ABSTRACT
This study examines news frames on terrorism coverage during the year 2003
in four Southeast Asian, English language newspapers – the Bangkok Post, the Jakarta
Post, the Manila Times, and the Phnom Penh Post. Qualitative content analysis was
conducted using 590 articles, which are characterized as the “straight news”. The
study looked at the emphasis of the story, the structure of the article, the sources used
as a reference, and the opinion statements of the journalists to draw common themes
for the frame construction.
Thirty three frames including sub-frames were derived during the analysis.
The findings suggest that the coverage of terrorism revolves around three common
categories of frames, which differ in their number of usage across four newspapers.
PPP and BP coverage is characterized by using “issue-oriented” frames, MT coverage
is dominated by “conflict – oriented” frames, and JP coverage – by “destruction/
disaster-oriented” frames. Discussion of findings with the application of the Media
Framing theory is provided as well as the suggestions for the future research.
Approved:
Signature of