Typhoon Haiyan Coverage on Inquirer and The Wall Street Journal News Sites: A Framing Analysis

Abstrak

Natural disasters, which strike without warning and leave
limited scope of preparedness, is a potentially traumatic event that is
collectively experienced with severe consequences. With its high news
values, natural disasters gain attention of the media, and therefore are
given foremost and extensive coverage, particularly on news sites which
allow readers to access the updates anytime anywhere. Natural disaster
coverage is always of great concern to people as it involves massive
deaths, human suffering and brings a huge impact to the aftermath life of
the victims. Debates were going on that the media depicted natural
disasters from different perspectives, especially between the Asian media
and the Western media, due to the geographical, cultural, political interest
and ideological divergences. Therefore, by taking Typhoon Haiyan news
coverage as a case study, this research aims to investigate the differences
of news frames featured in the Asian local media, Philippine Inquirer and
Western media, The Wall Street Journal news sites. The findings
indicated that the news framing of the Typhoon Haiyan disaster showed
resemblance in primary news source and theme coded for both the
Philippine Inquirer and The Wall Street Journal. Both the local and
international news media “mediatised” disaster beyond the national
spectrum of interest. The proliferation of new media, irrespective of Western or Asian media, has transformed the world of disaster into a
global context.