Testing Different Approaches to News

Abstract

The purpose of this chapter is combining the previous process-tracing observations with content analysis to finally assess the extent to which the coverage of 9/11 and its aftermath can be explained by current approaches to news in Political Communications, International Communications, and News Sociology. More specifically, from the perspective of Political Communication, to what extent was coverage reflecting the views expressed by elites within each country’s political debate (indexing hypothesis)? From the viewpoint of International Communications, to what extent was coverage presenting similar features across all newspapers (globalization) rather than showing differences along national lines (localization)? Alternatively, was there any evidence that there were unbalanced news flows between richer (more powerful) and poorer countries, for example, between the United States and Pakistan? Finally, within the micro perspective of News Sociology, to which degree was each newspaper’s coverage shaped by the norms of conduct and the individual biases internal to each single media organization?