Studying Homo Narrans in several online habitats by analyzing the framing of the Wikileaks Iraq video in newspapers, blogs and tweets

Abstract

Working within the narrative paradigm as posited by Walter Fisher in 1985, a framing analysis was conducted to map the reception of the Wikileaks Iraq video by American newspapers, professional news blogs and by people on Twitter. The idea is that not only journalists, but all people are storytellers. Studying their storytelling on different online platforms, we can learn about the politics of form of these media, about their functions, and about the storytelling behaviour of different online users, who function within different institutional contexts. The analysis showed that several different versions of the Wikileaks Iraq video story existed online. It showed that people will tell one story or the other dependent on the context of their production, and dependent on the medium they use. People on different platforms were shown to make meaning differently. This tells us yet again that homo narrans, man the storyteller, is flexible.

About

This paper was written for a research seminar on User Generated Content and the Consequences for Journalism. It was lectured in early 2010 by dr. Todd S. Graham. The seminar was part of the Master of Journalism, at the University of Groningen. The paper explores new forms of online journalism and the media framing of the 2010 Wikileaks Iraq shooting video.

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Download the print version of Online Storytelling (pdf; right click, save as). Those interested in all research data excluded from the print version, can also download the Appendices of Online Storytelling (rar including pdf’s; right click, save as). All content is protected under Creative Commons license 3.0. For other permissions and contact, e-mail me at mom [at] jelmermommers.nl.

Navigate to:

• Opening citations
• Introduction
• Literature review
• This research
• Methodology
• Limitations
• Results
• Conclusions
• References

“The most striking phenomenon in Western journalism, in both praxis and theory, is the obstinate, the diehard metaphysical faith that language is transparent. Or, put somewhat differently: The fault lies in the refusal of journalists, but also of students of journalism, to put the profession where it belongs, that is, within the context of human expression, of expressive activity. It is the refusal to deal with and judge newswriting for what it is in essence – storytelling.”

Roeh, 1989: 162

“Choices of words and their organization into news stories are not trivial matters. They hold great power in setting the context for debate, defining issues under consideration, summoning a variety of mental representations, and providing the basic tools to discuss the issues at hand.”

Pan & Kosicki, 1993: 70

“Regardless of how many pundits attempt to frame this tragedy within the vagaries of a “war is hell” narrative, Collateral Murder will prove to be a landmark event in the reportage of the Iraq war, as it forces the viewer, in the most visceral way possible, to simultaneously confront both the deplorable unreality of American aggression and the grim fate of those caught within its scope.”

Douglas Haddow, 2010 (np)

1. Introduction

Humans are essentially storytellers. That was the basic proposition of a 1985 article by Walter Fisher, in which he argued that all human communication should be understood within the narrative paradigm, a paradigm that nullifies the distinction between mythos and logos and returns to the concept of logos as it was proposed by the (pre-Socratic) ancients, i.e. one concept that incorporates all aspects of human expression and communication, namely: story, reason, rationale, conception, discourse and/or thought. The paradigm holds that all meaningful communication is a form of storytelling.

The following paper is the result of taking this paradigm online and studying homo narrans (man the storyteller) as he used different platforms to make sense of one concrete news event, in this case the leaking of the Wikileaks Iraq shooting video (discussed later).

2. Literature Review

“Journalists are professional storytellers. They do not write articles, they write stories” (Bell, 236). Working from this perspective, journalism becomes more like other kinds of public expression (Zelizer, 2004:128). It can be regarded as a form of cultural production, in the same league as film making and fine arts. And like all acts of cultural production, journalism relies “on conventions to accomplish work while approximating a shared understanding with audiences and while working within social, cultural and economic constraints” (Lowrey & Latta, 2008: 185).

The news accounts journalists construct “shape in decisive ways our perceptions of the ‘world out there’ beyond our immediate experience. For many of us, our sense of what is happening in the society around us, what we should know and care about from one day to the next, is largely derived from the news stories they tell” (Allan, 1999: 77).

“[This] role of storyteller is a significant one”, notes Bell (2001: 236), “both in language behavior and in society at large. Much of humanity’s most important experience has been embodied in stories.”

Those readers still doubting the omnipresence of story in journalism should study its lingo. As Bell notes (idem): “A good journalists ‘gets good stories’ or ‘knows a good story’. A critical news editor asks: ‘Is this really a story?’ Where’s the story in this’?”

The storytelling perspective proposed here argues against the idea of ‘journalism as information’ (cf. Zelizer, 2004:129). It also argues strongly against any notion of a reality ‘out there’ independent of human observation, one which can be represented objectively in text, working by normative standards and professional conventions. From the storyteller perspective of journalism, there is no one ‘true story’ that can be told ‘correctly’ (cf. Roeh, 1989: 163). Codifying an event to make it fit into standardized news discourse (cf. Allan, 1999: 81) does not make that discourse the truest mirror of reality. There are only interpretations.

However, it would be a misunderstanding to deny that some stories make more sense or better reflect reality than others. Incidentally, this is not what (this interpretation of) Fisher holds. What Fisher does argue, however, is that no one form of discourse has “final jurisdiction” over others (1985:87). While sidelining the philosophical debate over fact and fiction, this paper confirms that there is a difference between true and fictional stories. The point is that whether or not a story is believed to be true depends on the producer, the medium and the audience. As Roeh explains, within the storytelling perspective, (research) questions are “located in the world of culture and meaning-production, rather than in the world of true facts and distorted facts” (Roeh, 1989: 168).

As Schudson notes, “all news stories are stories, but some are more storylike than others” (2003: 186). Hard news, for instance, is not narrative driven. “The classic hard news story operates more to convey useful information efficiently than to build a shared world with readers emotionally. At this end of journalistic writing, the reporter mimics a piece of machinery that conveys relevant information with accuracy” (idem). However, this hard news story should still be regarded as story, because different from a ‘simple chronological account’, it seeks coherence and meaning: “a story has a point, and it exists within a cultural lexicon of understandable themes” (Bird & Dardenne, 2009: 207). I would challenge anybody seeking to counter the idea of journalism as story, to produce one article or television news item that has no point, that seeks no coherence, that creates no meaning.

What then, is it that journalists do? According to Schudson, the reporter’s job is to “make meaning (…). The writer must construct a tale, one whose understanding requires a reader or viewer to recognize not the sum of facts but the relationships among them” (Schudson, 2003: 177). As meaning makers, journalists have authority (Barnhurst, 2003: 2). They “‘make events mean’ by providing frameworks for understanding unexpected or unusual events, thus bringing them within the bounds of the normal and comprehensible” (Hall et.al. (1978) as paraphrased in Lawrence, 1996: 141). Importantly, these frameworks for understanding should usually already be familiar with audiences to be effective. In other words: journalists have to retell familiar stories to be popular storytellers. Or as Bird & Dardenne put it, “the impulse to tell stories may lead journalists to frame the world in conventional ways that often reinforce existing ideologies” (2009: 208).

With all this storytelling by journalists and others in the business of cultural production, one would almost forget the first proposition of this paper. It does not say: “Journalists are essentially storytellers.” It said: “Humans are essentially storytellers.” Although in their professional role, journalists may have a privilege over others to tell what convention deems ‘true stories’, they are – like everybody else – in the business of making meaning, producing narratives, and thereby constructing the world (cf. Bird & Dardenne, 2009: 209).

The narrative paradigm was posited by Fisher as a proposal against the privileging of “experts” and their discourse. Fisher hoped that our (re)new(ed) understanding of man as storyteller would result in a concept of logos that approximates that of the ancients (i.e. one that incorporates story, reason, rationale, conception, discourse and thought in one concept), one that “regards all humans and their communication as not irrational and as deserving of respect” (1985:79 (italics added)). It is with this notion in mind that this story begins.

As always, the media landscape is changing. With the advent of the internet, it has been changing rapidly. Print media are in decline, online media are on the rise (cf. e.g. Pew, 2009). One pressing issue for online journalism is its business model: media companies have yet to find a way to pay for quality (investigative) journalism with online revenues, not to mention making a profit.

The internet has given non-journalists the tools to produce their own content (user-generated content (UGC)) on platforms like Blogger, WordPress and Twitter (basically a platform for micro-blogging). Some of these ‘amateurs’, as they have been positively (Lessig, 2007) and negatively described (Keen, 2007), are taking on an active role in (online) public debate. Some are stepping on to turf that used to be controlled by professional journalists only. These non-professional storytellers are getting actively involved in all stages of journalism. In the old days, readers had the option to react to an article or news item once it had been produced and printed or broadcasted (by mail, usually). Now, online users can get involved in all stages of journalistic production, and make their voice heard before professional gatekeepers do their work. Journalists are no longer the filters they used to be (Goode, 2009: 1291). In this sense, all this online activity is a “challenge of top down storytelling” (Deuze, 2006: 72). Online news journalism by non-professional journalists is dismantling a carefully cultivated hierarchical relationship between (mass) media consumers and producers (ibidem: 65). Even without going into the idea of Bourdieu’s field theory (1992), it is perfectly understandable that traditional media outlets have reacted negatively to these changes. If online amateurs can do (part of) a journalist’s job, then what is the point?

One prominent answer to the changes in the media landscape over the past 20 years has been the idea of “news as conversation” (cf. Gillmor, 2004; Goode, 2009: 1295). “The lines will blur between producers and consumers, changing the role of both in ways we’re only beginning to grasp now.” (Gillmor, 2004: xiii). “News reception is about process, not text, as “the story” emerges in conversation with the news narrative as framing structure. In making sense of the news, we involve others in the negotiation of meaning and its cultural significance emerges through everyday interaction” (Bird (2003) as cited in Bird & Dardenne, 2009: 212).

In this conversation, power matters. The texts that meaning makers manufacture, be they journalists or moviemakers, are shaped by the power relations that surround them (cf. Bourdieu, 2005). The creation of meaning is central to the idea of communication. But besides the socio-cultural or organizational aspect of creating meaning, there is always the question of raw power. Who has the power to create meaning? As stated before, journalists have authority to tell true stories, to manufacture true interpretation of events. But who is able to contest when the ‘right’ meaning is not being constructed? These are questions of power and when studying different (new) media and content producers, we should keep a sharp eye on the power relations that shape their stories. Power is imprinted in every act of cultural production.

There are several ways to interpret the influence of context on the production of story. One is a sociocognitive understanding of news discourse, as posited by Van Dijk. This perspective “explains how underlying ideologies control more specific group attitudes and how personal mental models of journalists about news events control activities of news making (…)” (2009: 195).

Schudson distinguishes two views to the manufacture of story: the cultural view or the social-organizational view (2003: 182). “Organizational views take news to be a manufactured product created anew each day in interactions among firms, markets, and resources. A cultural view is more impressed with the things news workers inherit than with what they create; it emphasizes not social production so much as the symbolic determinants of news in the relation between facts and symbols.” (ibidem, 183)

In my view, these perspectives on the influence of context on story overlap. For the purpose of this paper, the main point to be made is that the context of cultural production matters. As Roeh notes, “stories entail given points of view” and “storytelling assumes given contexts of communication and of meaning-production” (1989: 168). Later on in this paper, frames will be analyzed as the key manifestation of both story and context of the cultural production. In this view, the cultural producer is primarily a product of his surroundings.

 

Form is by no means neutral. The meaning of any text is both a result of its content (words, sentences, propositions, ideas) and its form (medium, (story-)structure, lay-out). As Goode notes: “[the] formal properties of any medium embody ‘codes’ which carry political consequences” (2009: 1303). Schudson gives a clear example of this phenomenon. He describes a changing role of journalists in the U.S. and concludes that “with the establishment of the summary lead as newspaper convention, journalists began to move from being stenographers, or recorders, to interpreters” (Schudson, 1995: 59). In other words: a change in function of journalists brought about a change in form of the journalistic product (i.e. story). Concludes Schudson: “It is a very different matter to say that the news reflects the social world by describing it, and to say that it reflects the social world by incorporating it into unquestioned and unnoticed conventions of narration. When a changed political reality becomes part of the very structure of news writing, then the story does not “reflect” the new politics but becomes part of the new politics itself. There is not only a narration of politics in the news; the news is part of the politics of narrative form” (ibidem, 66).

Form influences our perception of story. News papers, for instance, are masters of creating the form in which ‘true stories’ can be told. In this sense, the form of the news paper, the lay-out (e.g. using big or small pictures), the structure of particular stories, are all ideological. They reflect ways of looking at the world, they reflect ideas about truth and objectivity. A good example is the separation of op-eds and news in a newspaper. This form speaks the ideology of objectivity. Thus, news media provide the forms in which “true declarations” appear. (Schudson, 1995: 54) This is what Broersma calls “performative discourse” (in press).

I have relaid here this connection between form, content and ideology, because it follows logically that a new medium, a new form of communication, always challenges ideological givens, i.e. that any new medium has political consequences that may go unnoticed for some time, but are very real in the everyday lives of people as more of them start to use the medium. “The manifold scrambled, manipulated, and converged ways in which we produce and consume information worldwide are gradually changing the way people interact and give meaning to their lives” (Deuze, 2006: 66).

Obviously, the internet is playing a major role in this process. It is having profound influence on communication, journalism and politics. Roles are changing. Borders are being redrawn. This is fundamental of “online culture”, it involves a changing relationship between the consumers and producers of news. It facilitates open publishing initiatives and individualized storytelling (Deuze, 2006: 64).

It should be noted that like any other medium, the internet itself is not neutral:

[All] technology is routed in ideology. (…) The Internet has (…) a very concrete cultural ideological context. It represents the fusion of the old military industrial complex of southern California, and the hippy ethic of northern California. (…) [Both] the military industrial complex, which invented the internet or at least financed the internet in the late 50′s, and the counter culture of the late 60′s, in san Francisco were libertarian or hostile to authority, hostile to the state, hostile to traditions. These people were tied together by the libertarianism, by their hostility to traditional forms of authority.(Keen, 2009, np)

And because “technology is simply a reflection of human will [and technology] isn’t accidental, (…) doesn’t come about in a vacuum”, Keen concludes that “the Internet itself reflects a hostility towards authority.” The notion that the internet has “no centre”, that it cannot be controlled, is a reflection of its anti-hierarchical nature. On the other hand, Keen recognizes the paradoxical relationship between this ideal and the immense power of a few internet companies like Google and Facebook.

The point to be made here is that like other media, the internet is not a neutral medium but an ideological one, and so the producers that function within its context are influenced by its nature. This helps explain, as we will see later, why Wikileaks, a whistle-blower Web site with the mission to “break the world open” is really such a natural phenomenon of the internet. It is very hostile to any authority whatsoever. Whether this is good or bad is another question.

This also explains, for instance, the perceived “outsider status” of bloggers. They are seen by their users “as conduits to raw information, somehow less corrupted by power than their predecessors [from traditional journalistic outlets, JM]” (Tremayne, 2007: xvi). One important characteristic of blogs is their opposition to mainstream media, notes Deuze (2006: 65). This can be understood within Bourdieu’s field theory, i.e. that new competitors in a ‘field’ (in this case the journalistic field, or that of storytellers) naturally oppose the status quo (2005). It can also be understood with Keens proposition of the anti-authoritative nature of the internet (2009). Both perspectives lend a greater understanding of what is actually happening when “the people formerly known as the audience” (a term by Rosen, 2006) go online and start producing their own stories, their own narratives. “Instead of relying on journalists, public relations officers, marketing communications professionals, and other professional storytellers to make sense of our world, we seem to become quite comfortable in telling and distributing our own versions of those stories (…)” (Deuze, 2006: 66). Like the professional journalist’s transformation from a stenographer to an interpreter (see Schudson above), this is in itself an ideological shift; it is political.

Accordingly, professional journalists have not stood idly by as meaning makers on the internet challenged their authority as storytellers. The new content producers have been criticized and seen as a danger by professional journalists. Many journalists are of the opinion that the internet threatens quality of journalism (O’Sullivan & Heinonen, 2008: 366). As Hermida (2010: 4) relays, some journalists’ opposition to a service like Twitter “reflects the unease in adopting a platform which appears to be at odds with journalism as a ‘‘professional discipline for verifying information’’ (Project for Excellence in Journalism, nd). “Services like Twitter are a challenge to a news culture based on individual expert systems and group think over team work and knowledge-sharing” (Singer,2004, as cited in Hermida, 2010: 4).

Others have suggested a complementary relationship between weblogs and traditional journalism (Reese et.al, 2007), between old and new media. This complementary relationship is the one this paper endorses. Different media producers serve different purposes, and all should be free from elitist, normative judgments. Different media can and do co-exist, they influence one another but they do not necessarily compete for the same functions (Tremayne, 2007). No blogger has ever set out to be The New York Times.

Meaning makers do not function in a vacuum. On all sorts of online platforms, they influence and react to one another. Their normative ideas about story may be different, leading some to believe that they are different. But the borders between different forms of cultural production – take the genre-lines within journalism – are purely conventional and constantly changing. Historically, the idea of ‘objective journalism’ as it is favored by institutional media was normalized in reaction to other forms of storytelling, like the movement of ‘New Journalism’ (Roggenkamp, 2005). It is important to recognize the nature of these conventions and the corresponding normative judgments, because it opens up the possibility of ignoring them in favor of openly comparing the stories that different media producers tell. When we consider all people as storytellers, we consider all media as platforms for this activity. When we comparatively study the texts in these media, we learn about their politics of form, about ourselves and by extension we learn about the (social, organizational, cultural, and political) context that surrounds media producers.

Without normatively judging the ‘journalistic quality’ of one medium over another (a normative choice in its own right), this paper simply examines how people use different online platforms to make sense of the world.

3. This research

In this research the meaning making function of different online storytellers will be analyzed by taking a one case approach and studying its reception on different online platforms. More specifically, the research takes the case of the Wikileaks Iraq video and analyzes how storytellers made sense of it. This will tell us how – in relation to this event – different media platforms facilitate meaning making.

The study is not interested in determining whether in a normative sense, one form of content is more journalistic than another. Instead, the study identifies the functions of these different media platforms by examining the reception of the Wikileaks Iraq video. The study provides, if you will, a snapshot of online news breaking and storytelling. Before discussing the case studied here, the source should be introduced.

 

On Wikileaks

The video that prompted this research was obtained, decrypted and leaked by Wikileaks, a whistleblower Web site “run by an international collective dedicated to untraceable document-leaking” (Lynch, 2010:1).

Wikileaks was launched in early 2007. The Web site “publishes anonymous submissions and leaks of sensitive documents from governments and other organizations, while preserving the anonymity of its sources.” (Wikipedia, 2010). For its material, Wikileaks is completely dependent on what it calls its ‘courageous sources’.

Lynch notes: “As a site whose mandate is to publish any leak they deem significant, without regard for political impact, violation of privacy or breach of copyright law, Wikileaks has been a controversial project since its inception” (2010: 1). It should be noted that within the libertarian, anti-authoritative nature of many new online media platforms, Wikileaks makes perfect sense (see last chapter).

Wikileaks cannot be considered a regular journalistic enterprise from a normative point of view, because, as co-founder Julian Asssange told the New York Times: if he were forced to choose between being a journalist or an advocate, he would choose advocate (2010, April 6). The organization, therefore, cannot be said to share the ethic of institutional media working within the Anglo-Saxon model of ‘objective journalism’. “Wikileaks is aggressively proactive in its attempts to bring their leaks to the attention of journalists.” (Lynch, 2010:3)

This has not been the only reason for a tense relationship with mainstream media. Also, “Wikileaks is unsettling to journalists because it represents a radical shift in the way information is collected and distributed in the media landscape” (Lynch, 2010:2).

“Wikileaks poses a challenge to traditional journalistic practice, in particular to the ways in which investigative journalists have cultivated source relationships and the ways in which media outlets have established themselves as the arbiters of fact. And the friction rubs both ways: the collective that runs Wikileaks has expressed frustration in their dealings with traditional media, in particular with the press’s seeming indifference to some of their leaked material” (Lynch, 2010: 3).

According to a survey performed by Lynch (2010), journalists have mixed feelings about Wikileaks but most show at least some approval of the project and acknowledge that is was useful to them at some point. “Other journalists reported being frustrated with how the unconventional nature of the site thwarted their usual reporting practices” (ibidem: 9). In terms of gathering information, reporters are Wikileaks’ competitors and were described as such by the Web site in 2007 (ibidem:4).

It is important to note the essential differences and tensions between Wikileaks and traditional, institutional media because they may explain some of the findings of this research.

 

The case

The case studied here is the leaking of a video by Wikileaks. The video, shot from a helicopter gun-camera, shows the shooting and killing of alleged Iraqi insurgents and a Reuters reporter and his driver by American forces in Baghdad in 2007. The men on the ground were believed to be armed insurgents. Only after the incident did it show that the RPG (rocket launcher) soldiers had spotted on one of the men, was in fact the zoom lens of the Reuters photographer’s camera. Some of the other victims were armed. When a minivan arrived on the scene to carry away the wounded, the U.S. soldiers targeted the van too, injuring two children inside and killing others.

This incident had been reported by several media (including the Washington Post and the New York Times (both 2007, July 13)) and by David Finkel in his book The Good Soldiers. The scene in the video was thus not news in itself, although to many who were unaware of previous coverage, it may have been.

The footage of the incident is shocking in several respects. First, the images are graphic and gripping because they show not only the shooting and killing of armed men, but also of wounded people and of people coming to their rescue who seem to pose no imminent threat to the security of American forces.

Another shocking dimension of the video was the audio of military radio transmissions between soldiers in the helicopters and controllers on the ground. Before opening fire, for instance, one of the soldiers commands to “light ‘em all up”. After the shooting, a soldier calls on his buddy to “look at those dead bastards”. When friendly ground troops arrive, one of the soldiers in the helicopter chuckles after seeing a truck drive over a corpse. “I think they just drove over a body”.

Wikileaks published two versions of the video: one edited to nearly 18 minutes, and one full 39 minutes version showing the before and after of the incident described above. This has important implications, because Wikileaks would later be criticized for editing the images in such a way that they lack the context of ongoing fighting in the Baghdad neighborhood.

The question of what the actual news was, remains open and cannot be answered definitively, as the different interpretation by media will show. What was noteworthy, though, was that Reuters had tried in vain to obtain the footage ever since the incident. The news organization had even filed a freedom of information act (FOIA) request, but without success (Reuters, 2008). This led many, including Wikileaks, to believe the army was covering up a (series of) war crime(s).

Consequently, this was the way Wikileaks framed the video, giving it the title “Collateral Murder” and claiming that not only did the video show murder of at least some unarmed civilians, the two Reuters reporters and those coming to their rescue, but also that the US military had tried to cover this up. It is important to note that in this sense, the way Wikileaks published the news was far from ‘neutral’. The video was also given a clear political slant. Take for instance the opening of the video, with a George Orwell quote: “Political language is designed to make lies sound truthful and murder respectable, and to give the appearance of solidity to pure wind.”

Wikileaks held a press conference at the National Press Club in Washington D.C. on the morning of April 5, 2010, announcing the publication of the video. At 4:57 pm, Wikileaks tweeted that it had published the video: “LEAK: Cover-up of murder of civilians and journalists through US forces in Iraq. Video online at: http://collateralmurder.com”. This is where this research takes off. Readers are advised to watch the video to gain a full understanding of the following analysis. The research questions are:

R1: How was the leaking of the Wikileaks Iraq video framed on American newspaper Web sites, professional news blogs, and on Twitter?

R2: If the framing on the different online platforms differs, what does this tell us about these platforms and about the people using them?

4. Methodology

The reception of this leaked video (‘the news’ in the following) was analyzed on different meaning making platforms, in an effort to sample both old and new organizations and applications on the internet. Newspapers were chosen as a representative of old, institutional media that have gone online. Professional news blogs were chosen as a representative of new media online, which share many characteristics with newspapers, in that they too have become professional organizations that employ professional journalists. As Lowrey & Latta note: “[The] more relevant bloggers become in terms of audience and influence, the more their production routines resemble those of professional journalists” (2008: 185).

Twitter was chosen as a place to look for spontaneous meaning making by ordinary people, who without having taken a degree in journalism know to tell stories.

The focus is on American storytellers. The current research design can be replicated for other countries (e.g. Iraq) later.

Concretely, the top 10 most trafficked newspaper Web sites and the 10 top most popular political/news blogs in the U.S. were selected, along with 200 Twitter updates (‘tweets’) about the news. These numbers are not representative of all American online newspapers, blogs and tweeters, but they do give a general impression. (It is unclear whether or not the tweets were – like the other productions – written by Americans. More on this later.)

Especially with tweets, it was important to look at a relatively big number because, as Hermida (2010: 5) has argued, “the value [of Twitter] does not lie in each individual fragment of news and information, but rather in the mental portrait created by a number of messages over a period of time.”

Both (1) the initial reception of the news and (2) the first follow-up after the initial reception were analyzed. This would have meant looking at 20 newspaper articles, 20 blog postings, and 200 tweets – 100 forming the initial reception, another 100 forming the follow-up. However, some newspapers and blogs did not produce either an initial reception or a follow-up (or both), so the total number of selected productions was slightly smaller. Also, two blog postings that were selected for the follow-up category – the second posting about the news – were in fact initial receptions in terms of content. They were thus analyzed as such.

The table in appendix 1 summarizes the selection of data and units of analysis. Please see appendix 2 for more details on the selection and sampling processes.

 

Framing analysis

To analyze the content of the selected media productions, this research has resorted to framing analysis.

A very general definition of framing was proposed by Gamson & Modigliani as a “central organizing idea or story line that provides meaning to an unfolding strip of events” (cited in Entman et.al., 2009: 175). This definition according to Entman et.al. (idem) does not provide sufficient basis for consistent measurement or theory, but it does clarify the main idea of this branch of analysis. More specifically, it is useful to distinguish between issue-specific frames and generic frames (as proposed by de Vreese, 2005, cited in ibidem: 176). The issue specific frames “are pertinent only to specific topics or events. (…) Generic frames transcend thematic limitations as they can be identified across different issues and contexts” (idem).

Basically, “[the] idea is that framing and frames are primary means through which people make sense of a complicated world” (Entman et.al, 2009: 179). Frame analysis, then, “examines the selection and salience of certain aspects of an issue by exploring images, stereotypes, metaphors, actors and messages” (ibidem: 180).

This type of analysis fits especially well with the concept of news discourse as story. The method is essentially language-based (cf. Zelizer, 2004: 128). Framing provides “an important pathway for thinking about language use in conjunction with the intersection between journalists and their public.” (ibidem: 142). The idea of studying the use of language in news discourse closely – as framing analysis does – can be situated within the tradition of critical linguistics, which – among other things – holds that “journalists and other media workers can never evade the power structures which shape the vocabulary and other aspects of the way the language makes sense.” (Matheson, 2005: 5). Language can never be free from power. Framing analysis as interpreted here thus connects notions put forward in the literature review about storytelling, ideology and language. Frames reflect the people and the (organizational) context which produced them: the powers around a media producer (journalist, blogger, tweeter) and his/her personal bias and interpretation are imprinted in the texts they produce. As far as a media producer controls the selection of a frame, it represents the exercise of his/her power.

“Framing processes occur at four levels: in the culture, in the minds of elites and professional political communicators; in the texts of communications; and in the minds of individual citizens” (Entman (1993, 2004) as cited in Entman et.al, 2009:176). The issue-specific frames studied in this research resonate with broader frames that are present not only in specific media discourses, but also in the minds of people (both producers and consumers). A characteristic of these frames is that they are diachronic in nature: “A framing message has particular cultural resonance; it calls to mind currently congruent elements or schemas that were stored in the past.” (Entman et.al., 2009: 177). This research focuses on the issue-specific frames surrounding the Wikileaks Iraq video and takes the qualitative approach to framing, as clarified by the work of Pan & Kosicki (1993).

Pan & Kosicki identify four categories of framing devices in news discourse, representing four structural dimensions of that discourse. Analysis on every structural level yields insight into the nature of the frame that connects different signifying elements into a coherent whole. This analysis does not uncover the actual meaning of the story as it perceived by audiences. “Rather, it generates a data matrix of signifying elements that might result in different interpretations.” (Hall, 1980, as paraphrased in Pan & Kosicki, 1993: 69). The methodological benefit of this analysis is that it can be replicated for different discourses on one issue and that the results can be aggregated to observations on a higher level (idem). This is exactly what the current research intends to do.

The structural dimensions include (cf. Pan & Kosicki, 1993: 59-63):

1. syntactical structure (or macro syntax, i.e. form of content which can be analyzed without semantic analysis),
2. script structure (or story grammar, i.e. elements that organize events or actions),
3. thematic structure (or hypothesis testing, i.e. putting forward propositions)
4. and rhetorical structure (or stylistic choices, i.e. choice of words, categorizations, metaphors).

The current study has analyzed the syntactical structure of the different media generically, i.e. once for every media category (cf. Entman et.al., 176). Specific script structures were not analyzed in this study, because the main proposition that all media productions should be regarded as stories has already been put forward. This includes an understanding of the ‘story grammar’ of all news discourse, namely that it puts people, events, themes, places and scenes into a coherent (and often dramatic) story. (This is not to deny that different types of stories exist.) That thematic and rhetorical structure will be analyzed for each media production.

 

Units of analysis

Identifying (issue-)specific frames in the selected media productions was done by studying the thematic and rhetorical elements in the units of analysis, which are the headline and lead paragraph for articles and blog postings, or the whole tweet alternatively.

The headline and lead paragraph were chosen as the units of analysis because they represent the “heart” of the story (Schudson, 2003: 182). “The importance of the lead or first paragraph in establishing the main point of a news story is clear. (…) It summarizes the central action and establishes the point of the story”. It is where people “get the main point of a story from reading a single opening sentence”. The headline, then, “is an abstract of the abstract. The lead pares the story back to its essential point, and the headline abstracts the lead itself” (Bell, 2001: 239). Or as Allan puts it (1999:83):

Headline: represents the principal topic or ‘key fact’ at stake in the account. To the extent that it is recognized as performing this function by the readers, it is likely to influence their interpretation of the account to follow. In this way, then, it helps to set down the ideological criteria by which the reader is to ‘make sense’ of what follows.

News lead: typically the opening paragraph or two providing a summary or abstract of the account’s essential ‘peg’ or ‘hook’ which projects, in turn, ‘the story’ in a particular direction or ‘angle’. The five Ws and H (the who, what, where, when, why and how most pertinent to the event) will likely be in the lead or first paragraph.

The ‘ideological criteria’ that Allan mentions are important. The selection of the story angle is not a neutral choice, rather a product of interpreting and filtering on the basis of both professional and political norms and beliefs. The ‘inverted pyramid’ story-format puts the information deemed most important and ‘newsworthy’ on top. “[The] account proceeds to structure the remaing details in a descending order of discursive (and usually ideological) significance” (Allan, 1999: 83).

Categorization of data

In an iterative (inductive) process of collecting, coding and categorizing data, a list of working frames for the codation of general thematic choices was generated. These were used to code the better part of all data, after which they were reviewed and partly adapted, resulting in a definitive list of thematic frames. Categories for rhetorical/lexical choices were used to code more specific, local properties of the news discourse. Both the working frames and rhetorical/lexical categories were put down in a coding scheme and used as variables (cf. Entman et.al., 2009: 180).

An example of a general news frame identified in the initial reception of the news is the “Wikileaks publication frame”, meaning the discourse in the unit of analysis emphasized the publication of the video over its revelations. Another example is the “Wikileaks Collateral Murder (WCM) frame”, which means the article or posting copied the Wikileaks frame to convey the news.

Examples of coding categories for specific rhetorical/lexical choices include but are not limited to: “victim denomination” (e.g. ‘Iraqis’, ‘journalists’, ‘civilians and reporters’), “description of incident” (e.g. ‘attack’, ‘shooting’, ‘killing’, ‘murder’) and “description of video” (e.g. ‘combat’, ‘shocking, ‘brutal’).

When combined, analysis of these basic news- or issue-frames and rhetorical/lexical choices yields insight into the thematic and rhetorical structure of the media productions at hand.

Again, these frames represent the primary angle to the news as identified in headline and lead only. The analysis does not cover the rest of the discourse, because it is primarily interested in the ‘issue-framing’ by the content producers (Entman et.al, 2009: 182). What do the different meaning makers emphasize? This question of emphasis is central to the idea of framing, as framing according to Entman ‘‘essentially involves selection and salience. To frame is to select some aspects of a perceived reality and make them more salient in a communicating text’’ (1993: 52). Or put differently: “[The] intended meaning of a news story [which this type of frame-analysis shows, JM] has the capability of directing attention as well as restricting the perspectives available to audiences” (Hall, 1980; Tuchman, 1978, as paraphrased in Pan & Kosicki, 1993: 59).

A full exploration of the WCM frame can be found in appendix 3. A detailed description of all frames and coding categories can be found in the coding scheme, in Appendix 4a and 4b. Appendix 5 shows two complete examples of the framing analysis. Appendix 6 shows all data used for the analysis, i.e. all articles (6a), postings (6b) and tweets (6c, 6d). Appendix 7 contains the actual analysis; it shows the coding of the data in the coding schemes. (For appendices 6 and 7, please download the appendix package.)

Validity

Validity of the results will be ensured by providing thick, rich description of the material as much as possible within the given constraints (of length) of this paper, and by openly reflecting on the shortcomings of the study, as well as disclosing the assumptions, beliefs and biases that might have influenced the researcher’s interpretation. (These validity procedures borrow from both the constructivist (interpretative) and critical paradigm (Creswell & Miller, 2000: 125).)

Stability

Stability of measurement was assessed by retesting 25% of all data, two weeks after the original analysis. This method is not ideal to provide evidence for strong reliability claims, but within the context of this research, it is the best test available. According to Riffe et.al., accordance should be found on 80% of all tested cases (1998: 128). Babbie & Baxter (2004:248) claim 70% is enough. A sequence of random numbers was used to select cases for the retest. It should be noted that in case of the newspapers and blogs, the researcher still remembered part of the last coding session.

The retest suggests high stability, i.e. the researcher seems to be consistent, though not completely. As for the newspaper and blog analysis, agreement was found in 87% of the retested data (with a total of 62 codings in 10 articles/blog postings). In the retesting of tweets, 95% agreement was found on a total of 80 codings (in 50 tweets). These percentages were not corrected for chance agreement because, frankly, the researcher does not know how to use a statistical correlation test to do so. Test-retest data can be found in appendix 8. (For appendix 8, please download the appendix package.)

5. Limitations

Before moving to the results of the analysis, some notes on the research, disclosure of assumptions, beliefs and biases that might have influenced the researcher’s interpretation, and a discussion of concrete limitations of the method employed will follow. The researcher is of the opinion that these should be conveyed before turning to the results.

For the record, it should be stated that the researcher has thought about the ethical implications of this study. However, no obstacles worth an extensive review were encountered. The only point that could be raised is that of the privacy of tweeters, who although tweeting in public, often feel they are communicating with their friends and followers only. One could argue that tweets used for research should thus be made anonymous, protecting the privacy of their authors. However, this researcher is of the opinion that was is public, is public. Secondly, the current study is not suggesting judgment of the content of tweets. In this respect, there really is not much case for offense.

Researcher bias

Determining issue-frames and categories was an interpretative process, as was the interpretation of the framing analysis that follows. Because of this interpretative aspect, the reader has the right to know what bias in the mind of the researcher might have skewed the interpretation one way or the other.

To start, I found the Wikileaks video horrible to watch. It made me hate war more than I had consciously hated it before.

Being a blogger and tweeter myself, I was personally involved in the reception of the news. I wrote about it on my blog and I tweeted about it (mostly in Dutch). I was disappointed with mainstream media coverage of the Wikileaks video, especially with the framing of it in some (Dutch) newspapers. I felt the coverage failed to adequately describe how ugly the images and the comments of the soldiers were. A lot of the media I read framed the issue within the “war-is-hell” narrative, as Haddow (2010) calls it. I personally feel that this frame is a missed opportunity to discuss the horror of war more broadly. The video could have been the start of a conversation. Within big media, I did not witness that conversation as much as I would have personally ‘liked’. Still, I realize that there is no ‘wrong’ or ‘right’ interpretation of the news.

These ideas on the coverage made me think of this research in the first place. I wondered whether other media step in when mainstream media do not facilitate the emotional processing of the images and this conversation on the horrors of war. This question may have led me to look for otherness on blogs and on Twitter, as opposed to the generally more traditional newspapers. However, I have done an honest attempt to answer the research question independent of these ideas. I have not consciously ignored signs that did not fit my implicit hypothesis.

Shortcomings in sampling

The sampling techniques that were used to gather the data were not flawless. For the sampling of tweets, the research was completely dependent on Google search results. The Google update search is a new service and it is unclear what ‘rules’ Google applies for the scanning of Twitter. In general, Google is not a neutral search tool that scans the whole internet. According to some estimations, its robots scan only 25% of the web. Others estimate this percentage to be 50% (Van Ess, 2009: 34). Either way, the search results Google produces are never complete. Secondly, Google ‘ranks’ pages on a number of aspects, including the number of links to it. If a similar mechanism is in place for the scanning of Twitter, this would mean that Google update search only scans popular tweets or tweeters. This dependency on Google’s scanning technique of Twitter is far from ideal, but within the boundaries of this research, acceptable. It should be noted that the Twitter conversation studied here may not be representative of the actual activity on the whole of Twitter.

Also, it is unclear whether or not the Tweeters researched here were American citizens, like the storytellers at newspapers and blogs (supposedly). This showed when one of my own tweets – written in English – appeared in the Google search results. To take a more extreme and unlikely example: some of the anti-war statements in the sample may have been written by Iraqis, in English, and thus show up in an English Google update search. Manually, it is possible to check each tweeter for his/her ‘location’. But this would have taken too much time within the boundaries of this research.

Similarly, there is a somewhat unfair mechanism in place for the selection of blogs. Because blogs were only selected if they had in fact reported on the news (see appendix 2), popular news blogs that ignored the news were not part of the sample. In the case of top trafficked newspaper Web sites, however, those that did not report on the news online were included in the sample. Unfortunately, without this sampling technique for blogs, it was impossible to come up with a definitive list that was both popular and in this case, relevant.

In general, the best has been done to provide representative and relevant samples with the given limitations of online sampling.

Shortcomings of the analysis

Blogs at newspaper Web sites were excluded from the analysis. This is a debatable choice. In the end, the argument that made for excluding blogs on newspaper Web sites was that the research looks at the ‘official’ reception of the news, one that is prominent on the website. It is assumed that blog postings on newspaper Web sites do not make it to the (digital) front page and are mostly read by specialists and ‘fans’. Accordingly, they cannot be seen as representative of the reception of the news by the journalistic organization of the newspaper. However, it should be noted that newspapers are incorporating blogs on their websites, and that this has consequences for their online storytelling.

One could argue that comparing news articles and blog posts to tweets is an exercise in apples and oranges, because in the case of tweets, the whole thing is taken into account, whereas the articles and blogs are cut short after the lead. However, as was pointed out several times, the research looks at the story angle. Accordingly, a tweet should be compared to the headline of an article or blog posting. The analysis identifies the main issue-frame.

This research does not examine the motives of storytellers. The consequence of a radical storyteller perspective is that a pr-spokesperson’s story is analyzed in the same terms as an independent journalist’s story. After all, everybody is a storyteller and no form of discourse has ‘final jurisdiction’ over others (see literature review). Because obviously these motives do matter, future study should tackle this problem by distinguishing somehow between storyteller motives (such as commercial, political, entertaining, etc.).

This research although recognizing the interactive nature of online news production, has not taken into account the actual interaction between different media. The content producers were analyzed in isolation. Especially blogs and tweets are a place for hyper-linking, but the analysis did not include a category to check where they linked to (e.g. ‘personal blog’, ‘newspaper Web site’). Future research should incorporate this aspect so that an impression of the entangled nature of the online storytelling arises. This includes an understanding of the globalised character of the conversation. Although it was studied as being so, in reality the online storytelling is not local. Again, this hints to future research.

Comments about the size of the samples are beside the point, as this study makes no claims of representativeness on a quantitative basis.

6. Results

The following results provide the answer to the first research question:

R1: How was the leaking of the Wikileaks Iraq video framed on American newspaper Web sites, professional news blogs, and on Twitter?

Syntactical structure

The syntactical structure of the different platforms in this research is markedly different. Newspapers typically produce articles like they would for the newspaper, but instead publish them online (first). The textual structure is much the same as a print article would be, starting with a lead after the headline. However, newspaper Web sites are, like blogs, much more interactive than a print article and they provide the journalists with new reporting tools, like hyper-linking and embedding video. Blog postings are similar to online newspaper articles in terms of their syntactical structure.

Twitter is a completely different story. It provides users (‘tweeters’) with the possibility to produce short 140 character messages, which is precisely the length of this sentence. Tweeters who follow one another can than see each other’s messages and reply or republish the message to their own followers (‘retweet’). Most tweets are public, i.e. also accessible for unsubscribed visitors, and include links to content on other online platforms. All in all, Twitter facilitates instant but short communication. Many journalistic organizations, including Wikileaks, have created an account to promote their content via Twitter.

One very important distinction between newspapers and the other platforms, is that conventionally, newspapers separate opinions (in op-eds) from facts (in articles). Blogs make this distinction less markedly. In form, tweets do not differentiate at all. One tweet can be about a pet, while the next carries political content. In these online spaces, the conventional separation in form between ‘fact’ and ‘fiction’ seems to fade. As for the journalistic ideology of blogs, it shows that in comparison to newspapers, they have a different conception of news and objectivity. The ideal of objective reporting is not represented in the same form as it is in online newspapers. While these notions are somewhat rough and generalised, they are relevant for the interpretation of the results to come. Of other political consequence are the lay-out, the use of images, the size of headlines, and so on. These can vary wildly for both online newspaper Web sites and blogs. It is beyond the scope of this research to discuss these differences in detail.

It is important to note that these platforms co-exist in an endless online space and that there are plentiful linkages between them. This is the macro-syntax of any of these platforms, if you will: they are interactive and interconnected.

Initial reception

Of the 10 newspapers, 2 did not produce an initial reception of the news. One of them, The Wall Street Journal, did link to other websites who reported the news. Of the 8 remaining initial receptions of the news by newspapers, a majority (6) emphasized the content of the video in their initial reception, while framing the news on their own terms, i.e. not copying the WCM frame. Take the example of The New York Times:

One newspaper initially emphasized the publication of the video over its revelations. Another communicated the news within the 2007 incident frame when first reporting on the news, emphasizing what happened three years ago before speaking of the release of the video.

The blogs were decidedly less uniform in their first reporting on the news. To start, three blogs emphasized the publication of the video by Wikileaks in their first reporting, taking as the main news angle the fact that the video got published, only then followed by what it showed. Take for instance the headline of The Daily Beast: “Wikileaks releases Iraq-Killing Video”. After this headline, a short posting clarifies what the video shows, but the main news according to the headline is the publishing of the video.

Remarkably, two blogs communicated the news by directly debating the content of the video – asking whether it showed collateral murder – and thereby assuming the reader was already aware of the news. Take the example of the Hot Air Blog, who headlined its posting: “Video: Collateral murder, or the risk of war zones?” One blog communicated the news by framing it within the precedent of Reuters trying to obtain the video in vain.

Of the five remaining blogs, only one primarily framed the news exclusively in their own terms, i.e. not copying any part of the WCM frame in their initial reception. Three blogs communicated the news within the WCM frame, while attributing that frame to Wikileaks – making clear that this interpretation is not necessarily theirs (using for instance quotation marks). An example is the HuffingtonPost report, which read the headline: “Wikileaks VIDEO Exposes 2007 ‘Collateral Murder’ In Iraq”. Two other blogs copied the WCM frame without distancing themselves from it, implying the WCM frame is the ‘right’ interpretation of the events shown in the video. An example is the posting by Truthdig, which was titled: “Collateral Murder in Iraq”.

On Twitter, there were many different first reactions to the news. 75 out of the 100 tweets analyzed for the initial reception were concerned somehow with breaking the news, or ‘helping’ to do so. No less than 45% of these tweeters copied the WCM frame directly by retweeting the Wikileaks news tweet (cited above), or by phrasing the news in their own terms but clearly within the WCM frame. Another 7% of these news breaking tweeters communicated the news within the WCM frame, while attributing that frame to Wikileaks and thereby taking a subtle distance. One tweeter directly refuted the WCM frame by saying “you say zoom lens, I say RPG” – defending the soldiers’ actions. The remaining 47% of news breaking tweeters communicated the news in their own terms, i.e. without clearly referring to or copying from the WCM frame.

The 46 tweets that were not breaking the news communicated about it in many ways. Eight tweeters reacted emotionally, saying for instance the video was “sickening” or that “no video has ever depressed me more”. Three others made comments about the coverage of the news, noting for instance that “this story is exploding!” Two tweeters criticized mainstream media, e.g. “American media show ignorance over Wikileaks leaked video of soldiers shooting civilians in Iraq…” Twelve others made statements that were interpreted as being political or anti-war, like for instance the phrase “END WARS NOW!” or the label “America’s disgrace” or the statement that “someone should be accountable”. Other tweets included citations from the soldiers in the video (3), recommendations for watching it (4), words of thanks to Wikileaks (4), and statements about the video authenticity (7).

Comparing these platforms, this analysis shows that in their initial reception, newspapers were more likely to frame the news in their own terms, not copying Wikileaks’ suggestion of “Collateral Murder”. Half of the blogs communicated the news within the WCM frame, either with attribution or without, while the other half chose a different interpretation altogether. Almost half of the tweets that were analyzed here copied the WCM frame literally, mostly by retweeting. This is a considerable difference in the choice of the main news angle, especially with the newspaper Web sites. In other tweets, a variety of reactions to the news could be found, including for instance emotional reactions and anti-war or political statements.

Follow up

Two newspapers did not follow up on the news online. Three others followed up on the news by publishing an (identical) AP story which quoted a senior military official saying the video was real. The five other newspaper follow-ups were stories about the White House response to the video, the fact that the military supposedly lost its copy of the video, a story about the military criticizing the lack of context in the edited version of the video, one about the role of social media like Wikileaks in current day journalism, and one on Wikileaks itself.

One blog also followed-up on the news by conveying that an official had confirmed its authenticity. Another told the story of the U.S. Army’s CENTCOM publishing a redacted version of its own investigation into the 2007 incident. Two other blog postings were stories debating the incident and what the video shows. Finally, another two blogs published posts about comedian Stephen Colbert who interviewed Wikileaks’ editor in chief, Julian Assange.

The follow up on Twitter was as diverse as the initial reception and even more so, because in the initial reception, almost half of all tweets were copies (often retweets) of the WCM frame. The topics of the April 7 tweets are shown in figure a:

Click for larger image.

First and foremost, comparing the platforms on their follow-up shows a rich diversity of stories. Among these, remarkable findings include the fact that (1) three newspapers published the same AP story, and that (2) two blogs discussed what the video showed, while in this sample, no newspaper dedicated a follow-up story to do this. Twitter facilitated a very diverse follow-up in terms of content, with tweets often pointing to coverage on other platforms.

Please note that neither the image of the initial reception nor that of the follow up provides a complete overview of all internet activity surrounding the news. For instance, Web sites of major television news networks were not part of the sample of this study, although they are far more popular than newspaper Web sites for the consumption of news (Pew, 2010). Besides, the analysis above has only looked at the principal thematic choices in headlines and leads.

Rhetorical/Lexical properties

The above analysis of the initial reception and the follow-up of the news on the different platforms was focused on the thematical choices made by the different meaning makers, it analyzed the basic themes and topics of their stories. Now, in which terms did they tell these stories? The analysis of the frames is not complete without looking at the rhetorical and lexical properties of the texts, i.e. the choice of words and stylistic devices to convey the news.

The following analysis is concerned with the description of the video (was it a ‘combat’ video or was it ‘harrowing’?), the labels or descriptions of the incident (was it an ‘attack’ or a ‘massacre’?), the denomination of the victims (were they ‘men’ or ‘unarmed civilians’?), the denomination of the culprit (was a US helicopter or were American soldiers shooting in the video?) and the description of the source (‘Wikileaks’ or ‘a Web site’?).

The headlines and leads of all newspapers and all blogs were analyzed on these properties, but not all tweets. Only those tweets that were not copying (i.e. retweeting) the WCM frame and that were involved with breaking the news, were analyzed on these properties because (1) analyzing the (exact) frame copies (i.e. retweets) would yield identical data time and time again and (2) these tweets do not represent the story telling characteristics of tweeters, because they are copies of somebody else’s story. Tweets that were not concerned with breaking the news were excluded for this part of the analysis too, because they would not be on the topic of the video itself and thus not use the terms analyzed here. In short, 35 April 5 non-WCM news tweets were coded for their rhetorical/lexical properties.

Description of the video

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Newspapers and blogs in about 35% of all (34) cases described the video as a “killing video”, a “shocking video” or a “brutal video” (or a similar variation to these terms). These powerful words were far less common on Twitter, where most tweeters described it either as the “Wikileaks video” (56% of 18 tweets) or a “combat video” (28%). (17 other tweets did not specify a description of the video at all.) Some newspapers were unique to describe the quality of the video, calling it “gritty” (10%). Newspapers were also more likely to call the video “leaked” (25%), rather than the “Wikileaks video” (only 5%). These results may be explained by the nature of these platforms. On Twitter, users have only very limited space to articulate the news and adjectives or other descriptives may be left out, unless when functional (like ‘Wikileaks’ or to a lesser extent, ‘combat’). Conversely, blogs and newspapers have several chances – in the headline and the lead – to describe the video with an adjective. It is remarkable how blogs were far more likely to use the descriptive “Wikileaks” than newspapers, who in this sample seemed relatively more comfortable with the term “combat” or “leaked”.

Description of incident

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See figure c in appendix 9: Newspapers, and to a slightly lesser extent, blogs, were more likely than tweeters to describe the incident shown in the video as an ‘attack’, a ‘firefight’ or an ‘engagement’. This type of technical description for the images in the video can be interpreted as distant: it allows for some distance between the culprit and the victims because it were not ‘soldiers shooting’ but ‘an attack killing’. Newspapers were more likely than blogs, and blogs more likely than tweeters, to describe the incident as a ‘shooting’. However, the most used category of description for all platforms was a term focused on the act of killing. This term was used most by tweeters (59% of 29 tweets), followed by newspapers (40% of 20 newspaper articles). About 25% of blogs and tweeters described the video in Wikileaks’ terms or in line with Wikileaks terms (i.e. ‘murder’, ‘slaying’, ‘indiscriminate targeting and killing’, ‘atrocity’), with blogs attributing these descriptions to Wikileaks in 5 out of 7 cases. Only one newspaper article described the incident in terms that were in line with the powerful WCM terms mentioned before, referring to the troops as ‘unleashing devastation and killing (…)’. Apart from this one instance, the most graphic descriptions in the newspaper headlines and leads were focused on the act of killing: ‘shooting and killing’, ‘gunning down’. The difference with the blogs and tweeters in this respect is considerable, their language in many cases was more direct, with blogs and two tweeters using WCM frame terms by describing the incident as an ‘atrocity’ or a ‘massacre’. It is important to note that in this sample, the most confronting descriptions of the incident were almost exclusively used on new online platforms such as blogs and Twitter.

Denomination of victims

Click for larger image.

Finally, the analysis has shown that the victims were denominated in a wide variety of ways. In the headline and the lead paragraph, newspapers were most likely (in 46% of 13 cases) to name those killed in the video “journalists” or “Reuters employees” only (i.e. ignoring in the first instance the civilian and/or insurgent casualties). Others (23%) called the victims a “group of men, some of whom were unarmed”. Finally, some newspapers (15%) named those killed in the video ‘Iraqis and reporters’, while others chose to denominate them as ‘journalists, and possibly armed men’ (8%), or simply as ‘Iraqis’ or ‘civilians’ (8%).

The blogs used different denominations in their headlines and lead paragraphs. One part (of 16 cases) specified all victims as ‘reporters’ only (13%) or ‘Iraqis/civilians’ (6%). More than half of all bloggers denominated the victims as ‘Iraqis and reporters’ (56%). Finally, 25% of bloggers described the victims of the shooting as ‘Iraqis, journalists, and a van collecting the wounded’.

Tweeters were (like newspapers) most likely (in 37% of 27 cases) to specify the victims of the killings as ‘reporters’ only. Almost 30% of tweeters described the victims as ‘Iraqis’ or ‘civilians’. 18,5% denominated those killed in the video as ‘Iraqis and reporters’. Remarkably, 11% of tweeters (equaling 3 tweets in the sample) described the victims as ‘unarmed civilians and journalists’.

It is remarkable that the denomination that can be considered most complete and specific, ‘Iraqis, journalists, and a van collecting the wounded’, was used only by bloggers and once by a tweeter (who mentioned the shooting at children). To the other meaning makers, some of the victims were apparently not part of ‘the who’ that is typically contained in the lead. Nobody put the shooting at the people and children in the van on first place.

Many newspapers were quick to emphasize the killing of Reuters reporters, emphasizing the loss of journalists over the loss of Iraqi civilians or the wounding of children. This is not to say these newspapers neglected to mention them altogether (e.g. later in the article), but it does say that they chose not to emphasize these victims alongside the reporters, something 4 out of 16 blog postings did choose to do. It is remarkable too that some tweeters described the victims as ‘unarmed civilians and journalists’, when clearly at least some of the men in the video were armed. Most precise descriptions (‘some unarmed’, ‘possibly armed men’) could be found on the newspaper Web sites. Contrary to these precise descriptions, however, 6 out of 13 newspapers described the victims primarily and only as journalists, when clearly the Reuters employees were not the only victims.

Culprit

Finally, the analysis has determined how the culprit – the one shooting in the video – was denominated. It showed that on all media platforms, content producers were most likely (67-81%) to denominate the culprit in an impersonal way, e.g. as ‘U.S. Army’, ‘American helicopter’ or ‘Apache’. The other (beginnings of) stories analyzed here denominated the culprit more directly as (American) people, calling the shooters ‘U.S. forces’, ‘soldiers’ or ‘troops’ among other things.

Source

For newspapers and blogs, the analysis has coded the denomination of the source. Most productions on these platforms denominated the source fully as ‘Wikileaks’, or for instance ‘the whistle-blower Web site Wikileaks’. One newspaper hid the Wikileaks name (calling the source ‘a website’), while seven newspapers and three blogs produced one article or posting that did not name the source of the video at all. It can be concluded that in the coverage analyzed in this sample, the source (i.e. Wikileaks) of the video was emphasized more often in the headline or lead paragraph of blog postings than that of newspaper articles.

7. Conclusions

Images have the power to disrupt dominant narratives. They may not (always) have a direct influence on politics and policy-making, but they might have a “considerable impact on popular imagination and historical consciousness” (Papadopoulos, 2008: 6). “Iconic news photographs might have long-term repercussions for the shaping of public consciousness and national memory (…)” (ibidem:23). I would argue this goes for video as well as for photographs. We should recognize images’ power to directly engage with publics. As Papadopoulos argues in the case of the Abu Ghraib torture photographs, images can function as their own frame, i.e. not have as a main function to support another frame in a news text (ibidem: 6).

The Wikileaks Iraq video, however, was directly incorporated within a frame. The first ever time audiences saw the images, they were already part of Wikileaks’ proposed story of ‘collateral murder’. From the title to the tweet that notified people of the leak, Wikileaks interpreted the images every step of the way, and it gave them political meaning before audiences had the chance to do so. By all means, this was forceful meaning making – it was an act of storytelling outside of conventional journalistic platforms.

And it was quite successful, at that. On Twitter, the WCM frame was widely reproduced. Half of all blogs copied it too, while some emphasized the source of the frame by attribution. Wall (2009: 21) has found that much of the collecting, constructing and distributing of information on war via social media such as blogs still echoes the military’s preferred narratives, irrespective of “who the storytellers happens to be”. The reception of the Wikileaks video shows that new media organizations can now successfully bypass these ‘preferred narratives’ in favor of their own story.

The analysis of the newspaper’s interpretation of the news showed the undoing of the Wikileaks Collateral Murder frame. The vocabulary used in newspaper articles was markedly different from the original ‘collateral murder’ story. The terms used to describe the incident in newspaper articles were less graphic than those used in blogs and in tweets, which stayed closer to the WCM frame. The newspapers, like the tweeters, barely emphasized the victims of the van-shooting as the first issue, many conversely naming only the Reuters reporters as victims in the headline and lead. Wikileaks tweeted that for them, “the focus on the Iraq massacre response should be the cover-up and the van/missile attack”. Pronouncing this preference on the framing of the video so explicitly, makes it all the more interesting to see how effectively (especially) newspapers were at removing the WCM frame and telling the story in their own terms. With some exceptions, the newspaper articles removed the sharp edges in Wikileaks’ discourse, translating the news event into a discourse that was less confronting. Blogs were in many ways in between much of the dominant meaning making in newspapers and the diverse conversation on Twitter. But on comparison, they stayed much closer to the WCM frame than newspapers did. Like Twitter, they were less uniform in their reception than newspapers.

Professional journalists’ unwillingness to retell the story that Wikileaks proposed might be understood by the uneasy relationship between the mainstream press and the online collective. Wikileaks’ aggressively proactive behavior when promoting its leaks (and in this case, its story) might irritate journalists from traditional news outlets. Mainstream media in this research (i.e. the newspapers) may not have been indifferent to Wikileaks’ material, they were indifferent to Wikileaks’ proposed story.

There is one big if to these claims. The cases researched here were all news articles, never op-ed pieces. The op-ed pages may have literally copied the WCM frame, and this research would have never known. But the finding of this research and the following conclusions do apply to newspaper’s primary discourse.

To conclude, the second research question will be answered by combining and comparing the results from the analysis above with the points raised in the literature review, thereby aggregating findings to a higher level of understanding.

R2: If the framing on the different online platforms differs, what does this tell us about these platforms and about the people using them?

On functions

When regarding it as the professional journalists’ job to bring events within the bounds of the normal and comprehensible, to fit new stories within existing narratives, it is no surprise that the WCM frame was discarded. News discourse often works to depoliticize the issues at hand (cf. Allan, 1999: 77). When information is placed in a hard news story, this involves undoing it of subjective emotions and primary reactions. One could even argue that newspapers had no other choice then to discard the WCM frame, because it was full of blatantly “subjective language”. Copying it would have comprised the impartial stance the organizations working within this paradigm seek. The analysis shows that newspapers efficiently exercise this objectifying function, that within their paradigm, they act as cleaners for the status quo (which exists by virtue of existing narratives). A similar point could be made for the blogs that communicated the WCM frame, but took a subtle distance by attributing it to Wikileaks.

On Twitter, this is not the case. Twitter functioned as a much more effective echo chamber for the WCM frame. Seeing the results of this research, Twitter shows the potential to be a diverse platform for the distribution of content, whereas blogs and newspapers specialize in one function to serve their audiences (or advertisers). However, it should be noted that many tweets link to story on other platforms and in this sense, Twitter is as much a place for conversation as it is for aggregation (or advertising).

The literature review suggested a complementary relationship between media. This proposition is supported here because no one platform fulfilled all identified functions. Different functions – for instance the re-framing by newspapers, the emotional and political communication on Twitter – can co-exist online, which suggests that all are necessary.

Talking of media functions raises questions on the future of (online) investigative journalism. It has been noted that amateurs step in and take over (part of) the functions of journalists, while rarely making them completely abundant. But with the leaking of the Wikileaks Iraq video, it shows that exclusively online organizations can perform tasks that were once the exclusive domain of traditional media. Generally, the internet is not seen as a good place for investigative journalism because there is no business model in place to pay for it. But Wikileaks is showing traditional outlets that online journalistic enterprises can perform their tasks and tell their own stories. Lynch (2010) suggests that some professional journalists are using Wikileaks as a safehouse for sensitive information. This development paves the way for seeing the internet as a place for collaborative journalism by all sorts of meaning makers. For the future of journalism, this is a hopeful sign.

On form

The form that storytelling takes on Twitter facilitates process and negotiation of meaning. It is not one tweet, but the mental portrait that all tweets construct over time that matters to users (cf. Hermida, 2010). The form of the newspaper Web site is much more definitive. It suggests that much of the meaning making has already been done. Professional news blogs are somewhat in between these two opposites, with blogs usually being more interactive than newspaper Web sites.

Earlier, this paper proposed that because the internet is not a neutral medium, it is likely to influence the producers that function within its libertarian context. This proposition can be both endorsed and refuted with the current results in hand. First, it can be endorsed because of Wikileaks’ political inclination. Wikileaks poses as a radical outsider, ready to break the world open. In fact, the story researched here took on the form of its creator. The proposed story fits with the storyteller’s profile and with the anti-authoritative nature of the internet as identified by Keen (2009).

But second, this proposition can be refuted when looking at the newspapers. They did not fundamentally change their function when they went online, although they might have shifted to a more interactive and accessible form of storytelling. The medium may be the message, but within its borders, many messages can be communicated.

On power

It was stated in the literature review that frame analysis by extension lays bare the imprint of power and the context in which the storytellers function. Looking at the results from this perspective, what can be concluded? Most interestingly, it shows that newspapers have the power to re-frame the proposed story. Their function was to undo the ‘bare facts’ from the story Wikileaks proposed, and to use them to retell the story using another, less confronting narrative.

The power of blogs in this context can be interpreted in two ways. Either, they had the power to resist re-framing the Wikileaks story into a cleaner version, or they were powerless to resist Wikileaks’ framing.

Twitter had the potential to be all of the above, as it was both an aggregator for the stories other online media produced, and a platform for the negotiation of meaning.

The meaning makers in this research used their power to make meaning differently. At newspapers and professional blogs, few write for many to read. The meaning makers at these organizations have relatively much power to (re-)create stories. On Twitter, many write for relatively few to read. But the tweeters have the power of the collective to make meaning. Their conversation is open and the negotiation of meaning among users creates story.

On political consequences

What are the political consequences of the framing in the online media that were studied here? Basically, the research has shown that on the internet, several frames can co-exist. No dominant frame was identified across all platforms. This finding is important because it has consequences for the interpretation of the news by readers. These readers are offered different vocabularies to think about the news. They are confronted with different denominations of key actors and events in the video. These different frames construct different worlds ‘out there’ – they direct attention to other parts of the information and they restrict the number of perspectives – which obviously has major political consequences.

It should be noted that there is no way of knowing how exactly the proposed frames on the different platforms were interpreted by their consumers. We can say, however, that framing heavily influences readers’ responses to news discourse because “on most matters of social or political interest, people are not generally [very] well-informed and cognitively active (…). [Framing] therefore heavily influences their responses to communications (…)” (Entman, 1993: 56).

This arguably had major consequences for people using Twitter and directly encountering the WCM frame, which was widely spread there. Communication on Twitter is quick, unfiltered and direct. These characteristics offer the suggestion of consuming ‘raw information’. In this case, however, the WCM story was anything but ‘raw’, it had been finely edited before making it online. Tweeters may have been unaware of the extent to which Wikileaks framed the issue in the video, heavily influencing their interpretation. Arguably, this suggestion was perpetuated by the very nature of video, which like photojournalism is “cloaked in [a] mantle of objectivity” (Schwarts, 1992:108, cited in Allan, 1999:87).

Moving further, the fact that several frames co-existed can be interpreted as having detrimental effects on the shared culture of a society. If people do not exchange and negotiate story, they become isolated from one another. If it were true that people use only one medium to get the news, these findings would endorse Keen’s fear of “the risk of a relativistic world devoid of common stories [as a result of the opposing, co-existing frames on the Web (JM)]” (cited in Bird & Dardenne, 2009: 213).

However, research shows that only 7% of Americans get the news from only one medium on a typical day. Twitter is not commonly used as a news source: in a research by Pew it was the least cited news source. Conversely, “[some] 46% of Americans say they get the news from four to six media platforms on a typical day” (Pew, 2010). It can thus be concluded that the different framing on the online platforms might have influenced the same readers and that the different frames do not exist in isolation but rather are re-mixed by both consumers and producers of news.

On Homo narrans

In the perspective of this paper, content producers are seen as a product of their surroundings, not as free agents who – except for some superficial choices – have the power to select the stories they wish to tell. This perspective makes for a different interpretation of the frames used. For newspapers and blogs, we can imagine the professional, institutional context of their story production. For Twitter, there is no way of knowing the institutional context that controlled the meaning makers.

When not viewing the human meaning makers who’s content was studied in this research as different in a personal way – when seeing them all as storytellers within different institutional contexts – this research shows most of all that storytellers will tell one story or the other dependent on the context of their production, and dependent on the medium they use. People on different platforms produced different meaning making. We are left to conclude that if anything, Homo narrans is flexible.

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