What does the Fox Say? A mixed-methods framing analysis of Fox News’ coverage of domestic terrorism, 2012-2022
(2023) SIMZ11 20231Graduate School
- Abstract
- This paper investigates Fox News’ television coverage of domestic terrorism in the United States from 2012 to 2022. This period spans the terms of both Republican and Democratic Presidents, the COVID-19 pandemic, large-scale civil protests, and the emergence of rightwing extremism as the foremost domestic terror threat. The empirical analysis is based on 287 transcripts from 24 Fox News shows. The study engages a deductive, quantitative content analysis of four specific news frames: sourcing, contextualization, ideological labels, and definitional certainty. Five emphasis frames (attribution of blame, conservatives under attack, questioning intelligence agencies, radical Islam, and rightwing extremism is not a threat) are also investigated... (More)
- This paper investigates Fox News’ television coverage of domestic terrorism in the United States from 2012 to 2022. This period spans the terms of both Republican and Democratic Presidents, the COVID-19 pandemic, large-scale civil protests, and the emergence of rightwing extremism as the foremost domestic terror threat. The empirical analysis is based on 287 transcripts from 24 Fox News shows. The study engages a deductive, quantitative content analysis of four specific news frames: sourcing, contextualization, ideological labels, and definitional certainty. Five emphasis frames (attribution of blame, conservatives under attack, questioning intelligence agencies, radical Islam, and rightwing extremism is not a threat) are also investigated through an inductive, qualitative content analysis. Quantitative results indicate that the use of specific sources has shifted over time, the contextualization of domestic terror incidents has switched from references to other foreign terror to other domestic terror, ideological labels are applied to the left while there is hesitancy to apply rightwing labels, and that definitional certainty in coverage has increased over time. Qualitative results indicate that the network’s coverage of Islamic and leftwing extremism is consistently thematic, while rightwing extremism is framed episodically and left as unconstructed terrorism despite the significant increase in incidences of rightwing domestic terror over the sample period. Further qualitative results indicate marked increases in the prevalence of three additional emphasis frames: attribution of blame to the left, conservatives are under attack, and questioning the integrity of intelligence agencies. (Less)
- Popular Abstract
- Rightwing domestic terrorism has become the paramount terror threat in the United States and as a result, media coverage of domestic terrorism has increased significantly. The inherently political nature of rightwing domestic terrorism poses a unique situation for the reporting and framing of the issue by rightwing media. This paper seeks to understand how Fox News, as a rightwing source of media, framed the topic of domestic terrorism in its cable television coverage from 2012-2022, across 287 transcripts from 24 different Fox News television programs. How the media frames certain issues plays an important role in facilitating public understanding of both the cause and solution to social issues, as well as the public’s ability, or... (More)
- Rightwing domestic terrorism has become the paramount terror threat in the United States and as a result, media coverage of domestic terrorism has increased significantly. The inherently political nature of rightwing domestic terrorism poses a unique situation for the reporting and framing of the issue by rightwing media. This paper seeks to understand how Fox News, as a rightwing source of media, framed the topic of domestic terrorism in its cable television coverage from 2012-2022, across 287 transcripts from 24 different Fox News television programs. How the media frames certain issues plays an important role in facilitating public understanding of both the cause and solution to social issues, as well as the public’s ability, or willingness, to identify and define events with specific labels. In this case, the framing used by Fox News is central in communicating to its audience what is terrorism, and what is not.
The quantitative portion of this research sought to understand how Fox News utilizes sources, contextualizes domestic terror, applies ideological labels, and how it uses definitional certainty. Results from this section show that the sources used by the network changed over time and became more partisan (rightwing) as rightwing terror incidents increased. The contextualization of the incidents also changed over the period of analysis, from being contextualized within the domain of foreign terror to domestic terror. Leftwing and radical ideological labels were used often, while rightwing ideological labels were rarely used by the network. The definitional certainty of the use of the term domestic terrorism also increased over the period of analysis.
The qualitative analysis set out to identify themes across the transcripts. The results showed that the network failed to frame rightwing domestic terror in the context of a widespread of social issue, and instead placed the blame almost entirely on radical Islamic terror and leftwing domestic terror. Other frameworks reinforced this finding. For example, the network commonly portrayed conservative figures, and rightwing extremists, as being unfairly targeted and framed the FBI, and other intelligence agencies, as being complicit in attacks against the American rightwing. (Less)
Please use this url to cite or link to this publication:
http://lup.lub.lu.se/student-papers/record/9139142
- author
- Wiles, Jesse LU
- supervisor
- organization
- course
- SIMZ11 20231
- year
- 2023
- type
- H2 - Master's Degree (Two Years)
- subject
- keywords
- Domestic terror, ontological security, framing, television, news media, rightwing extremism
- language
- English
- id
- 9139142
- date added to LUP
- 2023-09-25 14:30:13
- date last changed
- 2023-09-25 14:30:13
@misc{9139142,
abstract = {{This paper investigates Fox News’ television coverage of domestic terrorism in the United States from 2012 to 2022. This period spans the terms of both Republican and Democratic Presidents, the COVID-19 pandemic, large-scale civil protests, and the emergence of rightwing extremism as the foremost domestic terror threat. The empirical analysis is based on 287 transcripts from 24 Fox News shows. The study engages a deductive, quantitative content analysis of four specific news frames: sourcing, contextualization, ideological labels, and definitional certainty. Five emphasis frames (attribution of blame, conservatives under attack, questioning intelligence agencies, radical Islam, and rightwing extremism is not a threat) are also investigated through an inductive, qualitative content analysis. Quantitative results indicate that the use of specific sources has shifted over time, the contextualization of domestic terror incidents has switched from references to other foreign terror to other domestic terror, ideological labels are applied to the left while there is hesitancy to apply rightwing labels, and that definitional certainty in coverage has increased over time. Qualitative results indicate that the network’s coverage of Islamic and leftwing extremism is consistently thematic, while rightwing extremism is framed episodically and left as unconstructed terrorism despite the significant increase in incidences of rightwing domestic terror over the sample period. Further qualitative results indicate marked increases in the prevalence of three additional emphasis frames: attribution of blame to the left, conservatives are under attack, and questioning the integrity of intelligence agencies.}},
author = {{Wiles, Jesse}},
language = {{eng}},
note = {{Student Paper}},
title = {{What does the Fox Say? A mixed-methods framing analysis of Fox News’ coverage of domestic terrorism, 2012-2022}},
year = {{2023}},
}