The Role of Media Frames - Essay Example

Name : xxxxxxxxxxx Institution : xxxxxxxxxxx Course : xxxxxxxxxxx Title : A critical framing report Tutor : xxxxxxxxxxx @ 2011 Introduction Generally, since time immemorial, people have been depending a great deal on mass media in order to get informed about different happenings, scenarios and affairs at regional, national or even at global level. From this information got from mass media, individuals at a personal level draw evaluated conclusions based on a number of factors like ones geographical disposition and comparison of news from different sources. These factors compressed form critical framing (Campbell 2011). Critical framing is the informed and conscious organization of principles that transform sketchy or incidental information into a structured and meaningful problem, in which a solution is implicitly or explicitly included (Mbeke 2008). It is composed of analytical and evaluative aspect. It therefore follows that there are well placed procedures and methodologies put in place to maintain objectivity in the checks and balances of the systems to avoid biasness and objectivity. Critical framing tries to map and explain the similarities, differences and inconsistencies in the quality of the information conveyed by the mass media. To achieve at sensible evaluation of issues, there is need for an investigative and effective methodology that is capable of pursuing evaluation and to generate standards on which such a quality assessment can be based on (Chweya 2002). Frames are often grouped into different categories depending on the scope of content and geographical coverage they appear to wrap. These levels are composed of the following; The macro level –this covers an entire nation like disaster such as earthquake or a society like civil war. The meso level- this covers a group of people in a certain region such politicians Then there is the micro level which refers to framing processes by individual actors. There is also strategic framing whereby the actors tend to behave in a certain manner in order to impress their viewers and thereby maintain their employment. A news story frame should meet the following criteria (Mbeke 2008); A frame is meant to be focused. It should give information that is meant to without leaving any detail unattended and at the same time not going off track. It is also supposed to be comprehensive in that it gives detailed information of what is happening at the ground level. No information should be left so that the listeners have a feel of adequacy of the media source. It is also supposed to be precise. A frame should give exact information which should be objective and not give individual opinions. It should maintain integrity and act professionally in that it should not add or subtract any information. This creates a sense of dependability due to trustworthiness from the listeners. It should also be sensitive enough not to flare up the emotions of already agitated audiences into reactions especially on sensitive matters like war. It should also be timely in that it delivers information on time so as to create reliability from the clients. Every frame should be logically consistent in that it should be reliable and dependable. The information should have connection and inter-relationship of various aspects of the document (Carr 2011). There are many news houses and corporations nowadays that are broadcasting what is happening around us and around the world covering issues ranging from sports, economics to health. These networks vary in their information coverage in terms of their recipients. They are composed of mega networks as well as miniature ones. The large networks provide more national and global news, while local stations concentrate more on the regional issues (Carr 2011). However, the recipients who in this case are the audiences tend to capture only what one is interested in as these networks provide a wide range of topics for users or their clients to select from. These topics range from entertainment to business issues and weather (Brewer 2003). Although these networks argue that they are objective in their delivery of news, there is always variance among the diverse sources in their reporting of the same news. This is often brought about by cultural differences and diverse backgrounds of the networks personalities. To minimize this discrepancy, there is dire need to create semantic relationship between the stories being addressed by various agencies (Coser 1956). This paper is going to look at the role of media frames in the face of pre, post election violence and aftermath in Kenya. In Kenya the post election violence occurred as a result of President Mwai Kibaki being declared as the winner while being the incumbent, of a fervently contested but flawed 2007 presidential elections in Kenya by the former electoral body, the Electoral Commission of Kenya (ECK). This led to fierce reactions, hatred and retaliation between the Party of National Unity (PNU) and Orange Democratic Party (ODM) supporters. Consequently, over 1,030 people were inhumanly killed, over 350,000 people internally displaced and property worth billions of shillings was damaged in the contest of all these (Coser 1956). Kenya has a multiple, developed and robust mass media and communication sector that serve the various competing political, social, economic, cultural and technological needs of diverse interest groups (BBCWST, 2008). It has the stately owned, managed and controlled media which is the KBC (Kenya Broadcasting Corporation) .The KBC radio service broadcasts in over 21 ethnic languages and is the only network in Kenya that is able to reach all audiences across the nation. It also operates KBC TV (channel 1), pay TV (channel 2) and Metro TV (channel 31) and K24 (Carr 2011). On the other hand is the Royal media service, owned by S.K. Macharia. It is the second largest media house in Kenya after KBC. The Royal media service operates a newspaper named as the Leader, the Citizen TV which has a national reach, and several radio stations broadcasting in ethnic languages including Kikuyu (Inooro), Luo (Ramogi), Kamba (Musyi), Luhya (Mulembe). The scenario in Kenya is that primarily, the KBC radio reaches both urban and rural areas while all the other TV networks cover urban and some segments of rural areas (BBCWST 2008). As for the press media there is The Nation Media Group (NMG) which is the largest print media network in Kenya with interests in newspapers and magazines. It operates the Daily Nation, Sunday Nation, the Nairobi Metro, the Business Daily, the East African newspapers. Then there is also the Standard Group (SG) that operates the popular Kenya TV Network (KTV), which is the Kenya’s first private TV station (1989) and the East African Standard Newspapers, the oldest newspapers that started its operation in 1902. In the same breathe, there are various international news broadcast agencies and organizations that are operational in Nairobi, Kenya. These include the BBC, VOA, Duetsche Welle, Radio France, Radio China, Al Jazeera and CNN. All these various media sources played a pivotal role in Kenya`s 2007 post election violence (BBCWST 2008). As such, most of the local radio stations in Kenya have young untrained staffs some of whom they are freshly from high school graduates. Media played a crucial role during this time whereby the local radio stations hosted debates that heated animosity. For example, the KBC had a written segment prior to advertisements that was entitled as ‘domo domo’ meaning, foul mouth. This heightened hatred and suspicion between PNU and ODM supporters. The FM radio stations especially those broadcasting in ethnic languages fueled ethnic hatred and animosity through the use of hate and unpleasant words in their local language. In Rift Valley province for example, the local Kalenjin radio stations used to refer to their Kikuyu neighbors as ‘Kenyambi‘(weeds). This accelerated further to a case whereby a presenter would be heard saying uproot ‘Kenyambi’ which meant that Kikuyus needed to be evicted since they are as a stubborn weed even under harsh climatic conditions. At the same time, a popular Kikuyu radio station often called Luos the fishermen who are simple minded. There was also retaliation from other FM local stations that called kikuyus as hyenas among other unsavory names ((Mbeke 2008). Kenya is also well served with the internet network. As for the website, there were www.jalous.com bloggers that had its subscribers post unfriendly materials. It used unpalatable language and defamed Kikuyus and President Mwai Kibaki. Still there was also the www.kenyaimagine.com bloggers that incited people to be anti ODM. However, the allafrica.com was objective and encouraged peaceful coexistence (Brewer 2003). In the case of aftermath of the perpetuated hatred, there were mass killings. The government banned live broadcasting of the affected areas. However the international broadcasting networks like the CNN and BBC brought burnt houses, people killed to the attention of the public. In this case there rose more hatred since people could not watch their tribesmen being massacred. Consequently, there was escalated revenge that left many people homeless, orphaned, loss of property and lives. Contrary, the international agencies portrayed a lot of professionalism and integrity. They were timely delivery of reports with no partiality on either side. There was also use of images of what was happening on the ground (Carr 2011). Generally, there was an absence of professional conduct in most media prior to and during the post-election violence. The reports were inaccurate, biased and imbalanced. This could have been due to the fact that the Kenyan reporters were their first time to report conflict news. Thus there was lack of experience. There was no expertise since most of the reporters in the FM stations were formerly either DJs or presenters. Kenyan news agencies have also failed to invest and develop investigative journalism practice within news rooms. As a result they were not able to address the sensitive issues when the conflict emerged. On the other side, the media training institutions in Kenya scantly offer serious courses on conflict reporting and ethics that would have prepared a platform for conflict sensitive journalists in the face of Kenya`s 2007 post election violence (Mbeke 2008). Essentially, the national media networks gave varying reports that made people believe that the results were rigged. The government controlled corporation, which is KBC TV and radio intentionally, delayed reporting of the outcome of the election outcome. This raised eyebrows among Kenyans who were eagerly waiting for the presidential results. As for the CNN and the BBC, they gave procedural information. As a result, there was chaos since the public wondered how outsider broadcasting networks could transmit such information while the local media agencies said it was not available (Brewer 2003). At the same time, the media houses like KBC, NTV and KTN conducted themselves in non professional manner by providing varying results that were only speculative in nature and were given in small doses. This made the Kenyans believe that their suspicions were right and there was flare up of the public. Stations like KBC said that their data bases had clashed which left alot to be questioned like whether such a national media corporation did not have a back up machinery in place. It was also found that international stations like the BBC used to give figures of the casualties and the internally displaced people that were higher than that given by the government broadcasting networks like the KBC (Christine 2007). In the report made by Al Jazeera, they used sound in their reporting as they portrayed for instance how police hacked the civilians. This brought about some genuineness in the reporting. Another contrast noted is in the voice of Journalists. The voice employed by the Al Jazeera, CNN and BBC journalists was that of a third person’s point of view; someone who was only at the background and not a participant. As for the local media agencies like KTN, they had reporters screwed in the scenery. The use of voice-over technique, coupled with the detached tone of voice by the international agencies was to strike an air of objectivity (McQuail 2005). Later, the local media played a major role in bringing about peace and harmony. The Safaricom and Celtel, the mobile phone companies in Kenya, promoted peace by use of SMS. For example Safaricom, disseminated SMS messages such as: “In the interest of peace, we appeal to Kenyans to embrace each other in the spirit of patriotism, and exercise restraint to restore calm to our nation.” Celtel, on the other hand, sent peace messages through SMS saying “One people one nation, choose peace” (Allan 2006). Again, the local radio stations are predominantly denoted by music for entertainment. There was still use of music by these local stations. However the international ones did not. This made the international agencies exemplified as on how serious the situation was. At the same time the intonation of the CNN and Al Jazeera journalists depicted concern as there was stress of speech in the reporting (Allan 2006). NTV on the other hand was awarded for its consistency in its reporting during and after post violence period in Kenya. Some of the anchors had steered amicable campaigns to bring Kenyans together. This led to one of the news anchor host July Gichuru being given an award by the Martin Luther king foundation. As for the international news agencies this was not the case. Instead, they acted on showing on the severity of the situation and appealing the international community to intervene (Christine 2007). Still there was use of repetitive messages by the NTV on the move that was made by the international community to salvage Kenya. The replay of the caption figuring this was to emphasize on the positive need for coalition of the government and harmony. However, this was not the case for the international mass media agencies like the CNN and the Al Jazeera. As for the print media like the Daily nation, the news was always on the front page headlines. There was massive coverage of every proceeding that occupied a couple of pages in the newspapers. A local Pamoja radio FM, organized peace events for youths and aired peace messages urging peaceful co-existence in the country (McQuail 2005). One of the differences noted between the presentation and format of frame during this period between national and international media houses was that for the local ones there were live interviews and debates being conducted like on NTV which was not the case for the international bodies. These forums enhanced people to air out their views and what they experienced thereby bringing national healing since they felt that they had audiences and their matters were being addressed. Due to this fact a lot of listeners (audiences) were drawn to such news bodies (Allan 2006). CNN and Al Jazeera made use of amateur videos. They portrayed images that showed the magnitude of post election violence. Conversely at this juncture, these international media agencies appeared to infringe international standards of ethical reporting of explicit images of anguish people burnt in a church and innocent citizens being shot by police. Nonetheless, CNN and Al Jazeera played a crucial role in enlightening the nation as well as the worldwide community on the magnitude of post election brutality in Kenya. It aroused the feelings of audiences to rely on it since the government had banned live coverage of the affected areas. Similarly, the KTN had images that reflected how they situation had aggravated by having live images of shots whereby police were shooting and killing unarmed civilians who were demonstrating peacefully. This showed how some armed officers tend to misuse their power (Brewer 2003). As for the websites, they were also involved in the reporting of the Kenya 2007 general election aftermath. There were the blogs that posted photos of police killing an unarmed petrol attendant, which local news editors had censored. These video footages also suggested how the situation had become unbearable and out of hand and needed global involvement (Campbell 2011). Al Jazeera, CNN, KBC, NTV and KTN depended on amateur videos collected from a video sharing site, to strike the feel of authenticity. In spite of the similarity in the sources of videos used for the report, Al Jazeera and CNN focused on the protesters' more violent aspect of the demonstration, use of crude weapons like machetes and stones blockage of roads. This was also made available by the print media such as Daily nation, the People and the Standard. They showed the progress of violence up to the time that the government had to step in by use of armed forces and later the involvement of United Nations peace keeping agencies. Meanwhile, the KBC only used hosted video clips that showed protesters in state of riot with some burning cars and police stations, implying that people are really upset and in rage (Allan 2006). Another difference is that the local media only covered the region mileage due to their transmitters compared to the international Al Jazeera and CNN. The ethnic radio stations only covered their regions though they had a lot of impact since they could reach families with no TV sets and the illiterate as well as semi illiterate. At the same time, there was a wide coverage even in the remotest places (Brewer 2003). Another difference noted is that the local TV stations portrayed written and verbal peaceful captions at prime times of the news. These audio visual footages were also used during advertisements, between news breaks and also as part of entertainment. This was later accompanied by music that was not the case for the international media agencies. As a result, these caption footages worked a lot of magic and draw mass to these news anchorages (McQuail 2005). In conclusion, framing of news has a lot of impact on the reception and implication of the audiences. It has power to draw audience or otherwise, calm a animated atmosphere or condense it. 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Unpublished Seminar Paper. RECESSPA, Nairobi. McQuail, M., 2005, McQuail’s Mass Communication Theory. London: Sage Publications. Read More