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opposition’s or presidential versions of reality? Was there any change in coverage across
different media through different periods of the Ukrainian political crisis?
To answer these questions, the author employed media framing analysis
techniques.
THEORETICAL CONSIDERATIONS
Theory of Framing
With little personal experience in politics, people depend on news media to
understand the political world. This provides media with the power to frame reality for
the public. Researchers argue, “How people think about an issue, especially a political
issue that is inherently ambiguous, is dependent on how the issue is framed by the media”
(Semetko & Valkenburg, 2000, p. 94).
Gamson and Modigliani (1987) defined a media frame as “a central organizing
idea or story line that provides meaning to an upholding strip of events…. The frame
suggests what the controversy is about, the essence of the issue” (Gamson & Modigliani,
1987, p. 143).
According to Entman (1993), to frame means “to select some aspects of a
perceived reality to make them more salient, thus promoting a particular problem
definition, causal interpretation, moral evaluation, and/or treatment recommendation”
(Entman, 1993, p. 52).
Iyengar (1991) differentiates between episodic and thematic media frames.
Episodic newscasts depict public issues as concrete instances or specific events that are
Convention