Constructive journalism versus Conflict and New Cold War frames:
a comparative content analysis of Russian and Western media coverage of the Ukraine crisis
by Anastasiya Pak Student ID: 12846791
Master’s Thesis
Graduate School of Communication
Erasmus Mundus Master’s in Journalism, Media, and Globalisation
Supervisor: Andreas R. T. Schuck
Date: May 29, 2020 Word count: 79871
Abstract
During the Ukraine crisis the relationship between Russia and Western countries deteriorated, which has been labelled as the beginning of a New Cold War. Previous research on this crisis focused on conflict propaganda and bias in the coverage by Russian and Western media. By developing an approach to measure constructive journalism and through well-established framing theory, this study looks at differences in the coverage of the Ukraine crisis by Russian and
Western media. It measures the extent to which these media applied constructive journalism vis-à-vis conflict and New Cold War framing. A content analysis of 360 news articles reveals that both Western and Russian media used the conflict frame more prominently than constructive journalism. However, various Russian and Western news outlets showed significant differences in terms of their application of the New Cold War frame and in terms of using various elements of constructive journalism. This study contributes to the scholarly gap in the operationalisation of constructive journalism and provides empirical evidence on the prevalence of confrontational geopolitical narratives which possibly led to the escalation of the conflict between Russia and the West.
Keywords: constructive journalism, Ukraine crisis, framing, conflict reporting, Russia, content analysis
Introduction
The Ukraine crisis unfolded in late 2013 when Ukraine’s President Victor Yanukovych’s opted for the Eurasian Union deal that favoured Russian interests over the arrangements for the Association Agreement with the European Union (EU). This decision sparked the violent protests which were followed by the President fleeing the country, Russia's annexation of Crimea, and the war in Eastern Ukraine (Yuhas, 2014). It turned into a major geopolitical crisis which involved Russia on one side, and the EU with the United States (US) on the other (Ojala & Pantti, 2017). Up until today this is one of the most neglected displacement crises worldwide which took lives of over 13,000 people (Shemet, 2020).
Previous research found that the news media on both sides - Russia and the West - provided a biased and confrontational coverage of the Ukraine crisis, labelled as the New Cold War framing (e.g., Lichtenstein, Esau, Pavlova, Osipov, & Argylov, 2019; Ojala & Pantti, 2017; Pasitselska, 2017; Roman, Wanta, & Buniak, 2017; Samoilenko, Erzikova, Davydov, & Laskin, 2017). This led to normalisation of their respective governments’ views amongst the public. Therefore, alternative narratives which provided solutions and other sides’ perspectives on the crisis were overshadowed.
The prevalence of a biased conflict coverage, congruent with the official narratives of the political elites, sparked public distrust in traditional media (Lichtenstein et al, 2019; Newman, 2019). Constructive Journalism has recently emerged to challenge this issue by reflecting
people’s perspective in the news and by holding those in power accountable (NCVO, n.d.). It is a form of journalism which focusses on important societal issues and places them within the relevant context (Constructive Institute, n.d.). Such an approach was found to be welcomed by the audience and by a growing number of newsrooms including the BBC, The Guardian, and The
New York Times (Hermans & Gyldensted, 2019). However, a standard academic definition of constructive journalism has yet to be established (Aitamurto & Varma, 2018; Bro, 2019;
McIntyre & Gyldensted, 2018). The research operationalising constructive journalism has mainly focused on Northern and Western Europe and the US (Rotmeijer, 2019). In a non-Western context, it was scrutinised from the perspectives of local journalism (e.g., McIntyre & Sobel, 2018; Rotmeijer, 2019), global health crisis communication (e.g., Zhang & Mattingwina, 2016), and in economic news (e.g., Zhao & Xiang, 2019). Thus, the question of whether constructive journalism is applied in the reporting of international political conflicts across different political and media systems remains unanswered.
To address this gap, this study seeks to examine whether constructive journalism is practiced in the reporting on international conflicts. I aim to investigate to what extent did Western and Russian media apply Constructive Journalism vis-à-vis the Conflict and the New Cold War framing in the coverage of the Ukraine crisis. The study contributes to existing literature on constructive journalism by introducing a quantitative approach in this concept’s operationalisation. It is also relevant due to the importance of media in effective crisis communication. This research can provide insights on how constructive journalism can be practiced for engaging policymakers and citizens in more constructive conflict resolution. The study is based on a quantitative content analysis of quality US, British, and Russian news media and covers the crisis period from 2013 to 2015.
Theoretical Background
What is constructive journalism?
As traditional media greatly influences on both international public and policymakers, it can serve as a tool of constructive crisis communication aimed at well-being of affected people
(Lichtenstein et al., 2019). Societal well-being is at the core of constructive journalism, mainly defined as an emerging form of traditional critical journalism which focusses on solutions, has strong societal relevance, and incorporates positive psychology techniques in news (Haagerup, 2015; McIntyre & Gyldensted, 2018). Positive psychology techniques are aimed at engaging and building good relationships with the audience by adopting the narratives of meaning and
achievement (McIntyre & Gyldensted, 2018; Zhang & Matingwina, 2016).
Since the concept is recent in journalism research, most of the studies on constructive journalism are prescriptive or normative, and leave room for its interpretation, conceptualisation and operationalisation (Bro, 2019; Mast, Coesemans, & Temmerman, 2019). Several scholars have operationalised this concept through journalistic role perceptions (e.g., Aitamurto & Varma, 2018; Allam, 2019; Kovacevic & Perisin, 2018; McIntyre & Sobel, 2018), but few identified its use in news stories through framing theory (e.g., Lichtenstein et al., 2019; Zhao & Xiang, 2019). This shows that constructive journalism is a comprehensive type of journalism which is open for interpretation in terms of academic research.
Constructive journalism has several predecessors and relates to different alternative types of journalism. It shares some commonalities with them but also has distinct features. According to McIntyre and Gyldensted (2017), constructive journalism is an ‘umbrella term’ which
encompasses several related concepts or forms of journalism: prospective, restorative, peace, solutions, positive and civic journalism. Constructive journalism shares the depolarisation tendencies with peace journalism, focusses on solutions of the problems as solutions journalism, as well as engages and collaborates with the audience as civic journalism (Mast et. al, 2019). Other related concepts are activist and public journalism which are considered the predecessors of constructive journalism (Aitamurto & Varma, 2018).
Constructive journalism is often confused with these related forms of journalism. Therefore, it is important to distinguish constructive journalism from them. Constructive
journalism shares the ideal of social progress with these types of journalism but steps away from their activism stance. To illustrate, peace, activist and public journalism promote ideas for addressing the problems and encourage the readers to take specific actions, for which they were highly criticised. On the other hand, constructive journalism does not call for citizens to take action, but rather provides balanced reporting and avoids sensationalism (Constructive Institute, n.d.). It focusses on problems and follows such principles of traditional journalism as objectivity, neutrality, fairness, detachment, and impartiality (Aitamurto & Varma, 2019). Moreover,
constructive journalism is not only oriented at citizens but also decision-makers, as it provides constructive critique on their response to solve the problem (Bro, 2019). As for solutions
journalism, the main difference is that constructive journalism news focusses on solutions to the problem but does not entirely base the story on these solutions (Aitamurto & Varma, 2018; McIntyre & Lough, 2019). Thus, constructive journalism embraces important features of traditional journalism and goes beyond them by engaging the audience and providing possible solutions to the problem.
Towards a conceptualisation of constructive journalism.
In terms of operationalisation of the concept, Hermans and Gyldensted (2019) identified six elements of constructive journalism. The first is solution-oriented framing. Framing is the
process to “select some aspect of a perceived reality” and highlight it in such a way that promotes “a particular problem definition, causal interpretation, moral evaluation, and/or treatment
recommendation” (Entman, 1993, p.52). Solution-oriented framing, hence, refers to proposing an actionable solution when covering a problem in the news (Hermans & Gyldensted, 2019). The
second element in the scholar’s typology is Future orientation, which refers to adding to the story the ‘what now?’ question along with the traditional journalistic questions such as ‘who?’,
‘what?’, ‘where?’, ‘why?’, and ‘how?’. The third element is Inclusiveness and Diversity, which implies the inclusion of diverse sources and perspectives in the news (Hermans & Gyldensted, 2019). Empowerment of People is the next element. It means using enhanced inquiring
techniques on “possible resources, collaborations, common ground and solutions” (p. 539). The fifth element is Covering Context, which means including relevant explanatory data in the story. Finally, the Co-creation element refers to creating journalistic content together with citizens by letting the readers contribute to the story with their own commentaries and research on a specific issue.
Noting the differences between constructive journalism and the other similar concepts
discussed above, I will identify the main elements to operationalise constructive journalism based on the above-mentioned elements of Hermans and Gyldensted (2019) and the definitions of constructive journalism by Bro (2019), McIntyre and Gyldensted (2018), and Zhang and Matingwina (2016). Thus, I propose to focus on the following elements of constructive
journalism in the news stories on international conflicts: (a) solution-oriented framing, (b) future orientation, (c) diversity, (d) focus on humans, (e) covering context, (f) Governments’
responsibility. Solution-oriented framing refers to mentioning an action or stance to solve or ease the conflict whether by the individuals, communities, or governments (McIntyre & Gyldensted, 2018); and mentioning an achievement on the resolution of the conflict and its meaning for the people (Hermans & Gyldensted, 2019). Future orientation means covering the future possibilities after the conflict is resolved and including examples of post-conflict rebuilding (Hermans & Gyldensted, 2019). The diversity element refers to including diverse sources and stances on the
issue including the opposing sides (Hermans & Gyldensted, 2019). Meanwhile, focus on humans means mentioning how the conflict affects citizen and providing the examples of local heroes who stand tall in the face of the crisis or help others (Zhang & Matingwina, 2016). Covering context relates to offering a profound explanation of the reasons why the conflict unfolded, supported by facts and data (Hermans & Gyldensted, 2019). Finally, governments´ responsibility means providing a constructive critique on the governments involved in the crisis and the
effectiveness of their response to the conflict (Bro, 2019).
I excluded the elements of co-creation and empowerment of people (see Hermans & Glydensted, 2019) for several reasons. First, constructive journalism is based on traditional practice where journalists report as detached watchdogs. The co-creation of content with the citizens may lead to subjectivity. Also, it can lead to journalists moving towards activism. Second, in reporting on the conflicts, the journalists need to promptly deliver the news, which makes co-creation unfeasible. Finally, Hermans and Gyldensted (2019) found that the
contribution of the non-journalists to the news was the least valued element of constructive journalism among the audience. As for the empowerment of people, I excluded this element since it relates to the interviewing techniques executed by the journalists, which cannot be measured in a content analysis. Thus, in this study I propose to operationalise constructive journalism based on the six elements: solution-oriented framing, future orientation, diversity, focus on humans, covering context, and governments’ responsibility.
Framing elites’ agenda and the New Cold War
While constructive journalism is a relatively new concept for the analysis of reporting on international conflicts, framing theory, which was defined in the previous section, has been long dominating the scholarship in this field. Many studies have been published on the congruency of
media framing of the international conflicts with the official government propaganda, also called the indexing theory (e.g., Bennett, 2015; Dimitrova & Strombäck, 2005; Herman & Chomsky, 2002; Norris, 1995). It refers to the process when the consensus among elite sources is
diminishing the will of journalists to search for alternative perspectives; thus, it enables the elites to set media agenda (Bennett, 2015). Indexing of official positions contributes to both the
enhancement of defined narratives and convincing the public of who is to blame in the conflict (Hansen, 2015).
During the Ukraine crisis both Russian and Western media framed the conflict in accordance with the views of their respective governments (e.g., Dyczok, 2015; Lichtenstein et al., 2019; Ojala & Pantti, 2017; Ojala, Pantti, & Kangas, 2017; Szostek & Hutchings, 2015). Russian media was called a government propaganda machine which sought for public support for the Russian government’s actions in Ukraine (Liu, 2019). The main narrative of Russian
government was the double standards (Szostek & Hutchings, 2015; Watanabe, 2017). According to this narrative, the Western powers, especially the US, sought world dominance without
considering the interests of other actors and secretly caused the Ukrainian revolution. The
Russian government divided the world between ‘us’ (Russians and Russian speaking Ukrainians) and ‘them’ (The West) as during the Cold War (Pasitselka, 2017). The clash between the
superpowers – The East and The West – was highlighted in the coverage by Russian media, while the attempts of the Ukrainian government to resolve the conflict were silenced (Nygren et. al, 2018). As for the Western media, despite high journalistic professionalism and low state intervention, they adopted a similar narrative in the coverage of the crisis. The position of the West was hostile towards Russia and its ambitions in Ukraine; So was the position of the Western media, which ignored details of the conflict and the role of the West in the crisis, simplistically
blaming Russia for its ‘invasion’ of Ukraine (Boyd-Barrett, 2017; Liu, 2019; Roman et al., 2017; Samoilenko et. al 2017; Sirinyok-Dolgaryova, 2014). Thus, the media on both sides of the
conflict adopted propagandistic narratives in line with their respective governments’ perspectives. The narratives adopted by Russia and the West were hostile towards each other, a climate that is reminiscent of Cold War times. Right after World War II and before the collapse of the Soviet Union, the world was divided into the Western and the Soviet socialist blocks. The complex affairs happening in different places were portrayed through the prism of rivalry between the two major superpowers (Norris, 1995). Such a portrayal was conceptualised as the Cold War Frame. Three decades after the end of the Cold War, during the Ukraine crisis, the world again divided into the East, represented by Russia, and the West, represented by the US and the EU.
This division was reflected in the media coverage and was conceptualised as the New Cold War Frame (Ojala & Pantti, 2017). This frame represents the events as the re-emergence of the Cold War and “the geopolitical power struggle between Russia and Western countries and alliances” (Lichtenstein et al., 2019, p. 70). The New Cold War frame centers on the conflict and contradicts constructive journalism features such as providing diverse stances towards the crisis, deep causes, and solutions. By highlighting the conflict between the superpowers, this frame disregards the Ukrainian government’s role in the resolution of the conflict. Instead, the New Cold War frame reflects the division of the world between the two blocks which blame one another in the crisis (Ojala & Pantti, 2017). From the Russian media´s perspective, the frame portrays Russia as a positive actor and blames the West in the Ukraine crisis. However, from the Western media perspective, Russia holds the main responsibility in the crisis. Meanwhile, such important causes as the economic basket-case and the drawbacks of the association agreement
with the EU (e.g., favouring the interests of foreign corporations at the expense of local businesses) were majorly overlooked by the media (Boyd-Barrett, 2017).
The dominance of the conflict frame
The centrality of the conflict makes the New Cold War frame conceptually close to the conflict frame, which is known to be one of the most prominent generic news frames in political news coverage (Schuck, Boomgaarden, & de Vreese, 2013; Semetko & Valkenburg, 2000). According to Semetko and Valkenburg (2000), this frame emphasises the conflict between individuals or entities and reduces complexity in public debate by portraying events simplistically. Stories which are framed in terms of conflict reflect disagreement between countries or other parties, focus on blame attribution and discuss matters in terms of opposing sides. While the New Cold War frame can be classified as an issue-specific frame by the typology of De Vreese (2005), the conflict frame is generic. This means that in terms of the Ukraine crisis, this frame does not focus on specific theme; that is it does not only explore the conflict between the East and the West, but also the conflict between the parties inside Ukraine or between people and the government. This frame was found to be prevalent in the coverage of the Ukraine crisis by both Russian and Western media (Liu, 2019). Thus, the conflict frame is broader than the New Cold War frame as it does not limit itself on focussing on the conflict between the superpowers.
Both the New Cold War and the conflict frames ignore the conflict’s nuances and complexity and support confrontational treatments. Such an approach contradicts constructive journalism principles. To illustrate, Lichtenstein et al. (2019) found the stories on the Ukraine crisis aligned with constructive journalism focus on solutions, future perspectives for people affected by the crisis, and provide deeper causes of the conflict instead of assigning blame to someone. On the other hand, the stories framed in terms of conflict and New Cold War offer a
simplistic one-sided coverage of the crisis, portraying it as an arena of opposing sides and focussing on the destructive parts of the conflict.
Considering the discussion above, the differences in media systems, journalistic cultures, and positions in the Ukraine crisis in the United Kingdom (UK), US, and Russia, I anticipate finding differences in their coverage of the conflict. In particular, I expect the coverage by both Western and Russian mainstream media to oppose constructive journalism, as conceptualized above and operationalised in the current study. Thus, I want to test the following hypotheses:
H1: The conflict frame is more prominent than constructive journalism in both Russian and Western media in their coverage of the Ukraine crisis.
H2: The New Cold War frame is more prominent than constructive journalism in both Russian and Western media in their coverage of the Ukraine crisis.
As the differences in application of constructive journalism between the Russian and the Western media have not been identified in previous research, and the nuances of their application of the conflict and the New Cold War frame do exist, I want to pose the following research questions:
RQ1: Are there significant differences between the Russian and the Western media in terms of the extent to which they applied constructive journalism in the coverage of the Ukraine crisis?
RQ2: What are the differences between the Russian and Western media in using (a) constructive journalism and the conflict frame and (b) constructive journalism and the New Cold War frame?
Finally, previous research has shown that some elements of constructive journalism are often present to a varied extent in news coverage (e.g., Zhang & Mattingwina, 2017; Zhao & Xiang, 2019). As the conceptualisation of constructive journalism in the current study is more inclusive and in line with the theoretical literature, I pose the following tentative research questions:
RQ3: Are there significant differences between the Russian and the Western media in terms of the prominence of different elements of constructive journalism?
RQ4: What are the most and the least frequent elements of constructive journalism used in the coverage of the crisis within each media outlet?
Methods
Research Design
This study is based on a quantitative content analysis of 360 news stories (N = 360) from six quality US, British and Russian media outlets. The unit of analysis was the individual news story which included news articles, opinion pieces, and interviews. Images were not analysed due to unavailability in databases. I chose quantitative content analysis because it enables obtaining systematic results in the analysis of concepts between and within different media (Macnamara, 2005; Semetko & Valkenburg, 2000).
Sample
My sample was composed of quality news media from the US, the UK, and Russia. The Guardian, The BBC News Online (BBC), CNN.com (CNN), and NPR News Online (NPR) represented Western media while RT in Russian (RT) and Rbc.ru (RBC) represented Russian media. Quality news media was chosen owing to their in-depth political coverage and influence
on foreign policy discourses and public opinion. The online versions of these outlets were
selected due to dramatic increase in popularity of online news across all countries and due to their accessibility (Godefroidt, Berbers, & d’Haenens 2016; Newman, Fletcher, Kalogeropoulos, & Nielsen, 2019).The news outlets were also picked owing to their popularity, ownership structure2, and because of the language constraints (Western media in English). All selected British and US news outlets are more left leaning (Mitchell, Gottfried, Kiley, & Matsa, 2014; Vliegenthart, Boomgaarden, & Boumans, 2011; Wicks, Wicks, & Morimoto, 2014). Meanwhile, the political leaning of Russian outlets could not be defined as the Russian media system is characterized by a strong relationship between media and the state and political parties’ support of the official government (Vartanova, 2012).
Data Collection
CNN articles were retrieved from the Nexis Uni database. Due to unavailability in
databases, The Guardian, BBC, and NPR articles were gathered through Google advanced search, while RBC and RT articles were collected from their websites. Articles containing the words “Ukraine” AND/OR “Ukraine crisis” and longer than 150 words were selected. Given the uneven coverage of the Ukraine crisis among the outlets3, the articles were retrieved from specific
timeframes belonging to the crisis phases within 2013-2015 (see Figure 1). During these periods,
2 These news outlets are among the most popular online news sources in their respective countries (Medialogia, 2020; Newman et al., 2019). In terms of the ownership structure, one state-owned/public and one privately-owned outlets was selected from each country.
3 Russian media published extreme number of articles on Ukraine during 2013-2015. This might be due to domestication of news on Ukraine within Russian media (Szostek, 2014). This study was not aimed at finding the differences in the coverage between the crisis phases, hence, the timeframes were used for reducing the data and ensure higher chances of the news relevance to the Ukraine crisis.
the Ukraine crisis was most heavily discussed by the media and received high international exposure (Lichtenstein et al., 2019; Ojala & Pantti, 2017).
Figure I. The timeframes and breakdown of the analysed articles within the timeframes (N of units = 360).
Because the search yielded 2,826 articles, I selected a random sample of 360 articles containing 60 articles from each news outlet4. A random sampling strategy ensures that every unit has an equal chance of being selected and strengthens the validity of the method (Neuendorf, 2002). The articles irrelevant to the Ukraine crisis were eliminated.
4 The search yielded 755 articles from RT, 565 articles from RBC, 366 – from BBC, 427 articles from The Guardian, 612 articles from CNN, and 101 articles from NPR, excluding the duplicates (articles with the same title and body). 60 articles were randomly selected from each outlet without the specification of the timeframe, i.e. the articles from all 4 timeframes were collected together. The similar procedure was made to all the outlets.
Although two outlets for each country is not representative of the whole population, Vliegenthart et al. (2008) suggest that one quality news outlet per country can be deemed sufficient for considering the country’s general news environment. Thus, though not
representative, such an approach can provide an indication of the relevant media content and existing narratives on the Ukrainian crisis. Similar approaches were followed by other scholars who conducted comparative cross-cultural studies in the past (see Godefroidt et al., 2016; Fahmy, 2010; Venger, 2019).
Measures and Operationalisation of Content Analysis
For measuring constructive journalism, the conflict frame, and the New Cold War frame I created a codebook with a series of yes(1)/no(0)questions5. To measure six elements of
constructive journalism, a set of questions was developed based on the discussion in the theory section above. The questions to measure the conflict frame were adapted from the standard typology of Semetko & Valkenburg (2000). The questions for the New Cold War frame were generated based on the theoretical discussion of this concept in previous research (Boyd-Barett, 2017; Lichtenstein et. al. 2019; Ojala & Pantti, 2017). Appendix A presents the Codebook with a whole set of questions for each concept.
Ten percent of the articles (n=36) were randomly selected to assess intercoder reliability (Krippendorff's alpha). Two coders, both fluent in English and Russian, performed the coding for this test. During the training sessions some questions were rephrased and supplemented with more examples. The inter-coder reliability test yielded satisfactory scores for all the variables and
5 Two variables, Russia as a winner or a loser and the West as a winner or a loser were not dichotomous but recoded into four dichotomous variables for the further analysis.
ranged between .70 and 1.00 of intercoder agreement (see the reliability values for each variable in Appendix B).
Development of measurement scales.
To examine whether the categories for the three main concepts reflect their respective underlying theoretical constructs, I conducted a series of Principal Component Analyses (PCA) with Varimax rotation. The first analysis distinguished the indicators of the conflict frame from those meant to measure constructive journalism; and the second distinguished the indicators of the New Cold War frame from those measuring constructive journalism. The decision to run separate analyses for these concepts was taken based on several reasons. First, due to conceptual relatedness some categories of the New Cold War frame were adapted from the conflict frame. However, based on theoretical considerations, it is important to distinguish these concepts from another. While the conflict frame is more generic, the New Cold War frame is more specific (i.e., it relates particularly to the conflict between the West and the East). This could lead to the
categories of both frames forming one and the same factor because they correlate empirically. The necessity to use such an approach was furthermore based on the hypotheses which were set to test the conflict frame vs. constructive journalism (H1) and the New Cold War frame vs. constructive journalism (H2), but not the conflict frame vs. New Cold War frame. The limitations of this approach are acknowledged further below in the discussion section.
The first PCA with varimax rotation for the categories of the conflict frame and
constructive journalism yielded three factors explaining more than 60% of the total variance. The KMO measure of sampling adequacy was .62, above the commonly recommended value of .50 (Mooi & Sarstedt, 2011). The step-by-step factor solution is presented in Appendix C. Factor 1 was labelled the Conflict Frame and consisted of the initial items of this frame except for
win-lose (i.e., the story refers to winners and win-losers in the Ukraine crisis). The second factor was labelled the Context and Human Focus Dimension of Constructive Journalism. The third factor was labelled as the Solution Dimension of Constructive Journalism. This means that constructive journalism comprised of two different dimensions, with its indicators loading on two distinct factors6.
A second PCA with varimax rotation was run for the indicators of the New Cold War frame and the constructive journalism indicators, yielding four factors which accounted for around 60% of the total variance, with KMO measure of sampling adequacy of .54 (see step-by-step factor solution in Appendix C). The first factor was labelled as Anti-Russian New Cold War frame7. The second factor was named Anti-Western New Cold War frame. The third and the
fourth factors were similar to the ones in the previous analysis with the indicators of the conflict frame. Appendix D presents the categories of each derived factor.
In order to perform inferential statistical analyses, I created new variables measuring all the concepts based on the results of the PCA (also see Appendix D for the categories of each frame/concept). Their scales were formed by averaging the scores of each category belonging to each factor. The values of each scale ranged from .00 (not present) to 1.00 (fully present). For example, an average score of the conflict frame closer to 1.00 suggested that the conflict frame was strongly present in the article. For answering the explorative research questions regarding the salience of different constructive journalism elements (RQ2-RQ4), all initial items measuring
6 The category of constructive journalism governments’ responsibility (i.e., the story provides constructive critique on governments response in the Ukraine crisis) was excluded as it loaded on two different factors.
7 The factor Anti-Russian New Cold War frame included one category (The East vs. The West) which referred to the Cold-War-like rivalry between the West and Russia and could also be anti-Western. I acknowledge, that this could skew the results in terms of the prominence of anti-Russian New Cold War frame within Russian media. This limitation is addressed in the results and discussion sections below.
constructive journalism were included in the analysis, and the frequencies of their occurrences were counted (see these items in Part 3 of the Codebook, Appendix A).
Results
The starting point of this research was to identify to what extent did Russian and Western media apply constructive journalism in their coverage of the Ukraine crisis. RQ1 explored the differences between the Russian and the Western media in terms of their application of
constructive journalism. The content anlaysis of 360 articles reveals that the solution dimension of constructive journalism was significantly more present in the Russian media (M =.37, SD =.32) than in the Western media (M =.29, SD =.35), t(258) =2.18, p < .05; whereas, the context and human focus dimension was significantly more prominent in the Western media (M=.54, SD =.32) than in the Russian media (M =.19, SD =.23), t(319) = -12.01, p <.001. In other words, the Russian media referred more often to the solution of the crisis and the opportunities for Ukraine in the future, while the Western media provided more context by referring to the causes of the conflict, its impact on ordinary citizens, and by including diverse sources and stances towards the crisis.
H1 investigated whether the conflict frame was more prominent than constructive
journalism in both Russian and the Western media, and RQ2a explored the differences regarding the prominence of the conflict frame and constructive journalism between the two groups. The results suggest that the conflict frame was generally very prominent but even more prevalent in the Western media (M =.81, SD =.38) than in the Russian media (M =.68, SD =.30), t(193) = -3.38, p <.001. Initially, I expected that both groups would have applied the conflict frame more prominently in comparison to the two dimensions of constructive journalism. Paired-sample t-tests show that for both Russian and Western media together there are significant differences
between the application of the conflict frame(M =.76, SD =.33) and the solution dimension of constructive journalism (M =.31, SD =.34), t(359) = 17.84, p <.001; as well as between the conflict frame and the context and human focus dimension (M =.43, SD =.34), t(359) = 13.92, p <.001. For example, this frame was very prominent in the article “US imposes visa restrictions on Russian officials as Obama signs sanctions order” from The Guardian which refers to the EU and the US leaders as one side which blames Russia for invasion in Crimea (Lewis, Roberts, Traynor, & Walker, 2014). It focuses on the clash between the superpowers instead of people who were affected by the crisis. The results suggest that the conflict frame is generally more prominent than constructive journalism in both Russian and Western media8. Thus, Hypothesis 1 is supported.
H2 predicted that the New Cold War frame would also be more prominent than
constructive journalism in both Russian and Western media, and RQ2b explored whethere there are differences in using constructive journalism and the New Cold War frame between both groups. Since the New Cold War frame had two versions, I first examined whether the anti-Western dimension of the New Cold War frame was more prominent in the Russian media, and if the anti-Russian dimension was more prevalent in the Western media. Figure 2 demonstrates that, as expected, the Western media applied anti-Russian New Cold War Frame more prominently than Russian media, t(269) = -2.67, p <.05. Meanwhile, Russian media used anti-Western New Cold War Frame significantly more than the Western media, t(136) = -5.84, p <.0019. A paired
8 Several paired-sample t-tests were also conducted for Western and Russian media separately. The results were statistically significant and reinforce the H1. Western media: the conflict frame (M = .81, SD = .38) was
significantly more prevalent than the solution dimension of constructive journalism (M = .29, SD = .35), t(239) = 18.48, p < .001; and significantly more prevalent than the context and human focus dimension (M = .54, SD = .32), t(239) = 9.32, p < .001. 2. Russian media: conflict frame (M = .68, SD = .30) was significantly more prevalent than solution dimension (M = .37, SD = .32), t(119) = 6.39, p < .001; and significantly more prevalent than context and human focus dimension of constructive journalism (M = .19, SD = .23), t(119) = 11.35, p < .001.
9The anti-Russian New Cold War frame (NCWF) has high score within the Russian media due to one category
which is whether the story explores the conflict between the East and the West. This category was present in 55 out 120 articles from Russian media. The second category of the anti-Russian NCWF which is the West blames Russia was present only in 26 articles. A paired sample t-test revealed significant differences in terms of the prevalence of
sample t-test within Russian news outlets shows that anti-Western New Cold War frame (M =.18, SD =.27) does not prevail over the solution dimension of constructive journalism (M=.37, SD =.32), t(119) = -4.78, p <.00110. On the other hand, the Western media did use anti-Russian New Cold War Frame more prominently (M =.46, SD =.44) than the solution dimension of constructive journalism (M =.29, SD =.35), t(239)= -4.78, p <.001. However, they applied Anti-Russian New Cold War Frame (M =.46, SD =.44) less prominently than the context and human focus dimension of constructive journalism (M =.54, SD =.32), t(239) = -2.37, p <.05.
Figure 2. Mean scores of the New Cold War Frame and Constructive journalism dimensions in Russian and Western media.
These results suggest that contrary to my prediction, the anti-Russian New Cold War frame, which assigns blame of the Ukraine crisis to the West and emphasises the struggles of
the anti-Russian NCWF (M = .34, SD = .38) over context and human focus dimension of constructive journalism (M = .19, SD = .23), t(119) = 3.45, p = .001. Therefore, the anti-Russian NCWF was prevalent in the Russian media due to a frequent reference to the conflict between the East and the West. I aknowledge this limitation further below in the discussion section.
10The frame was not more prominent than the context and human focus dimension, but this difference turned to be
insignificant, t(119)=-.19, p=.85. 0.18 0.03 0.34 0.46 0.37 0.29 0.19 0.54 0 0.1 0.2 0.3 0.4 0.5 0.6 0.7 0.8 0.9 1
Russian media Western media
Anti-Western NCWF Anti-Russian NCWF
people who were affected by the Western countries and their allies, was not more prominent than the two dimensions of constructive journalism in the Russian media. By contrast, the Western media blamed Russia for the crisis and referred to the geopolitical power struggle between the East and the West more often than focused on possible solutions and future opportunities for Ukraine. Yet the hostile narrative did not prevail upon providing context and focussing on humans in the Western media, i.e. the second constructive journalism dimension. Thus, Hypothesis 2 is supported only partially.
RQ3 examined the prominence of different elements of constructive journalism between the Russian and the Western media. Strikingly, despite a high prevalence of both analysed frames, the Western media used constructive journalism elements on a significantly more frequent basis than the Russian media, except for the solution element, X2 (9, N =360) = 194.75, p =.000. Table 1 shows the frequency of these elements in each group. Sixty percent of the Russian news stories mentioned a solution element, which is a part of solution-oriented framing, while only 38% of the Western media news stories contained this element. This means that the Russian media
mentioned an action or stance to resolve the Ukraine crisis in their news stories more frequently than the Western media. For example, this could be a story referring to the discussion of a political settlement of the crisis between the EU official and the speaker of Ukraine’s Parlaiment (RT, 2014). As Table 1 indicates, the Russian media provided information about the causes of the conflict only in 4 articles. On the other hand, the Western media offered diverse sources and stances towards the conflict and factual data in more than half of their stories. To conclude, there are indeed notable differences in the way that the Western and the Russian media used the elements of constructive journalism.
Table 1
Constructive Journalism Elements in the Western and Russian news articles Constructive
journalism element
Russian media Western media
Frequency % of articles Frequency % of articles
Solution 72 60% 91 37.92% Effect of the solution 4 3.33% 38 15.83% Future orientation 16 13.33% 45 18.75% Diversity 13 10.83% 123 51.25% Impact on people 31 25.83% 137 57.08% Hero 0 0% 20 8.33% Context 4 3.33% 63 26.25%
Facts and data 21 17.5% 123 51.25%
Governments' responsibility
4 3.33% 47 19.58%
N of articles 120 100% 240 100%
Note. n of articles from Russian media = 120. n of articles from Western media = 240. Total N=360. Frequency column represents the total number of presence of the element in the articles, where one article is a unit of analysis. The % column represents % of the occurrence of each element within all articles in each group.
RQ4 focused on the most and least frequent elements of constructive journalism in the coverage of the Ukraine crisis within each media outlet. Table 2 provides the results to assess this question. The comparative analysis of constructive journalism elements utilisation reveals
significant differences across the outlets, X2 (45, N=360) = 278.97, p <.000. As was mentioned above, the solution element was the most frequent in both Russian outlets. Nonetheless, private RBC used constructive elements more often than state-owned RT except for the context element. Neither of them mentioned a hero who represented hope and resilience, and both provided relatively few examples on how the crisis affects ordinary people.
Table 2
Constructive Journalism Elements in Six News Outlets (Raw frequencies, % of the stories)
Constructive journalism element RT Frequen cy (%) RBC Frequenc y (%) The Guardian Frequenc y (%) BBC Frequenc y (%) CNN Frequenc y (%) NPR Frequenc y (%) Total frque ncy Solution 30 (50%) 42 (70%) 19 (31.67%) 18 (30%) 36 (60%) 18 (30%) 163 Effect of the solution 1 (1.67%) 3 (5%) 6 (10%) 10 (16.67%) 12 (20%) 10 (16.67%) 42 Future orientation 2 (3.33%) 14 (23.33%) 6 (10%) 13 (21.67%) 18 (30%) 8 (15.4%) 61 Diversity 5 (8.33%) 8 (13.33%) 19 (31.67%) 32 (53.33%) 35 (58.33%) 37 (61.67%) 136 Impact on people 12 (20%) 19 (31.67%) 32 (53.33%) 34 (56.67%) 37 (61.67%) 34 (56.67%) 168 Hero 0 (0%) 0 (0%) 3 (5%) 4 (6.67%) 5 (8.33%) 8 (13.33%) 20 Context 3 (5%) 1 (1.67%) 7 (11.67%) 14 (23.33%) 15 (25%) 27 (45%) 67 Facts and data 8 (13.33 %) 13 (21.67%) 22 (36.67%) 35 (58.33%) 32 (53.33%) 34 (56.67%) 144 Governments' responsibility 1 (1.67%) 3 (5%) 8 (13.33%) 10 (16.67%) 17 (28.33%) 12 (20%) 51 Total N of articles 60 60 60 60 60 60
Note. Unit of analysis is the full article. Frequency column represents the total number of presence of the element and the % of the occurrence of each element within each media outlet.
By contrast, this latter element was the most frequent in the news stories of The Guardian. BBC relied the most on facts and data in comparison to all other news outlets. In stories of NPR, the most salient element was the inclusion of diverse sources and stances on the crisis (appeared in 61.67% of stories), which was also found in over 50% of BBC stories. For example, in the article
“Ukraine conflict: Death toll rises ahead of peace talks,” BBC mentions how the crisis affects people in the article’s section “Ukraine's war: The human cost,” and covers context in the section “Why has conflict returned to eastern Ukraine?” (The BBC, 2015). The story also incorporates the diversity element by pointing out each side’s stance on the conflict in the section titled “Rival agendas at Ukraine talks,” while also emphasizing the geopolitical rivalrly between Russia and the West. The above-mentioned results indicate that public and privately-owned Western news outlets incorporated more elements of constructive journalism in their reporting of the Ukraine crisis than state-owned and privately-owned Russian news outlets. The only exception is the solution element. Although, the Russian media incorporated this element more often, they did not report more frequently on the possible effects of this solution.
Conclusion & Discussion
This study set out to investigate the extent to which Russian and Western media applied constructive journalism vis-à-vis the conflict and the New Cold War frames in the coverage of the Ukraine crisis. My findings suggest that Russian and Western media dissimilarly applied the different dimensions of constructive journalism in their reporting; specifically the solution and context and human focus dimensions. The coverage also differed in terms of the application of both analysed frames. This study offers a new approach in the operationalisation of constructive journalism. It is hoped that it can help to establish hypotheses on the application of constructive journalism in the reporting on international conflicts.
Comparative analysis reveals that despite the differences in their media systems and rivalry positions in the Ukraine crisis, both Russian and Western media used the conflict frame more prominently than constructive journalism. These findings on the prevalence of the conflict frame are in line with a large body of literature on this frame’s dominance in hard news (Schuck
et al, 2013; Semetko & Valkenburg, 2000) and in the cross-national coverage of international conflicts (Godefroidt et al., 2016; Dimitrova & Strömbäck, 2005; Liu, 2019).
As for the New Cold War frame, the extent to which it was applied in the Russian and the Western media vis-à-vis constructive journalism dimensions varied significantly. The
anti-Western version of the frame, which specifically assigns blame to the West in the Ukraine crisis, emphasises struggles of people who were affected by the West and positively portrays Russia, did not significantly prevail over the solution dimension of constructive journalism in the Russian media. On the other hand, in the Western media, the New Cold War frame, which assigns blame to Russia and explores the confrontation between the East and The West, was more prominent than the solution dimension of constructive journalism. The salience of the solution dimension within the Russian media differs from the findings of Liu (2019), who suggested that the Russian newspaper The Moscow Times provided fewer prognostic solutions than British The Guardian. Yet the results on the Western media reinforce the previous findings on conflict propaganda and the adoption of the New Cold War framing by the Western media, especially in terms of
assigning blame to Russia (Boyd-Barrett, 2017; Ojala & Pantti, 2017; Ojala et al., 2017). The Western media, however, showed greater emphasis on applying the context and human focus dimensions of constructive journalism. This means that it provided relatively more context, diverse sources, and more often mentioned how the crisis affected people than it focused on the great powers’ struggle. Such an approach in the coverage can be due to a higher level of
journalistic professionalism and a more common practice of constructive journalism in the Western cultures (Hermans & Gyldensted, 2019; Nygren et al., 2018).
Further exploring the differences in the application of various constructive journalism elements within each media outlet, it was found that BBC relied on facts and data more
prominently than other outlets and often referred to the impact of the crisis on people. Yet it presented fewer solutions and the meaning of these solutions to people. This contradicts the findings of Zhang and Mattingwina (2016) who revealed that in the coverage of the Ebola outbreak in Africa BBC provided the context of the problem and greatly explored possible solutions. This can indicate that the media outlets utilise different constructive journalism elements based on the topic they cover. As for RT and RBC, their stories barely focused on the impact of the crisis on people and they did not mention a hero who withstands the burdens of the crisis. This is a surprising finding considering geographic and cultural proximity of Russia to Ukraine (Szostek, 2014). Such closeness enables journalists an easier access to citizen sources. These findings contradict previous studies which found that Russian media took an active stance in the reporting on the Ukraine crisis by relying more on local sources than the Western media and incorporating emotions (Nygren et al., 2018; Pasitselska, 2017; Roman et al., 2017). Thus, despite geographic constraints, which could possibly affect the quality of news content, the Western media focused on the crisis’ effect on ordinary people and on heroes more prominently than Russian media.
The current study is unique in providing a cross-national quantitative operationalisation of constructive journalism in conflict reporting and it leaves ample opportunities for further
research. First, including more countries to the Western media sample will provide a broader picture of the Western media coverage of the crisis. Second, as was seen on the example of BBC, a future study can explore whether the dimensions or particular elements of constructive
journalism are more often used in the coverage of specific topics. Finally, this study briefly indicated that the privately-owned Russian outlet incorporated the elements of constructive journalism more often than the state-owned outlet. This presents an interesting ground to explore
how Russian journalists’ practice of constructive journalism changes based on the ownership structure of the media outlets they work at.
I acknowledge several limitations of this study. First, two outlets per country limit the generalisability of my results to all Russian and Western media. However, as was discussed in the methods section, a similar approach was followed by other scholars who conducted cross-national studies (e.g., Fahmy, 2010; Godefroidt et al., 2016; Venger, 2019). Moreover, most of the comparative studies in the English language academia analysed state-owned Russian outlets or Russian outlets in English (e.g., Godefroids et al., 2016; Liu, 2019; Lichtenstein et al., 2019; Roman et al., 2017). This study incorporates both state-owned and privately-owned online news outlets in Russian, which strengthens the generalisability of the results to Russia and provides more nuanced findings. Another limitation concerns the use of PCA for the scale development in the current study. This approach is deemed to be slightly inaccurate for dichotomous variables (Antino, Alvarado, Asún, & Bliese, 2018), for which other procedures are typically preferred. Yet it was commonly used by researchers who developed concept measurement scales based on dichotomous variables (e.g., Godefroidt et al., 2016; Han, 2007; Schuck et al., 2013; Semetko & Valkenburg, 2000). The PCA was also chosen due to pragmatic reasons; that is its accessibility for a researcher with no prior experience in the analyses of scales’ validity. There are also limitations in factor solution itself. Since the conflict and the New Cold War frames are related content-wise, they would predictably load on the same factor. Attaching the importance to distinguishing these two frames based on theoretical grounds, I conducted two PCA’s which is not a common practice. Moreover, the factor solution for anti-Russian New Cold War frame included a category which was highly present in both Russian and Western media. This led to the salience of this frame in Russian media. Although further analysis explaining this nuance within
the Russian media was conducted, I fully acknowledge this limitation. Finally, the articles were randomly selected from the four timeframes, but not equally distributed within each. This could mean that more articles were analysed in some phases of the crisis than in others. Yet the distinction of the coverage between specific timeframes was not the scope of my research.
Despite these limitations, this thesis offers a quantitative contribution to constructive journalism practice in the coverage of international conflicts; a topic which has previously, for the most part, only been part of a more normative discussion about the criteria for ‘good’ journalism. Acknowledging that quality mainstream media significantly influences the
understanding of different issues by the public, this study supports previous research showing media’s well-known bias towards more confrontational rhetoric in portraying international conflicts such as the Ukraine crisis. As the relationships between the East and the West are still tense, mainstream media continues to point at the Cold War Era which divided nations into hostile blocks. Constructive journalism, if practiced more prominently, can contribute to dissolving such antagonistic narratives and re-establishing public trust in traditional media by providing attainable solutions to the conflicts. Yet, as the current study shows, much work still needs to be done by media professionals to make constructive journalism a common practice.
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Appendix A
Codebook
Part I. Criteria for the articles
1. It should include keywords “Ukraine” AND/OR “Ukrainian crisis”.
2. The articles should have been published within four timeframes:
- 1 November 2013 – 28 February 2014: the Maidan protests
- 1 March – 31 May 2014: the Crimea crisis, Presidential elections, and riots in Odessa
- 17-31 July 2014: the MH17 shutdown in Eastern Ukraine
- 1-28 February 2015: the Minsk international ceasefire agreement, heavy fighting in Eastern Ukraine.
3. The article should be related directly to Ukrainian crisis and events happening around it
(for example Minsk negotiations, referendum in Crimea). Articles related to sports or mentioning Ukraine in stock market results should be omitted in the first stage of screening. See the definition of Ukraine crisis below.
4. The article should be at least 150 words to eliminate short news reports copied from
news wires or press statements. The video or audio reports should be omitted.
General coding rules:
2. Read the article carefully through and answer on each variable listed below based on the whole article and the information it contains.
3. First, skim through the article to have a general understanding and identify the relevance of the article to the Ukraine crisis.
4. Second, start coding variables one by one.
5. Note in comments specific examples of why you coded specific variable for the presence. For instance, one sentence/paragraph which explicitly answers the question for the variable. Identification.
Main definitions:
The Ukraine Crisis is the conflict in Ukraine which started in 2013 with the Maidan protests
over the Eurasian Union deal which favoured the Russian interests. Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych, therefore, rejected the offer for the greater integration with the EU. People gathered on Maidan square for the massive protests. It, then, led to a turmoil, and the President fled the country. Subsequently, in March 2014 Russia annexed Crimea. The conflict was also followed by the war in Donbass (Eastern Ukraine) between pro-Russian separatists and Ukrainian
government. The international dimension of the crisis expanded with the shot down of Malaysian Airlines flight 17 (allegedly by pro-Russian separatists) which took away the lives of 298 people. This brought the relationship between Russia and West to its lowest point since the Cold War. In February 2015, Western leaders (French President Francois Hollande and German Chancellor Angela Merkel) signed a deal with Vladimir Putting and Ukrainian president Petr Poroshenko
