| dc.description.abstract | Title: Be prepared for bad news : Framing Terrorism in Norwegian News Media Author: Ingvild Knævelsrud Rabe Supervisor: Sveinung Sandberg Place: Department of Criminology and the Sociology of Law: Faculty of Law, University of Oslo Submission date: 08.05.2015 How are acts of terrorism framed in Norwegian newspapers? This thesis seeks to answer this question in a comparative case study on the coverage of two terrorist attacks that took place in 2013. The case study is based on 1121 newspaper articles, eleven of which are closely analysed qualitatively and 150 directly cited and paraphrased. The two attacks studied are the attack on the Westgate shopping mall in Nairobi, Kenya and the attack and hostage situation that took place at the gas facility Tigantourine in In Amenas, Algeria. Both resulted in many deaths, and both had a Norwegian connection; Five Norwegians were killed in In Amenas, and in Nairobi one of the attackers was a Norwegian citizen. My main research question is: How do Norwegian newspapers frame acts of terrorism? I have used framing theory in the analysis of the articles. It is a theoretical and methodological framework for analysing text and speech that has been developed and expanded by numerous scholars. Framing theory is concerned with the presentation of issues and how this may affect the recipients. Earlier research on framing theory and the media has proposed that one can use the predefined generic frames responsibility, conflict, human interest, economic consequences and morality to categorise newspaper articles and this thesis seeks to test this notion by trying to apply these on articles collected from Norwegian newspapers. The suggestion that certain news values such as proximity, personalisation and simplification has to be apparent for a story to be newsworthy will also be addressed. I found that the generic frames human interest and responsibility was by far the most used in the coverage of the attacks I have studied. The human interest frame is applicable when an article concentrates on a specific person or persons and/or when the focus of the Ingvild Knævelsrud Rabe VI article is on emotion. This frame is used extensively when it comes to the presentation of the victims and of acts of terrorism and to some degree when it comes to presentations of the perpetrators. The responsibility frame is used in articles focusing on the responsibility of the perpetrators. This frame is also applicable in articles concerning who is responsible for ending the attack and protecting the victims. However not every article can be classified as being framed by one or more of the generic frames. Some news values such as personalisation and proximity are easily detectable in the articles, the idea that the news value of violence and conflict is connected to a graphic presentation seems to be less true when the victims of such acts are close to the ones reporting on it. This thesis also explores how framing changes during the timeframe of the newspaper coverage. In the coverage of the In Amenas attack the human interest framed stories are spread throughout the whole timeframe demonstrating that the concern for the Norwegian hostages and victims was the most important focus from beginning to end. Responsibility-framed stories are also apparent throughout the coverage. In addition to the responsibility and human interest framed stories the beginning of the coverage also includes conflict-framed stories, the middle focuses on cooperation and the ending on economic consequences. The coverage of the Westgate attack is also characterised by a lot of human interest and responsibility stories, but the early coverage, as well as the coverage of the later developments also include a lot of conflict framed stories. The conflict frame is used to a much higher degree in the Westgate stories than the In Amenas stories. Lastly this thesis is concerned with the framing of the victims and perpetrators of these acts of terrorism. The coverage of the victims was mostly human interested framed and nationality played a huge part on the amount of attention the victims were given. The Norwegian victims were written about in a respectful way and the coverage of these victims was distinctly influenced by the impact their deaths had on the Norwegian society. There were, however, no Norwegians amongst those killed in Westgate, thus the stories about the dead were more sensationalised, and Norwegian survivors gained more attention than the victims. The division in representation due to nationality is also notable in the framing of the perpetrators. The stories on the Norwegian terrorist sought to explain why and how he became a terrorist to a much higher degree than the stories concerning the foreign terrorists. | eng |