Political Violence as Understood within Historically Conditioned Schemata : A Case Ctudy of American Media Discourse on Chechen-led Hostage Crises

Abstract

The scale and pervasiveness of mass-mediated communication in modem life is so great that media influence permeates all layers of politics, society and culture. 'The news media exert their influence ... by determining in part which issues people use in making their overall evaluations' (Miller and Krosnick 1997: 260). Within this context, news outlets play an exceptionally important role in transforming and replicating dominant political, social and cultural beliefs, as well as setting policy agendas. One manner in which news media shape perceptions of key events is through the act of framing. Erving Goffman (1979: 10-15) maintained that framing is a matter of everyday circumstance, whereby an individual's subjective involvement in events or everyday life, operates on the basis of previous experience. In news media, news frames serve as journalistic tools through which journalists recounting a story in a limited amount of space place an event within its broader context (Norris et al. 2003: 10-11). Framing in media reports, may be understood as the employment of symbols, words and historical references by journalists. These provide associational conceptualizations whereby any event is understood in relation to a series of other events, which are expected to be familiar to the wider audience. Framing, or more importantly, the selection of one frame over another, provides evidence of potentially ideational undercurrents which are present in wider society. Additionally, frames can impact broader social values due to the content: texts, images and structures; of the news reports which are produced within news organizations, and subsequently published to a wider, often nationwide, audience. The resulting content of any news report is frequently the result of subconscious omissions, emphases and inclusions of information. The omissions, emphases and inclusions of any news report are not necessarily attributable to any explicit ideational actions by media outlets or reporters; rather factors such as politics, history, culture, economics, ideology and society are expected to play a role in subconsciously or cognitively influencing th way that the news media frames issues and events.