments sampled, there are 100 comments (with readable content) to T36. SENSATIONAL AND HUMANITARIAN NEWS AND COMMENTS 31
Out of the max 100 comments sampled, there are 100 comments (with readable content) to T40. Out of the max 100 comments sampled, there are 95 comments (with readable content) to T48. Out of the max 100 comments sampled, there are 100 comments (with readable content) to T196. Out of the max 100 comments sampled, there are 100 comments (with readable content) to T53. Out of the max 100 comments sampled, there are 100 comments (with readable content) to T57. Out of the max 100 comments sampled, there are 100 comments (with readable content) to T64. Out of the max 100 comments sampled, there are 58 comments (with readable content) to T67. Out of the max 100 comments sampled, there are 100 comments (with readable content) to T7. Out of the max 100 comments sampled, there are 100 comments (with readable content) to T71. Out of the max 100 comments sampled, there are 100 comments (with readable content) to T76. Out of the max 100 comments sampled, there are 100 comments (with readable content) to T77. Out of the max 100 comments sampled, there are 100 comments (with readable content) to T83. Out of the max 100 comments sampled, there are 66 comments (with readable content) to T90. Out of the max 100 comments sampled, there are 100 comments (with readable content) to T91. Out of the max 100 comments sampled, there are 100 comments (with readable content) to T92. Out of the max 100 comments sampled, there are 98 comments (with readable content) to T94. Out of the max 100 comments sampled, there are 100 comments (with readable content) to T97. Out of the max 100 comments sampled, there are 100 comments (with readable content) to T98. Out of the max 100 comments sampled, there are 100 comments (with readable content) to T144. Out of the max 100 comments sampled, there are 100 comments (with readable content) to T101. Out of the max 100 comments sampled, there are 100 comments (with readable content) to T32. Out of the max 100 comments sampled, there are 100 comments (with readable content) to T51.
The 52 Telegraaf articles have 4933 readable comments. Thus, there is an average of 94.86538461538461 comments per article.
SECTION 12: MULTIPLE LINEAR REGRESSION RESULTS, DIFFERENT MODELS
Human Interest frame (N = 102) Durbin Watson = 1.89 Model 1 B SE b b* Sig. Adj. R2 Constant 0.47 0.37 Newspaper 0.64 0.22 0.27 0.006** 0.06 F( 1,100) = 7.93, p < .01
Model 2 Constant 2.40 0.55 Newspaper -0.03 0.26 -0.01 0.90 News story -1.26 0.28 -0.49 0.000*** 0.21 F( 2,99) = 14.70, p < .001
Model 3 Constant 2.16 0.56 Newspaper -0.17 0.26 -0.07 0.52 News story -0.98 0.31 -0.38 0.002** Article Length 0.04 0.02 0.22 0.06 0.24 F (3, 98) = 11.33, p = <0.01 Humanitarian frame (N = 109) Durbin Watson = 2.02 Model 1 B SE b b* Sig. Adj. R2 Constant 0.46 0.39 Telegraaf or NRC 0.54 0.24 0.21 0.027* 0.04 F( 1,107) = 5.00, p < .05 SENSATIONAL AND HUMANITARIAN NEWS AND COMMENTS 32
Model 2 Constant 2.14 0.61 Newspaper -0.04 0.28 -0.01 0.90 News story -1.10 0.32 -0.38 0.001** 0.12 F( 2,106) = 8.68, p < 0.01
Model 3 Constant 1.65 0.60 Newspaper -0.32 0.28 -0.12 0.26 News story -0.52 0.34 -0.18 0.13 Article Length 0.09 0.03 0.42 0.000*** 0.22 F (3,105) = 10.96 , p < 0.001 Issue elaboration (N = 109) Durbin Watson = 1.78 Model 1 B SE b b* Sig. Adj. R2 Constant 0.98 0.55 Newspaper 1.92 0.39 0.43 0.000*** 0.18 F( 1,107) = 24.35, p < .001 Model 2 Constant 1.44 1.04 Newspaper 1.76 0.48 0.40 0.000*** News story -0.30 0.54 -0.06 0.58 0.17 F( 2,106) = 0.31, p = 0.58 Model 3 Constant 0.50 0.98 Newspaper 1.22 0.47 0.27 0.01** News story 0.82 0.57 0.17 0.15 Article length 0.18 0.04 0.47 0.000*** 0.29 F (3, 105) = 15.63 , p < 0.001 Positive sentiment (N = 109) Durbin Watson = 1.84 Model 1 B SE b b* Sig. Adj. R2 Constant 1.30 0.30 Newspaper 0.57 0.18 0.29 0.002** 0.08 F( 1,107) = 9.75, p < 0.01 Model 2 Constant 2.99 0.44 Newspaper -0.01 0.21 -0.01 0.95 News story -1.12 0.23 -0.50 0.000*** 0.23 F( 2,106) = 27.88, p < 0.001 Model 3 Constant 2.83 0.45 Newspaper -0.11 0.21 -0.06 0.61 News story -0.92 0.26 -0.41 0.001** Article length 0.03 0.02 0.19 0.10 0.25 F (3,105) = 12.81, p = < 0.001 Negative sentiment ( N = 109) Durbin Watson = 1.71 Model 1 B SE b b* Sig. Adj. R2 Constant -2.00 0.23 SENSATIONAL AND HUMANITARIAN NEWS AND COMMENTS 33
Newspaper -0.76 0.14 -0.46 0.000*** 0.20 F( 1,107) = 27.92, p < .001 Model 2 Constant -2.93 0.37 Newspaper -0.44 0.17 -0.26 0.01* News story 0.62 0.19 0.33 0.002** 0.26 F( 2,106) = 20.40, p < .001 Model 3 Constant -2.66 0.36 Newspaper -0.28 0.17 -0.17 0.10 News story 0.29 0.21 0.16 0.16 Article length -0.05 0.02 -0.36 0.001** 0.33 F (3,105) = 18.89 , p < 0.001 Emot. Neutrality - Emotionality (N = 109) Durbin Watson = 1.68 Model 1 B SE b b* Sig. Adj. R2 Constant 2.28 0.40 Newspaper 1.33 0.25 0.46 0.000*** 0.20 F( 1,107) = 27.88, p < .001 Model 2 Constant 4.92 0.59 Newspaper 0.42 0.28 0.14 .128 News story -1.73 0.31 -0.53 .000*** 0.38 F( 2,106) = 31.59, p < .001 Model 3 Constant 4.48 0.58 Newspaper 0.17 0.27 0.06 0.54 News story -1.21 0.33 -0.37 0.000*** Article length 0.08 0.02 0.33 0.001** 0.44 F (3,105) = 28.66, p < .001 * p < 0.05, ** p < 0.01, *** p < 0.001
SECTION 13: THE REPORT OF THE RESULTS SENT TO NRC JOURNALISTS (DUTCH)
Rapport van de resultaten van scriptie over ‘humanitarian framing by Dutch newspapers, on social media, about refugee (crisis) related news’ Onderzoeksvragen: 1. In hoeverre bevatten de berichten van de kranten gedeeld via social media posts op Facebook humanitaire en sensationalistische elementen? 2. Zijn er overeenkomsten tussen de inhoud van deze artikelen en de bovenste 100 comments40 die als reactie op de post op Facebook geplaatst zijn?
40 Omdat de comments persoonlijk geanalyseerd werden, was het niet mogelijk om voor de Telegraaf alle coments te analyseren (sommige posts hadden meer dan 2000 comments). Omwille van deze reden zijn alleen de bovenste 100 comments geanalyeerd. De comments die bovenaan staan worden het meest gewaardeerd (geliked) en zijn dus ook de beste weerspiegeling van het sentiment en de reacties van de (potentiële) Facebook lezers van het artikel. SENSATIONAL AND HUMANITARIAN NEWS AND COMMENTS 34
Vergeleken kranten: NRC Handelsblad en de Telegraaf Vergeleken materiaal: Artikelen over vluchtelingen of de vluchtelingencrisis waar naar gelinked wordt via Facebook posts door de kranten zelf.
Tijdsperiode waaruit de artikelen gekozen zijn: 01-01-2015 t/m 22-04-2016 Totaal aantal potentieel relevante artikelen uit deze periode: NRC (N = 341, N staat voor aantal), Telegraaf (N = 203)
Uiteindelijke sample: NRC artikelen (N= 57) + comments (N = 859); Telegraaf artikelen (N = 52) + comments (N = 4933, dit zijn de bovenste 100 comments.Vaak had de Telegraaf meer comments maar die konden niet allemaal persoonlijk geanalyseerd worden).
Er werden vier schalen getoetst41: sentiment (in hoeverre is het artikel neutraal?), issue elaboration (hoe volledig/uitgebreid is de beschrijving dat het artikel geeft over het probleem, de situatie of de ontwikkeling?), human interest framing (in hoeverre zitten er elementen in de tekst die vanuit een subjectief standpunt aandacht geven aan hoe iemand of een groep mensen beïnvloed wordt door een vluchteling-gerelateerd probleem of een vluchtelinggerelateerde ontwikkeling of situatie?) en humanitarian framing ( hoeveel verwijzingen zijn er naar humanitaire acties en tot op welk niveau bevat de tekst humanitaire rhetoriek). Zie de appendix voor meer informatie over de inhoud van deze schalen. De waarden van de kranten op deze vier schalen verschillen significant van elkaar, indicatief dat de artikelen van de NRC en de Telegraaf niet tot dezelfde groep horen. NRC Telegraaf Gemiddelde Gemiddelde Sentimentsniveau (0 tot 9, 0 is neutraal en 9 is extremistisch) 4.95 3.62 Positief sentiment (0 is neutraal, 5 is erg positief) 2.44 1.87 Negatief sentiment (0 is neutraal, -5 is erg negatief) -3.51 -2.75 Issue Elaboration (0 is geen beschrijving, 10 is alle 7.09 4.44 beschrijvingselementen42) Human interest framing 2.51 1.50 Humanitarian framing 1.81 1.13
Resultaten: Algemeen - De NRC scoort hoger dan de Telegraaf op alle schalen. Sommige van de schalen – sentiment en human interest framing – kunnen worden gebruikt om sensationalisme aan te geven en men zou dit als een teken kunnen zien dat de NRC vluchtelingennieuws misschien op een sensationalistischere manier weergeeft dan de Telegraaf. - Ter nuance, de artikelen van de NRC geven een volledigere beschrijving waardoor er dus meer kans is dat elementen van deze schalen voorkomen. De NRC artikelen zijn ook langer: NRC (851.5 woorden gemiddeld), Telegraaf (208.9 woorden gemiddeld).
De inhoud van het artikel - Hoe ver een artikel van de neutraliteit afstaat heeft te maken met het type en de lengte van een artikel en niet met de krant (NRC vs. Telegraaf).
41 Op de volgende pagina zijn als deel van een ‘appendix’ de schalen en hun indicatoren te vinden. 42 Deze elementen zijn: een kwalitatieve definitie van het problem, een kwantitatieve definitie van het probleem, een verwijzing naar een plan, een oplossing, de impact, een oorzaak, een ontwikkeling, een gevolg en het aangegeven van de verantwoordelijkheid om iets aan te pakken of de verantwoordelijkheid voor een probleem. SENSATIONAL AND HUMANITARIAN NEWS AND COMMENTS 35
o Qua positiviteit van het artikel speelt alleen het type artikel een rol (niet de lengte en ook niet het soort krant). Een positief artikel is bijvoorbeeld een stuk over de vele kwaliteiten van de vluchtelingen of de beschrijving van een positieve ontwikkeling. o Qua negativiteit van het artikel spelen de krant (NRC of Telegraaf), het type artikel en de lengte van het artikel een rol. Een negatief artikel is bijvoorbeeld een stuk waarin er kirtiek gegeven wordt op een plan om de vluchtelingencrisis aan te pakken. - Met betrekking tot de issue elaboration, de volledigheid van de beschrijving hang af van de krant (De NRC of de Telegraaf) en de lengte van het artikel en niet het type artikel. - Wat betreft de human interest framing, de soort krant (de NRC of de Telegraaf) en het type artikel hebben invloed in hoeverre deze frame gebruikt wordt. De lengte van het artikel heeft geen effect. - En als laatste, wat betreft de humanitarian framing hebben het type artikel en de lengte van het artikel een effect. Het soort krant – de Telegraaf of de NRC - speelt hierin geen rol. Conclusie: Het type artikel speelt waarschijnlijk een grotere rol m.b.t. de resultaten dan de krant. Qua sensationalisme scoort de NRC hoger dan de Telegraaf. Daar staat wél tegenover dat de artikelen van de NRC langer zijn en ook volledigere beschrijvingen geven. Wanneer het sensationalisme betreft lijkt het dus beter om op het soort artikel te letten en niet zomaar op de aan- en afwezigheid van bepaalde kenmerken. De inhoud van de Facebook comments - De inhoud van de artikelen en de comments komt zelden overheen (in minder dan 10% van de gevallen) en voor beide kranten is er niet één maal een duidelijke connectie tussen de inhoud van het artikel en het commentaar). Er werden alleen overeenkomsten gevonden m.b.t. de aanwezigheid van de volgende elementen, en dit alleen voor de Telegraaf: o Een verwijzing naar de impact van een vluchteling-gerelateerde gebeurtenis of ontwikkeling. o Een verwijzing naar hoe een groep mensen beïnvloedt wordt door een vluchteling- gerelateerde gebeurtenis of ontwikkeling o Een verwijzing naar het gebruik van lokale oplossingen en lokaal materiaal om een probleem dat te maken heeft met vluchtelingen aan te pakken. - Er is ook een overeenkomst tussen de aanwezigheid van beschrijvingselementen (zie voetnoot 2) in het artikel en het commentaar. - Wél was er de suggestie dat er een overeenkomst is tussen uitingen van sympathie in de artikelen van NRC en uitingen van sympathie in het commentaar. Jammer genoeg kwamen deze uitingen in de sample niet vaak genoeg voor om hier iets over te kunnen zeggen. Een grotere sample zou hier meer inzicht in kunnen geven.
Conclusie: Hieruit kunnen we vooralsnog concluderen dat het commentaar op de posts waarin er naar de artikels gelinked wordt vrijwel los van elkaar staan.
Appendix Extremisme schaal: positief sentiment (0 – 5) + negatief sentiment (- 5 – 0 ) – 1. Neutraal Extreem (geen (sentiment) sentiment) 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9
Voor de analyse van de comments wordt de schaal met dezelfde elementen gebruikt. Human interest framing schaal, + 1 voor elk aanwezig element: Elementen: - Voorbeeld van een getroffen persoon die met de vluchtelingencrisis of een vluchteling te maken heeft. SENSATIONAL AND HUMANITARIAN NEWS AND COMMENTS 36
- Uitleg hoe een persoon of groep personen geraakt wordt door een een vluchtelinggerelateerde ontwikkeling, situatie of probleem. - Een uiting van sympathie, medeleven of waardering m.b.t. een vluchtelinggerelateerd persoon, plan of zelfs object. - Een uiting van tegenstand of ongenoegen m.b.t. een vluchtelinggerelateerd persoon, plan of zelfs object. - Een (audio-)visueel voorbeeld van: o De locatie van een ongeluk (+ 1) o De getroffen personen (+ 1) o Emoties (+1) o Gewonde of overleden (vluchtelingen) (+1) o Een protest (tegen of voor de vluchtelingen) (+1) Voor het analyseren van de comments wordt dezelfde schaal gebruikt, met uitzondering van het (audio-)visuele element (dit komtniet vaak genoeg voor).
Volledigheid van de beschrijving-schaal. +1 voor elk aanwezig element:
Elementen: - Een kwantitatieve beschrijving van een vluchtelinggerelateerd probleem of vluchtelinggerelateerde ontwikkeling (e.g. 112 vluchtelingen zijn verdronken specifieke cijfers) - Een kwalitatieve beschrijving van een vluchtelinggerelateerd probleem of vluchtelinggerelateerde ontwikkeling (e.g. natuurlijk zijn de leefomstandigheden inhumaan een moreel probleem) - Verwijzing naar een plan van een vluchtelinggerelateerd probleem of vluchtelinggerelateerde ontwikkeling (e.g. het vluchtelingenakkoord) - Verwijzing naar een oplossing van een vluchtelinggerelateerd probleem of vluchtelinggerelateerde ontwikkeling (e.g. een voorstel om de grenzen te sluiten zodag niemand meer binnen komt een plan die wordt gepresenteerd als een oplossing) - Verwijzing naar impact van een vluchtelinggerelateerd probleem of vluchtelinggerelateerde ontwikkeling (e.g. hierdoor is er minder geld voor de ouderen) - Verwijzing naar oorzaak van een vluchtelinggerelateerd probleem of vluchtelinggerelateerde ontwikkeling (bijv. dit komt door de oorlog in Syrië). - Verwijzing naar ontwikkeling van een vluchtelinggerelaeerd probleem (bijv. dit jaar komen er minder vluchtelingen dan vorig jaar) - Verwijzing naar de gevolgen van een vluchtelinggerelateerd probleem of vluchtelinggerelateerde ontwikkeling (bijv. verkrachtingen in Keulen) - Verwijzing naar de verantwoordelijkheid om actie te nemen om een vluchtlinggerelateerde probleem of vluchtelinggerelateerde ontwikkeling aan te pakken (bijv. een oproep aan Merkel om de grenzen te openen/sluiten) - Verwijzing naar de verantwoordelijkheid voor een vluchtelinggerelateerd probleem of een vluchtelinggerelateerde ontwikkeling. (bijv. kritiek aan de regering voor het nemen van de verkeerde maatregelen) Voor de analyse van de comments wordt de schaal met dezelfde elementen gebruikt. Humanitarian framing schaal, elk element m.b.t. een vluchtelinggerelateerd probleem of vluchtelinggerelateerde ontwikkeling, element aanwezig = +1 - Verwijzing naar solidariteit en empathie - Verwijzing naar het respecteren van cultuur, normen en waarden - Verwijzing naar humanitaire organisaties (incl. COA) - Verwijzing naar het gebruik van lokaal materiaal - Oproep tot solidariteit en empathie - Oproep tot het respcteren van cultuur, normen en waarden - Oproep voor het gebruik van lokaal materiaal - Humanitaire rhetoriek: SENSATIONAL AND HUMANITARIAN NEWS AND COMMENTS 37
o Verwijzing naar immoraliteit m.b.t. een vluchtelinggerelateerd probleem of een vluchtelinggerelateerde ontwikkeling. o Verwijzing naar moraliteit m.b.t. een vluchtelinggerelateerd probleem of een vluchtelinggerelateerde ontwikkeling. o Verwijzing naar het schandaal zijnde van een vluchtelinggerelateerd probleem of een vluchtelinggerelateerde ontwikkeling. o Het gebruik van woorden die aangeven dat een vluchtelinggerelateerd probleem of een vluchtelinggerelateerde ontwikkeling urgent is.
Voor de analyse van de comments wordt de schaal met dezelfde elementen gebruikt.