Week 12: Frame
Analysis / Audiences
4/7, 4/9: Frame
Analysis
- "How to Do a Frame Analysis"
- Marisa Nack, "Hazing and the Media: An analysis of The Burlington Free Press’s coverage of hazing on the UVM Hockey team," (Student paper, Sociology 243, Spring 2006)
- Julie C Lima, Michael Siegel, "The tobacco settlement: an analysis of newspaper coverage of a national policy debate, 1997-98," Tobacco Control 1999;8:247-253 ( Autumn )
4/11: Audiences
- Bennett, Ch. 3, "Citizens and the News," pp. 74-106.
- Schudson, Ch. 9, "The Audience for News," pp. 167-176.
What are the information and participation gaps in American democracy? What are three ways that news content matters for citizen information? What is the "citizen's dilemma"? Why does Bennett think mainstream news still matters in spite of the internet? What are the various patterns in which people interact with the news? Why do people prefer TV? When are people more likely to interpret the news in analytical and socially connected ways, and when are they more likely to view it in personalized, narrative terms? What kinds of uses and gratifications do people get from the news?
What does Schudson mean when he says "there is no 'short attention span' apart from the kind of world that elicits certain types of and qualities of attention"? What is the difference between extensive and intensive reading, and what is its relevance to the news audience? What is a ritualistic relation to the news? How do journalists think about their audience, if at all? To what extent is news "designed for insiders and … written almost in code"? What are the long-term trends in news readership and viewership?