#media framing

[rjalker]

6/30/26

Thinking about framing in Dorohedoro with Kai and Aikawa.

The story very clearly wants the reader to sympathize with Aikawa and see his situation as tragic. We're supposed to see him as a good guy, he's even one of the few Dorohedoro characters who explicitly isn't down with murder [... except for that time where he and Risu needed to get rid of a teacher or else they'd get in trouble]. And also by allowing Aikawa to be so much more of a character by letting us know what he's thinking, showing us his bonds, etc, the story also positions Aikawa as 'the person Kaiman used to be' much more than Kai no matter how much the story states at the end that Kaiman is a synthesis of all of Ai Coleman/Aikawa/Kai together.

But stopping to actually look at and analyze Aikawa's actions and priorities... he's not really that sympathetic. And there's a lot of his misery that seems self inflicted by his desire to not have to change the life he wants to have more than he cares about any of his loved ones it seems.

Meanwhile, with Kai the story wants us to view him as The Worst... even tho his violence isn't any more violent than things we see Kaiman, Nikaido, Shin, Noi, or En do. The only real difference is that none of his violence gets any comedy added to it and we aren't allowed to know him as a person so he comes across as all menace no affability outside of the love of food he shares with his alters. Even if he simply doesn't talk much, it's a comic. Thought bubbles exist, visual gags exist. But no, Kai's the scary unknowable boogeyman that's a danger to all the characters we're supposed to like and want to see succeed.

Kai feels a lot less like a character, [tho he had potential to be an interesting character] and more like a plot vehicle.

yeah I was picking up on that just from the anime so far. Like, *gestures* it's a Murderworld. Everyone does murder. And everyone the "good guys" kill also had friends and family who are gonna miss them, just like we're supposed to miss the character's Kai killed.

[definitlynotdwr]

The Poilievre Security Clearance Smear That Refuses to Die

Oh, for heaven’s sake. The Pierre Poilievre “security clearance” line has become one of those zombie claims in Canadian politics: killed repeatedly, buried repeatedly, and somehow still shambling around the media ecosystem looking for brains. The lazy version goes like this: Poilievre does not have security clearance. The line sounds grave because it is designed to sound grave. The average reader…

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[definitlynotdwr]

The Alberta NDP's Peggy Wright - This Is How Bad Policy Wins Without Public Consent

Posted by the NDP’s Peggy Wright on X.   There is a recurring pattern in modern policy debates that most people sense but struggle to name. The argument presented to the public is not the policy that gets implemented. Instead, a broadly agreeable claim—something no reasonable person would oppose—is used to carry a far more specific and contested agenda into law. By the time the details become…

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[definitlynotdwr]

The Questions Canadian Media Refuse to Ask

Canadian media know how to do pattern recognition when they want to. Give them the right suspect, the right ideology, or the right grievance story, and they will produce instant analysis about pathways, warning signs, radicalization, social meaning, and what the event “says” about the culture. But let violence intersect with a politically protected identity category, and the appetite for…

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[vaguely-problematic]

Language matters: What learners need to know about Ukrainian

Languages and how people use them represent personal identities and the political and cultural histories of a community. Learn more about Uk

some excerpts: "Languages and how people use them represent personal identities and the political and cultural histories of a community... [W]e wanted to provide a (brief) overview of Ukrainian and Russian, what people speak in Ukraine and why, and the linguistic complexities behind the videos and signs you've been seeing." .... How different are Ukrainian and Russian? "Before diving into the facts of these languages, we should take a moment to consider what people mean when they ask this question and what people are actually saying when they answer it. Because sometimes, this question is a very political one. "In the course of world history, groups could often justify their right to have an independent nation by proving that they had their own unique language — and so sometimes, people who try to minimize the differences between two languages might be attempting to diminish another country’s nationhood. "So be aware that political ideology, rather than linguistic fact, can sometimes shape someone's opinion about how similar or different the languages are." .... Ukrainian and Russian sounds and pronunciation "Ukrainian and Russian also have some important differences in the sounds of the language and how those sounds are represented in writing. "For example, you've probably also heard some differences in the name of Ukraine's capital city. The Russian name for Ukraine's capital is Киев (Kiev), which, as you would expect, uses Russian sounds. (Just like English speakers use English sounds to say Madrid, Istanbul, and Reykjavik!) "But the Ukrainian name of Ukraine's capital is Київ (Kyiv), which, naturally, uses the native Ukrainian sounds to say its own capital's name. The letter и is like the English "i" in "kit," and the letter ї is pronounced "yee": put it together, and you have "ki-yeev" and spell it "Kyiv" in English." .... How grammar can be political "Other linguistic differences might be more subtle. For example, it used to be the norm in English to say "the Ukraine" instead of just "Ukraine," which is what you hear today. "This change may seem small, but there is a complex history (and lots of politics!) behind it: using "the" creates the impression that Ukraine is a region, part of some larger whole, like another country. We do this in U.S. English with our regions, like the Midwest (of the U.S.) or the South (of the U.S.). "However, in 1991, when Ukraine declared independence from the USSR, the government also stated a preference that “the” not be used in English-language publications. That's why you now see just "Ukraine," to show it is an independent country." .... Standing with Ukrainians ..." If you speak Ukrainian and other Slavic languages, you can support Ukrainians by volunteering with Translators without Borders. If you're able to donate financially, UNICEF USA supports children in need and is focusing efforts on helping Ukrainian children. [links near end of article]"

[adventuresinsocioecology]

Here are some Landsat imagery of the southern section of the Virunga National Park in 1987, 2001 and then this year. Around the Volcanoes on the east side of the image the boundary of the park is very clear, with their being almost no buffer zone between local populations and the park. Evidence of volcanic eruptions is also visible in the centre of the image on the Northern shores of Lake Kivu. 

Using Landsat viewer (if you’re interested in Remote Sensing just have a look around this data, it’s amazing:https://landsatlook.usgs.gov/ you do need an account but it’s quick to set up), I’m able to zoom right in and see what this different actually looks like on a much finer scale:

You can see the very obvious greener border area in straight lines and the markings of what appear to terraced farming/agricultural plots (a visual comparison in 2015 show this land as all forested/grassland at the same time of the year).

Next year my research will focus on quantifying the forest loss in the Virunga National Park region of the eastern DRC over time, and looking to attribute social drivers to that loss, using my work this year which has given me a fantastic grounding in the social institutions, complexities and issues in this region as a springboard. As part of my research this year I have read so many oversimplified versions of conflict in the DRC, or the reasons why people need to make sue of forest resources, and the local people are criminalised for these actions. Technically, the removal of any resources from the protected area is illegal, but as I write my discussion section for my current report I am really enjoying interrogating this criminilisation frame and asking what other choice these people are given, and what other types of action the political/social and environmental infrastructure at the time of events like the Rwandan Refugee Crisis and Rwandan Civil War in 1994 would have made available. It is one thing to criminalise a population in media articles when there is a potential alternative (although still not a good thing!), but another to oversimplify conflict dynamics when there has not and is not an alternative option available for such a dense human population (some of the densest in Africa (Grey & kaplers, 2005)).

-  Grey, M., & Kaplers, J. (2005). Ranger based monitoring in the Virunga-Bwindi region of East-Central Africa: A simple data collection tool for park management

I think the onus is on the western audience (i.e us) who readily absorb these frames without question, nor think about the implications these frames could have for local people. Completing this research has forced me to reassess so many of my own biases and has changed how I view the world around me and media articles. There are implications of news media framing in Africa and the DRC that I argue are negative, and I’m looking forward to being able to share those findings!

Media framing is starting to be researched a bit more in literature (and I’m excited to be part of it); here is a really, really great paper:

- Braczokowski et al. (2018). Reach and messages of the world's largest ivory burn

And here’s a quick news article about if you don’t have time to read the whole thing although I thoroughly recommend it! https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2018/03/180305093039.htm

[thepicturesinourheads-blog]

A lesson in objectivity

A 7 News Adelaide update during the football last night opted for the sensationalist approach when newsreader Jessica Adamson stated that violence had broken out at 'multicultural rally'. The rally was in fact two dual protests that took place in inner Melbourne yesterday, between anti-racism and anti-immigration protesters which, despite the best efforts of police to keep them apart, broke out into small but violent scuffles between the two sides. 7 News' choice of words in reporting the incident is a textbook example of media framing, which is 'to select some elements of a perceived reality and make them more salient in a communicating text, in such a way as to promote a particular problem definition, causal interpretation, moral evaluation and/or treatment evaluation for the item described' (Entman 1993). There are three ways 7 could have reported the incident, as occurring at: a multicultural rally, anti-immigration rally, or protest rally. By describing it as a 'multicultural rally', 7 emphasised the presence of 'multicultural protesters' at the scene - thus, if we refer to Entman's (1993) definition of framing, attributing them as somehow causal to the incident. In actual fact, available reports suggest that the violence was perpetrated by a small number of protesters from both groups. What 7 should have said, in order to report the story in a fair and balanced manner (as is their journalistic responsibility), is a neutral statement, such as 'violence broke out between protesters from two rival groups in Melbourne today', or words to that effect, as reported by the ABC here. Of course, that doesn't have quite the same dramatic impact. It's difficult to assess why 7 News chose to frame the story in this particular way, but one may postulate a number of reasons, such as: perceived audience tastes, an attention-seeking exercise, the editorial leanings of the program, or simply the well-worn accusation of journalistic laziness. Whatever the reason, 7's news update is indicative of a general trend in commercial tv news towards increased bias in reporting, and consequent neglect of the journalistic principle of objectivity. This is concerning because, for most of us, the mainstream media remains our primary source of news and information of the world around us. Access to fair, balanced and accurate information is vital to making decisions about our health, wellbeing, livelihood, and those of our nearest and dearest. A basic understanding of media framing helps people to evaluate the quality of information presented to them, which is crucial to decision-making in our everyday lives.

[aislynnyume]

So, the media, any media, (like Jimmy Kimmel) does thing called framing. They takes the message they want people to hear, and put that one. I’m sure that they gave those same bullshit joke interviews with hundreds of fans and picked the worst ones to show. 

So.. thanks Jimmy Kimmel for feeding into the bullshit perception that all 1D fans are obsessive, gullible, naive crazies who cause chaos.