Semester of Graduation
Fall 2018
Degree
Master of Mass Communication (MMC)
Department
Manship School of Mass Communication
Document Type
Thesis
Abstract
This study examines newspaper coverage of the Greek economic crisis in the summer of 2015 by exploring attribution of responsibility to the actors involved in the crisis. I performed a qualitative content analysis on 114 news stories, 59 from The Guardian and 55 from The New York Times. Prior literature has indicated that American newspapers tend to present economic crisis from an elite perspective, which could distort public opinion to reflect elite views. Following previous studies, I analyzed the news stories in terms of how they used the responsibility frame of coverage of the Greeks and their creditors. The frames used by the American and the British newspapers were associated with the Greek government’s dissatisfaction with the creditors and vice versa, as well as Europe’s systemic deficiencies and the failed treatments that Greece’s creditors prescribed to alleviate the country’s financial plight. The analysis indicated that newspapers might have become more rigorous in interpreting the underlying mechanisms of a crisis instead of superficially covering episodic events, but most analysis comes from editorials instead of news stories. This could seem as a positive sign, but there is still much room for improvement.
Date
8-28-2018
Recommended Citation
Boukouvidis, Tryfon, "Similarities and Differences in Western Media Portrayals of the Greek Economic Crisis: A Qualitative Analysis of The Guardian and The New York Times' Summer 2015 Coverage of the Greek Economic Crisis" (2018). LSU Master's Theses. 4787.
https://repository.lsu.edu/gradschool_theses/4787
Committee Chair
Bien-Aimé, Steve
DOI
10.31390/gradschool_theses.4787