Routine Adjustments: How Journalists Framed the Charleston Shootings

Abstract

This article presents an analysis of U.S. national newspaper coverage of the 2015 mass shooting at the Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church in Charleston, South Carolina. A two-dimensional measurement scheme of time and space is used to examine media frames. Results suggest that journalists incorporated attributes unique to this tragedy into their reports by using a wide variety of frames that remained relatively consistent throughout the first 30 days of coverage. Compared with the results of studies of similar events, our analysis finds that news coverage of the Charleston shooting was more likely to use the past time frame (36%) and the societal/past combination frame (18%).