Masters Theses

Date of Award

12-1997

Degree Type

Thesis

Degree Name

Master of Science

Major

Communication

Major Professor

M. Mark Miller

Committee Members

Jeffrey Wilkinson, Russel Hirst

Abstract

This study employs computer-based content-analysis programs to determine whether stakeholder groups on opposite sides of an issue use specific words to communicate particular frames, or positions, to the media, and whether and how these terms manifest in the print media based on the news value of proximity. Environmental concerns have historically led to interest group opposition. Each side attempts to communicate its position to the media and the public, with hopes of ultimately influencing public policy. Through framing research, an attempt is made to understand how interest groups communicate and whether they are successful in their efforts to sway the public and legislators. An increased understanding of these communications approaches and how information manifests in the print media can be applied to all types of communication campaigns. This thesis investigates how stakeholders approached the issue of forest salvage during 1995-1996, when the Emergency Salvage Timber Rider of Public Law 104-19 was created, passed, and active, and whether they were successful in getting their frame terms into the print media. The study was conducted in two parts. First, literature (news releases and other information) from two opposing interest groups, the conservationists and the forest products industry, was analyzed to determine whether the groups used different words to frame the issue. This process used VBPro and VBMap, two computer-based content-analysis programs developed at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville. The VBPro program analyzed the texts for term cooccurrence and ranked them in order of importance based on a chi-square statistic. This output was used by the researcher to systematically evaluate how the terms with the highest chi-squares were used by the interest groups in order to select a group of terms thought best to represent the frames of each side. VBMap was then used to generate the coordinates of each term based on how the terms related to each other in the texts. This step enabled the researcher to visualize how the words clustered together in the texts, making it easier to interpret and identify patterns. Using the terms identified in the first part of the study, the newspaper texts from two different U.S. regions, one economically reliant on the forest products industry and the other not, were analyzed to determine whether the news value of proximity would dictate which frame terms manifested in the print media. The researcher hypothesized that the frame terms of the forest products industry would be more prevalent in the newspapers of the Northwest (the papers of three communities reliant on the forest products industry) and the conservationist terms would be used more often in the newspapers of the nonNorthwest (a grouping of 13 newspapers from East Coast communities). The results of the t-tests were not significant at the .05 level. The papers of both regions tended to reflect more of the forest products industry frame terms; however, the Northwest papers contained more forest products industry frame terms and the nonNorthwest papers reflected more of the conservationist terms.

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