News Sources and Framing of Responsibility on Devolution in Kenya, 2013–2017

The present research examines two aspects of newspaper coverage of devolution during a 4-year period between March 27, 2013, and May 28, 2017: first, through the lens of attribution of responsibility, who the news media most blamed for problems facing devolution; second, whether reliance on official sources in reporting of devolution mirrors the indexing hypothesis. Findings show that the most-blamed actor and dominant news source on devolution is the county executive. Journalists continue to rely on the elite as their main news source and as a result they shape the discourse on devolution.

Framing Family Planning

Given the population explosion and high rate of maternal and infant mortality prevalent in many developing countries, family planning has been promoted as method of controlling the population growth and stemming the occurrence of these birth-related deaths with the mass media as the major campaign tools. This study examined the coverage of family planning-related news in selected Nigerian online newspapers from September 2017 to April 2019, measuring the presence of eight news frames. A quantitative content analysis of the stories revealed that family planning news frequently fell within the attribution of responsibility frame and solution frame. However, it was observed that not enough media attention was given to address misconceptions about family planning, and stories prompting readers to take action on family planning significantly outnumber stories that provided help-seeking information necessary to take such actions. The results provide important insights of how family planning news is reported in Nigerian newspapers.

Niemiecka doktryna i judykatura wobec problemu odpowiedzialności karnej „sprawców zza biurek” — uwagi na tle koncepcji „Organisationsherrschaft”

The aim of the paper is to present the concept of Claus Roxin’s Organisationsherrschaft as an alternative to attributing criminal responsibility for crimes committed by Nazi “desk murderers.” This concept arose against the background of criticism, after the trials of Adolf Eichmann and Bohdan Stashynsky, of the particularly low number of convictions in similar cases and the numerous omissions of the entire German justice system. Under West German criminal law, a distinction made between those who order murder and those who commit murder on their own initiative meant that the above-mentioned perpetrators who passed on orders from above could only be found guilty of accessory to murder. The novelty of Roxin’s views, however, consisted in an attempt to combine the previous only individualistic perspective of criminal law with the idea of mass, bureaucratic murders. The traditional system of individual attribution of responsibility, as applied for ordinary criminality characterized by the individual commission of single crimes, must be adapted to the needs of collective responsibility, in which the organization (for example, an administrative structure) as a whole serves as the entity upon which attribution of criminal responsibility is based. The first part of the text discusses the main lines of argumentation presented by the West German jurisprudence in cases concerning high-ranking members of the state power apparatus of the Third Reich. At the same time, efforts were made to emphasize the lack of homogeneity of legal solutions presented in national criminal jurisdiction in West Germany and their unacceptable consequences. The second part is devoted to the basic theoretical assumptions of the doctrine of Organisationsherrschaft and its significance for the perception of the boundary between perpetration and participation in German criminal law. The third part briefly presents the contemporary reception of Roxin’s thought, as well as the main points of his criticism, indicating, however, how important it was to effectively prosecute decision-makers from the power apparatus of the Third Reich.

Self-Criticism in Post-Communist Times

This article revisits the category of self-criticism, which, as a speech act, plays a special role in the discourse of the intelligentsia, emerging from the peripheral status of Poland and from the imperative to catch up with the West. In contemporary Poland, self-criticism has revived as a discursive strategy in the context of coming to terms with the democratic transformation. For the right-wing intelligentsia, self-criticism is mainly a postulate that is addressed to political adversaries. For the left-liberal intelligentsia, self-criticism is not only a political weapon but also a strategy of introspective enunciation directed at the post-transformation society. A qualitative discourse analysis of selected acts of self-criticism performed by Polish left-liberal elites between 2013 and 2019 highlights two interconnected conflict-generating fields of debate: (1) reckoning with the neoliberal and pro-Western model of the 1989 democratic transition and (2) retribution on the post-transition intellectual elites that patronized the people and the attribution of responsibility for the Elite-People Division. The distinguished functions of self-criticism point to the political and class conflict as well as to the growing delegitimacy of the dominance of the neoliberal narrative about the Polish model of modernization.

Framing and Agenda Setting of the Day of Republika Srpska and its 2016 Referendum

The purpose of this article is to explore broadsheet newspaper framing and agenda-setting of two events using the five-frame model developed by Semetko and Valkenburg (2000). This article provides insight into how the leading broadsheet newspaper within BiH’s Republika Srpska frames relationships between the three main ethnic groups and is the first such study to occur in BiH. By identifying and exploring the most common frames in Glas Srpske during the five-year period (from 31 December 2015 to 30 December 2020), the research is meant to answer the following research questions: How does Glas Srpske frame the conversation about it and portray the Day of Republika Srpska (RS) and Referendum of the RS Day? The results, which find Attribution of Responsibility and Conflict frames to be the more prevalent in Glas Srpske, illustrate contentious politics that reinforce differences between ethnic groups in BiH. These events and the controversial narrative surrounding them are relevant more than ever in the light of the recent non-paper ‘Western Balkans – A Way Forward’.

The victims, villains and heroes of ‘panic buying’: News media attribution of responsibility for COVID-19 stockpiling

Societies often respond to a crisis by attributing blame to some groups while constructing others as victims and heroes. While it has received scant sociological attention, ‘panic buying’ is a critical indicator of such public sentiment at the onset of a crisis, and thus a crucial site for analysis. This article traces dynamics of blame in news media representations of an extreme period of panic buying during COVID-19 in Australia. Analysis reveals that lower socio-economic and ethnically diverse consumers were blamed disproportionately. Unlike wealthier consumers who bulk-bought online, shoppers filling trollies in-store were depicted as selfish and shameful, described using dehumanising language, and portrayed as ‘villains’ who threatened social order. Supermarkets were cast simultaneously as ‘victims’ of consumer aggression and ‘heroes’ for their moral leadership, trustworthiness and problem-solving. This portrayal misunderstands the socio-emotional drivers of panic buying, exacerbates stigma towards already disadvantaged groups, and veils the corporate profiteering that encourages stockpiling.

Major League Missteps: How MLB Mishandled the Astros Cheating Scandal

Major League Baseball (MLB) has been criticized for its handling of the Astros’ cheating scandal. Researchers used a case study method to test whether Situational Crisis Communication Theory (SCCT) should be expanded to include collaborative brand attack (CBA) as a crisis type. Researchers used traditional and extended SCCT to analyze MLB’s crisis response to determine which version fit best. Data were triangulated from sports news sources, MLB’s official statement and Twitter account, and social media influencer and stakeholder posts. Researchers asked which SCCT response MLB used and whether it was effective with stakeholders. Because of poor history, MLB’s accidental crisis response mismatched the level of stakeholder attribution of responsibility. Another question examined the role of social media. Major League Baseball underestimated the role of social media and SM influencers and, by underutilizing its Twitter feed, left stakeholders to attribute greater responsibility to MLB. Two final questions asked whether SCCT should be updated to include the CBA crisis type and whether it applied in this case. The results indicate the negative consequences of crisis/response mismatch and indicate that CBA should be incorporated into SCCT to address social media influence. This is the first known study to apply CBA in a sports context.

Media Agenda and Press Conferences on COVID-19 in Mexico: An Analysis of Journalists’ Questions

The impact of the COVID-19 pandemic has highlighted the need to strengthen health communication in times of crisis. This study aims to analyze the media agenda of press conferences on COVID-19 in Mexico during the first two phases of the pandemic, based on journalists’ questions. The study is based on framing theory. The method used was content analysis from a quantitative perspective. This method was explicitly applied to the final section of the conferences, which dealt with “questions from the press.” The results show that at the beginning of the pandemic, the press was more interested in the government’s management of the health crisis than in issues such as the prevention of the disease itself or the economic impact of the crisis on the country. Moreover, the main characteristic of the questions was that they were generally socially relevant. In conclusion, we found that in the media agenda of the Mexican conference, the frame of attribution of responsibility was prominent but in combination with the frames of conflict, human interest, morality, and economic consequences.

(In)Sincere Demeanor and (In)Sincere Language in Crisis Communication

Perceptions of a crisis communicator’s sincerity drive reactions to an organization’s response amidst a scandal. However, a spokesperson can nonverbally appear sincere while deceptively evading questions and can appear insincere while actually speaking sincere truths. Applying truth-default theory to crisis communication, we assess people’s reactions to a spokesperson varying in sincerity through demeanor and language. In an experiment ( N = 801), adults from across the United States were randomly assigned to view one of four versions of a news interview. The stimuli present the spokesperson replying to questions with sincere or insincere demeanor and sincere language (conveying relevance and clarity) or insincere language (evasion and obfuscation). Results indicate that sincerity in demeanor and language interact to affect (a) account acceptance, (b) negative word-of-mouth intention, and (c) attribution of responsibility. But sincerity in language largely overrides behavioral impressions. Discussion concerns considering evasion and obfuscation as demeanor cues, when violations of relevance and clarity in language undercut a spokesperson’s believability.

Attribution of Responsibility for Pick Up Artist Issues in China: The Impacts of Journalist Gender, Geographical Location, and Publication Range

Pick-up artists (PUAs) apply strategies from evolutionary psychology to exploit women emotionally, sexually, and financially. In China, PUA issues have been garnering attention from journalists and news media. However, scholars have yet to explore how such issues have been portrayed in Chinese online news media, in particular the attribution of responsibility. The current study content-analyzed 115 Chinese online news articles related to PUA issues to explore whom the responsibility for causing and solving the issue is attributed, and investigated the influence of journalist gender, geographical location, and publication range on the attribution of responsibility. The results indicated that (a) the responsibility for both causing and solving the issue was attributed to perpetrators and the society frequently and to victims sporadically and (b) the attribution of responsibility differs across geographical locations or when the news websites are national as opposed to provincial. Directions for future studies were discussed.