The First Amendment as a Frame: A Content Analysis of Top Blogs

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The First Amendment as a Frame A Content
Analysis of Top Blogs

• Nikhil Moro
• Kennesaw State University

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Blogs use frames

• Blogs have blurred the lines between producers of
  news and its consumers (Gillmor, We the Media,
  2004)
• Conceived in this manner, blogs may be expected
  to use several tools, such as framing, that the
  mass media have traditionally used to influence
  their consumers' understanding of issues.

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Are blogs news producers?

• News producers transform discrete bits of news
  information into powerful, socially meaningful
  narratives that contribute to the social
  construction of reality and identity. (Tuchman,
  Making News, 1978)

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Media use frames

• Media coverage usually does not objectively
  reflect the world, because the media use frames
  to provide their consumers with themes that
  organize information and provide a context for
  understanding its meaning. (McQuail, Sociology
  of Mass Communications, 1972)

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What are frames?

• Media frames are organizing principles that are
  socially shared and persistent over time, that
  work symbolically to meaningfully structure the
  social world. They act as a tool to shape and
  manipulate information and influence how people
  understand issues and perceive themselves.
  (Reese, Framing Public Life, 2001)

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The community state

• If in 1966 McLuhan suggested that the printing
  press was responsible for the rise of the nation
  state, forty years later, it may be argued that
  Weblogs, or simply blogs, are responsible for the
  rise of the community state.
• By 2005, over ten million blogs will have been
  created, which would dramatically impact ways in
  which information is exchanged in a variety of
  fields. (Henning, The Blogging Iceberg, 2002).

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Top ten blogs

• The ten most popular blogs read by media elites
  in 2004 were
• the Daily Dish by Andew Sullivan,
• Instapundit by Glenn Reynolds,
• Kausfiles by Mickey Kaus,
• the Corner by National Review Online,
• Talking Points Memo by Josh Marshall,
• Media News by James Romenesko,
• Eschaton by Atrios,
• Daniel Drezners blog,
• the Volokh Conspiracy by Eugene Volokh et al.,
• Boing Boing by Cory Doctorow and
• the Bleat by James Lileks.
• (Daniel Drezner and Henry Farrell, The Power and
  Politics of Blogs, 2004).

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Hypothesis

• H1 The First Amendment is a predominant frame in
  the presentation of news and commentary by the
  top political blogs.
• -- Study found clear evidence to support
  hypothesis.

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Method

• Content analysis (Babbie, 2000)
• This study is a close textual reading of the ten
  most popular blogs, over a period of five weeks
  starting January 1, 2005, to identify the
  frequency of occurrence of a First Amendment
  frame.
• Specifically, the study analyzed how often
  bloggers use values such as "freedom of speech,"
  "freedom of expression" or other democratic
  liberties, as talking points in their
  commentaries or presentations of events.

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Results

• 1. First Amendment, or its five constituent
  freedoms (of speech, of the press, of religion,
  of assembly, and of petition against grievances),
  were a dominant theme in bloggers postings.
• 2. More than a third of blog posts use First
  Amendment frames
• In all, 284 posts from the top ten blogs were
  coded in this study spanning five weeks in
  starting January 1, 2005. Of them, 102 posts, or
  36 per cent, cited the First Amendment or one of
  its component freedoms to support an argument or
  to make a point.

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• 3. Freedom of speech and freedom of religion were
  the two top First Amendment frames. The
  frequencies
• Freedom of speech or free speech 21
• Freedom of the press 11
• Freedom of religion 18
• Freedom of assembly or association 10
• Freedom to redress grievances 4
• First Amendment 38

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• 4. Across the board, the top blogs displayed
  relatively vigorous argument.
• To quote Derrida (trans., 1996), We can no more
  imagine effective speech without there being
  self-representation than we can imagine a
  representation of speech without there being
  effective speech.
• Or as Fish (1994) explains, free speech is just
  the name we give to verbal behavior that serves
  the substantive agendas we wish to advance.

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Discussion

• Freedom of expression and democracy
• Paradigmatic approach to freedom of expression
• Liberal/libertarian
• Conservative/utilitarian
• Critical-cultural
• Postmodernist