Abstract
On 11 February 2017, North Korea launched its first intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) test of the Trump administration. Over the ensuing year the North Korean government continued to defy international pressures through the intensification of its ballistic missile and nuclear programs. During this time frame, an escalation of adversarial rhetoric between the Trump administration and the Kim Jong-un military government gained widespread media attention for its potential to escalate into military aggression. This study analyzes USA Today coverage of the ‘North Korean crisis’, and its subsequent de-escalation following the announcements of diplomatic talks in March 2018 in order to gain insight into the nature of mainstream US media framing of the issue. The study found that US news media appropriates ingroup/outgroup dichotomies in the service of US interests. Analysis also revealed that the coverage embraced an ideologically-based narrative predicated on the rejection of an international system based on the moral imperatives of democracy and human rights in favor of a realpolitik interpretation of the international system in which actors compete for advantage.
Introduction
Frequently emphasized within predominant news framing and agenda setting research is the extent to which elite political actors and journalists exert influence over both each other and the public through the highlighting and selection of particular events, issues and actors in ways that endorse specific interpretations and perceptual frames (Entman, 2003). Personifying such processes is abundant framing research into the existence of a ‘Cold War’ foreign affairs news frame within mainstream US news coverage until the collapse of the Soviet Union. This scholarship identified the manner in which US international news coverage emerged within an ideological, dichotomistic perceptual lens through which all coverage of foreign events, issues and actors was understood relative to the US–Soviet conflict (Giffard, 2000; Hallin, 1986, 1987; Hanson, 1995; Norris, 1995).
Echoing Huntington’s (1993) highly controversial ‘clash of civilizations’ thesis, as the specter of communism receded, framing scholarship turned its attention to the ascension of the ‘clash of ideologies’ frame invoked by US news media. Within this ‘North–South’ frame, developing nations and the ‘have nots’ of the world were understood ‘in terms of their support for or opposition to Western policies and values’ (Giffard, 2000: 406). In the wake of the September 11 2001 attack, a new body of literature emerged that pointed to the ascension of a ‘War on Terror’ frame, universally invoked by mainstream US news media in their coverage of international affairs, one predicated on particular moralistic and ideological prerogatives (Merskin, 2004; Rogan, 2010; Spielvogel, 2005; Thussu, 2006).
The nuclear program of North Korea – the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (hereafter North Korea) – has long been seen as a threat to international stability and security. These concerns date back to Pyongyang’s (2003) exit from the Nonproliferation Treaty (NPT), an international treaty constructed to preclude the proliferation of nuclear armament, and to promote global nuclear disarmament. Following the country’s withdrawal from NPT, substantial international effort has been exerted to dissolve the threat, starting with six-party talks between the US, China, Russia, South Korea, Japan and North Korea in 2003. Nonetheless, the multi-nation talks have done little to extinguish the turmoil, bringing little in the way of diplomatic resolution, as rendered evident by the success of North Korea’s nuclear tests in October 2006, September 2007, May 2009, February 2013, January 2016 and September 2016 (BBC News, 2017).
After an initial escalation of tensions between the Obama administration and the North Korean government, in April 2013 the US began a path toward a diplomatic easing of tensions between the two nations (The New York Times, 2014). This political détente unraveled under the Trump administration, in turn giving rise to escalating hostilities and rhetoric between Pyongyang and Washington. Corresponding to the escalation of provocative actions by the two governments, which included numerous successful intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) testing by the North Korean government, was the White House’s ratcheting up of rhetoric aimed at the regime and its leader Kim Jong-un, and the administration’s pursuit of a ‘maximum pressure’ campaign (Borger and McCurry, 2018). In what has been hailed as an ‘historic diplomatic breakthrough’, on 8 March 2018, South Korean officials announced that President Trump had agreed to meet with Kim Jong-un after the North Korean leader promised to refrain from any additional nuclear testing and embark on a path toward denuclearization (Cheng, 2018).
As exemplified by inquiries into the construction of the ‘War on Terror’ narrative positioning the US and its allies (and in turn ‘the very idea of civilized society’) against an ‘axis of evil’ by the Bush administration in the aftermath of 9/11, news framing scholarship has often identified the tendency of journalists to ‘internalize’ and ‘naturalize’ dominant adversarial frames constructed by the White House, in turn drawing the mainstream news media into the proliferation of ‘patriotic fever’ and the escalation of ‘national anxiety’ (Reese and Lewis, 2009: 778). As indicated by the salience of media attention to the ‘crisis’, and even the most cursory of analyses into Western media coverage of the rhetorical conflict between Trump and Jong-un, the escalation of the ‘North Korean crisis’ under the Trump administration led to enhanced global apprehensions over the potential for military conflict between the US and North Korea. As news framing research has drawn attention to, such public apprehensions have the capacity for serving as a significant ideological force with implications for populations both within and outside the US democratic political structure.
Given the well-established role of the US news media in re-edifying political discourses and dominant ideological frames, an investigation into the media’s framing of the so-called ‘North Korean crisis’ holds the capacity not only for deconstructing a significant, evolving and volatile aspect of the international political environment, but the furthering of scholarly understandings into US foreign affairs news framing and the complex relationships between media, democracy, and the legitimation of particular power formations.
The framing of foreign affairs in US news media
For Entman (1993: 52), ‘to frame’ is to ‘select some aspects of a perceived reality and make them more salient in a communication text, in such a way as to promote a particular problem definition, causal inference, moral evaluation, and/or treatment recommendation for the item described’. In doing so, frames call attention to particular attributes of our perceptual worlds while simultaneously negating others. According to Goffman (1974), among the pioneers of framing research, frames may be understood as ‘schemata interpretations’ that equip people with the ability to identify and categorize events, issues, topics and actors.
Within prevailing framing scholarship, it is widely understood that, as a result of space/time limitations, the mass media arise as the primary vehicle for the dissemination of information and public perceptions about culture, issues, events and countries. Accordingly, framing research frequently addresses the nature and ubiquity of specific news frames, and the ways in which particular issues are framed (Edelman, 1993; Graber, 1988; Norris, 1995). Embedded within such research is the assumption that journalists unavoidably structure and frame news in a manner that makes stories accessible to a broad audience. Time/space limitations unavoidably act upon journalistic techniques and practices. Consequently, invoking particular frames allows journalists to simplify and impart meaning to issues while attracting the interest of audiences (Valkenburg et al., 1999).
Among the first to deconstruct US news media framing, Gitlin (1980: 7) defined frames as ‘persistent patterns of cognition, interpretation, and presentation of discourse, whether verbal or visual’. Entman (1993) asserts that such frames emerge within four particular locations within communication processes. Communicators unavoidably make conscious and unconscious judgments when determining what and how to communicate. Such determinations are in turn mitigated by ‘schemata’ that serve to structure their belief systems regarding the world in which they are embedded. Additionally, underlying this text is the presence or absence of specific words, phrases, imagery and sources that give rise to ‘thematically reinforcing clusters of facts or judgments’ (p. 52). Thirdly, the thoughts and assumptions of audiences are organized by frames, which may or may not be a reflection of the sender’s framing intention, or the frames arising in the text. Fourthly, culture arises as ‘the stock of commonly invoked frames’ and may be defined as ‘the empirically demonstrable set of common frames exhibited on the discourse and thinking of most people in a social grouping’ (p. 53). Entman thus asserts that, within all four locations, framing functions to privilege and highlight particular facets of reality in a manner that determines problems, identifies causality, ascribes moral evaluations, and proposes solutions (p. 52).
Edelman (1993) draws attention to the function of such processes in the political realm. He argues that, because ‘alternative categorizations win support for specific political beliefs and policies, classification schemes are central to political maneuver and persuasion’ (p. 232). Similarly, Entman (1993) contends that political elites necessarily compete among themselves and with journalists in producing dominant news frames. ‘Framing in this light plays a major role on the exertion of political power, and the frame in the news text is really the imprint of power – it registers the identity of actors or interests that competed to dominate the text’ (p. 55). Within this context, notable scholarly attention has been given to the influence of elite political actors’ interests on reporters and journalistic practices. Entman (2003: 417) contends that, through the privileging of and highlighting of specific issues, events, and actors, framing not only cultivates certain interpretations and perceptions, but also arises as ‘the central process by which government officials and journalists exercise influence over each other and over the public’ (p. 417).
Exemplifying how such processes function ideologically to legitimate particular formulations of power, wherein particular macro frames are naturalized into dominant commonsense understandings through their uncritical acceptance by journalists is scholarship concerned with the ascension, significance, and erosion of a ‘Cold War’ foreign affairs frame. According to ‘Cold War’ frame scholarship, prior to the collapse of the Soviet Union, the solidification of a dominant ideological conflict frame supporting particular US foreign policy interests served as a cultural container within which foreign issues, actors, and events were presented and understood by mainstream US news media (Giffard, 2000; Hallin, 1986, 1987; Hanson, 1995; Norris, 1995).
Studies addressing the presence of this ‘Cold-War’ frame have illustrated the manner in which all coverage of foreign affairs emerged within a broader, dichotomist framework in which issues, actors and events were universally understood relative to the ideological conflict between the US and the USSR. Corresponding to such research is an emphasis on the extent to which the interests of elite political actors exercised influence upon the mainstream news media agenda. Entman (1993) for example, draws our attention to the ways in which this ‘Cold War’ frame served to problematize events (i.e. civil wars), ascribed responsibility of said problem to communist influences, and provided inherent moral evaluations and remedies in a way that remained consistent with prevailing US ideology, foreign policy and interests. Hallin (1986: 110) likewise found that this foreign affairs news frame explained ‘all international conflict in essentially the same, familiar terms, sparing the public of mastering a new set of political intricacies each time a crisis erupted’.
However, as Giffard (2000) notes, after the fall of the Soviet Union and the proceeding rise of the global capitalist economy, a shift arose in the nature of foreign affairs framing. In the 1990s, the once preeminent East–West ideological framework eroded, in turn giving rise to one that positioned converge of regions afflicted by armed conflict or natural disasters such as famine or flood to privileged importance. Through his analysis of news agencies’ coverage of foreign affairs, Gifford identified the demise of the ‘Cold War’ frame. Emerging in its place was a ‘North–South’ conflict frame, one grounded within ‘a clash of ideologies and economic interests between the have and the have nots’. Although this frame called increased attention to developing countries, developing nations were ‘often defined in terms of their support for or opposition to Western policies and values’ (p. 406). Moreover, the nature of these relationships arose as inherently conflictual, casting developing countries as ‘chainsaw wielding despoilers of the rainforests, exploiters of child labor who deny women equal rights and allow their populations to spiral unchecked (or worse, enforce abortion), as undeserving supplicants for debt relief or bigger handouts’ (p. 406).
Reminiscent of such findings, and reflecting another significant research trajectory within the field, has been scholarship addressing the rise of the so-called ‘War on Terror’ foreign affairs news frame (Entman, 2003, 2004; Hess and Kalb, 2003; Kavoori and Fraley, 2006; Kull et al., 2003; Lule, 2004; Melkote, 2009; Norris et al., 2004; Reese, 2010). The ‘War on Terror’ is the terminology employed by the administration of George W Bush to denote the national security policy instigated after the 11 September 2001 terrorist attacks. As demonstrated by scholars within this terrain, in the aftermath of the attacks, both elite political actors and the mainstream media consistently framed foreign affairs and US actions abroad within a dichotomous, ideological ‘us vs them’ framework wherein the US was locked in a new ideological struggle with an ever-present ‘evil’ threatening ‘freedom’, democracy and the American ‘way of life’ (White House, 2003: 1, 2006: 14). This new dominant foreign affairs news frame emerged through the pervasiveness of rhetoric in the political and public sphere that created a moral imperative for US unilateralism within which ‘rogue’ nations and Islam arose as terror organizations: ‘oriental’ ‘enemies’ engaged in a ‘good versus evil’ struggle with the global defender of democracy and freedom (Merskin, 2004; Rogan, 2010; Spielvogel, 2005; Thussu, 2006).
Within this context, Entman (2003: 415) proposes a ‘cascading activation model’ to describe the way in which the Bush administration’s interpretive ‘schemata’ flowed from the White House down to networks of elite political actors, to ‘news organizations, their texts, and the public’. This ‘frame dominance’ ultimately served to drown out competing narratives, thus illustrating the significant degree to which political elites exerted influence over mainstream news media content. Through an exploration of USA Today’s content from 2001 to 2006, Reese and Lewis (2009) found that this ‘War on Terror’ frame became ‘naturalized’ and ‘internalized’ by journalists, consequently suggesting the US news media ‘accepted its use as a way of describing a prevailing condition of modern life’. Through their analysis, the authors concluded that mainstream US media coverage ‘created a favorable news discourse climate for military action in Iraq’ (p. 792).
Assisting in the construction of this ‘War on Terror’ frame was pervasive rhetoric surrounding an ‘axis of evil’, a phrase constructed by the Bush administration to designate those governments alleged to be purveyors of terrorism. ‘Rogue’ nations ‘seeking weapons of mass destruction’ (Dai and Hyun, 2010; Reese and Lewis, 2009). As a member of this ‘axis’, as well as a developing, communist nation, an examination of how North Korea has been framed proceeding the Bush administration affords a unique opportunity for gaining insight into the potential legacies and interrelationships between the ‘Cold War’ frame, the ‘North–South’ frame, and the ‘War on Terror’ frame.
Van Dijk (1988, 1998, 2000) also provides us with insight into the manner in which the press serves an ideological function. For Van Dijk (2000), ideologies may be defined as ‘the basis of the social representations shared by members of a group’. Ideologies allow individuals, as members of a group, to organize and make sense of the nature of particular social formations, influencing ‘a specific understanding of the world in general’ (p. 8). Ideologies most commonly arise as self-serving, functioning to fulfill a group’s material and symbolic interest. Discourses arise as the most significant ideologically-based social practice, required and employed by group members ‘to learn, acquire, change, confirm, articulate, as well as to persuasively convey ideologies to other ingroup members’ (p. 6), in turn placing them in opposition to outgroup members.
In his theory of ideology, Van Dijk (1993) proposes an ‘ideological square’ paradigm to represent the various discursive strategies utilized in texts, describing the relations between social groups based on four maxims: (1) ingroup: emphasizing the positive attributes of ‘self’; (2) ingroup: de-emphasizing the negative attributes of ‘self’; (3) outgroup: emphasizing the negative attributes of ‘others’; (4) outgroup: de-emphasizing the positive attributes of ‘others’. Such strategies of positive presentations of ‘self’ and negative presentations of ‘others’ serve to divide individuals into the categories of ‘ingroup’ versus ‘outgroup’, which reflect both their attitudes and their construction of identity, potentially affecting their interpretation of discourses or social practices that group members participate in. This ‘in’ versus ‘out’ group taxonomy allows for a focus on shared conventions of representations, as well as the polarization of individuals based on their shared norms and values. According to Van Dijk (2000), through their dissemination of cultural discourses, the press contribute to the legitimation of dominant ideologies and the reproduction of power, appropriating this ingroup/outgroup dichotomy in the service of their capitalist interest.
US news media’s framing of North Korea
A review of existing literature reveals that little academic research has been devoted to the examination of the news media’s coverage of North Korea despite the relative importance of the country and its nuclear ambitions within the global political arena. However, studies of news articles pertaining to the country have included those of Lim and Seo (2009), Dai and Hyun (2010), Kim (2014), and Curran and Gibson (2020). Lim and Seo’s (2009) analysis of US government discourse and coverage by The New York Times revealed that three frames vied for framing dominance alongside the changing nature of US–North Korea relations, military threat, dialogued partner and human rights. Dai and Hyun’s (2010) analysis of the framing of North Korea’s 2009 nuclear test by the US, China, and South Korea media found a common threat frame to be pervasive throughout Associated Press, Xinhua, and Yonhap coverage, characterized by a War on Terror framework in The New York Times and a Cold War framework in Yonhap. Analyzing CNN, Newsweek and The New York Times’ coverage of North Korea from 1998 to 2010, Kim (2014) found a strong correlation between the ‘discursive practices’ employed in relation to the coverage of North Korea and those invoked within coverage of Iran. More recently, Curran and Gibson (2020) undertook a content analysis of all coverage of North and South Korea by five major US news websites in 2016. The authors found that US media coverage of the nation embodied multiple and contrasting frames, including attribution of responsibility, conflict, and human interest.
While scholarly attention to the US media’s framing of North Korea remains limited, significant attention was given to the North Korean ‘crisis’ by both the White House and the US news establishment during the Trump administration. Consequently, an investigation into the US news media’s framing of North Korea under the former presidential administration, understood in relation to US foreign affairs news framing scholarship, affords a unique opportunity for extending prevailing understandings of the complex relationships between media, democracy, and the legitimation of particular power formations.
Five frames
In their examination of ‘the construction of common political knowledge’, Neuman et al. (1992) employ surveys, in-depth interviews, and a content analysis of the Boston Globe, Time, Newsweek and World Report from 1985 to 1987 in order to gain a better understanding of how individuals unpack public discourse in the media. Assessing the ‘coverage of prominent political and social issues in a broad sample of newspapers, newsmagazines, and network newscasts over a two-year period’, the authors found that the news media draw upon five central frames in their coverage of issues: conflict, attribution of responsibility, human interest, economic consequence and morality. Such common frames in turn serve to organize the presentation of a story in terms of which dimensions of an issue are prioritized. Given its holistic approach to understanding the nature of media frames, an application of these five central frames provides an avenue for analyzing the construction of particular media frames relative to the broader political and ideological forces in which they are embedded.
Conflict: The most pervasive of the five central frames, the conflict frame attempts to engage audience attention by emphasizing conflict between individuals, institutions, and groups.
Human interest: Next to conflict, Neuman et al. (1992) found that the human interest (or ‘human impact’) frame was found to be the most commonly evoked frame within mainstream US news media. By putting an emotional dimension or human face on an event, issue, or problem, such frames can be understood as efforts to personalize and dramatize news stories.
Morality frame: The morality frame puts the issue, problem, or event within the context of moral prescriptions. Neuman et al. (1992) maintain that dominant norms regarding objective journalism often inhibit direct reference to these frames. Instead, the morality frame predominantly emerges indirectly through inferences and quotations.
Economic consequence frame: The economic frame addresses a problem, event, or issue in regard to the potential economic consequences it will imprint on relative actors. For De Vreese (2009), this frame is predominantly focused on ‘economic implications, considerations, and prospects’.
Responsibility frame: The responsibility frame ascribes responsibility for solutions and causes to problems to either individuals, the government, or groups. In his study on poverty coverage, Iyengar (1991) suggests that the US news media plays a notable role in shaping public perceptions about who is deemed responsible for the cause and solution to social problems. He distinguishes between two distinct frames, episodic and thematic. Episodic frames arise as depictions of issues and problems in terms of individuals, occurrences and events. Thematic frames incorporate them within their broader socio-historical context. For Iyengar, because the news media relies overwhelming on episodic frames, there exists a greater tendency to ascribe responsibility at the individual, rather than societal level.
The Trump administration’s ‘North Korean crisis’
Just weeks after President Trump’s inauguration on 11 February 2017, North Korea launched an ICBM test that demonstrated for the first time that its missiles could reach the US. President Trump responded by threatening Kim Jong-un with ‘fire and fury like the world has never seen’. The ensuing year saw a significant escalation in US–North Korea tensions, characterized by ‘fiery’ rhetoric and provocations, including a series of further North Korea missile tests. The rapid escalation of this US–North Korean discord, seemingly arising outside the influence of established international institutions and procedures, caused significant alarm in the international community, particularly among North Korea’s regional neighbors. On 8 March 2018, South Korean officials announced that North Korean leader Kim Jong-un and Donald Trump had agreed to meet to discuss the issue of denuclearization.
Encompassing the Trump’s administration’s initial encounters and escalation of tensions with the North Korean regime, as well as the dramatic shift in such tensions, February 2017 through March 2018 was selected as the timeline for investigation. Drawing on a mixed qualitative–quantitative methodological framework, this study examined how USA Today defined the North Korean crisis, diagnosed its causes, proposed moral evaluations, and suggested remedies. Derived from the theoretical considerations outlined above, this study attempts to answer the following research questions:
Method
The time period under investigation for this study was from 10 February 2017 through 10 March 2018, encompassing the escalation and de-escalation of tensions between the Kim Jong-un regime and the Trump administration. USA Today news articles were the unit of analysis and were obtained through an exhaustive search in the online academic database LexisNexis. As Reese and Lewis (2009) note in their examination of the news media’s framing of the ‘War on Terror’, major television news networks emphasize ‘the dramatic, easily summarized conflict’. Conversely, they contend that print media provides ‘a more nuanced view of how journalists respond to administration framing’ (p. 778). Within this context, the Washington-based USA Today emerges as the leading US newspaper based on circulation figures for daily newspapers from 2017 through 2019 (Statista, 2019), a publication described by Reese and Lewis (2009: 779) as ‘a prototypical national newspaper’ that ‘seeks to speak with a national voice’.
The keywords ‘North Korea’ and ‘Pyongyang’ were used to search the headlines and bodies of all USA Today news articles within the identified time frame. The unit of analysis was individual news articles. Only news, opinion and editorial articles directly pertaining to North Korea were selected for inclusion. Of the 349 articles obtained in the LexisNexis search, 213 articles were included in the sample set. Considerations for analysis were guided by a qualitative interpretive–constructivist framing analysis framework (D’Angelo, 2006; Gamson, 1988; Reese and Lewis, 2009) that deconstructs and reconstructs news articles into their fundamental frames.
Analysis adopted a deductive approach, determining the presence or absence of the five dominant news media frames identified by Neuman et al. (1992): conflict, economic consequence, human interest, attribution of responsibility and morality. This approach allowed for the coding of multiple frames within a single article. Results from this exploration were then analyzed alongside an examination of the frames relative to the wider social, political and historical context of North Korea’s nuclear programme and prevailing North Korea news framing scholarship. As Van Gorp (2009: 91) notes, application of such deductive analyses allows for the reconstruction of frames into ‘frame packages’, ‘integrated structure[s] of framing devices and a logical chain[s] of reasoning devices that demonstrates how the frame functions to represent a certain issue’ (p. 91). The content analysis instrument is provided in the Appendix.
Krippendorff’s alpha (a) is a reliability coefficient employed in the measurement of the agreement between observers, coders, or measuring instruments that draw distinctions among normally unstructured phenomena and assign them computable values. Krippendorf suggests that alphas .80 and higher are regarded as very good agreement from which tentative conclusions can be drawn (Krippendorff, 2004). Two coders (the two authors), participated in the content analysis. The two coders had four intercoder reliability training sessions and tests. Coding disagreements were resolved through discussion. Following the trainings and tests, this study used Krippendorff’s α to estimate intercoder reliability. The two coders reached an intercoder reliability of .80 or higher for all frames identified.
Results and findings
This study analyzed USA Today coverage of the so-called ‘North Korean crisis’ under the Trump administration in order to gain insight into both the nature of mainstream US media’s framing of the issue, as well as its potential relationship to the construction of dominant ideological discourses and US foreign policy interests. Consistent with prevailing framing scholarship, analysis of the 213 articles revealed the presence of a set of predominant frames. Ordered by their frequency within the coverage, these frames included conflict (97%), attribution of responsibility (95%), morality (93%), human interest (79%), and economic consequence (46%). Deconstruction of these frames in turn revealed the emergence of the ascension of an ideological frame serving as a mechanism for organizing dominant understandings of the global international political–economic system, and the role of the US and US interests and actions within it.
Unsurprisingly, the conflict frame arose as the overarching framework within which the ‘North Korean crisis’ was understood. Of the 213 articles analyzed, 208 (97%) contained a conflict frame. The dominant conflict was that positioning the US against the aggressor North Korea, whose ‘belligerent’ actions and provocations represented the ‘number one threat’ to global peace and security. Arising in 93 percent of all articles, this conflict frame was predicated on both the immorality and danger posed by North Korea’s break with accepted conduct within the international system. Within this context, North Korea and Kim Jong-un’s ‘irrational’ actions and rhetoric arose as direct provocations to America, and by extension the international community more broadly.
Another common conflict identified was the positioning of President Trump against Kim Jong-un, present in 38 percent of the coverage. This frame predominantly emerged through the coverage of the two leaders’ provocative rhetoric. While this frame embodied competing frames with regard to the rationality of President Trump’s rhetoric, it nonetheless universally served to position President Trump, and by extension the US, as the defender of international peace and security. Frequently cited rhetoric between the two leaders included Trump’s referral to Kim as ‘Little Rocket Man’, ‘short and fat’ and ‘madman’, and repeated threats to ‘totally destroy’ the ‘rogue regime’. Similar statements by Kim Jong-un included calling President Trump a ‘mentally deranged dotard’ who deserved the death penalty, and threats to annihilate America if it attacked North Korea.
The second most common frame was the attribution of responsibility frame, present in 95 per cent of the articles examined. The crisis was depicted as the product of North Korea and Kim Jong-un’s increasingly ‘belligerent’ rhetoric and actions. North Korea was routinely described as ‘armed and irrational’, ‘reckless, irresponsible and destabilizing’. The country’s provocative actions were commonly attributed to the ‘brutal dictator’s’ ‘irrational’ actions and behaviors. Responsibility for North Korea’s actions was also attributed to China. The attribution of responsibility frame was identified whenever North Korea’s actions were framed as a product of China’s role as North Korea’s economic beneficiary. Nineteen percent of the coverage framed the international community’s failure to rein-in North Korea’s nuclear ambitions as a result of China’s continued economic support of the country.
The third most common frame was the morality frame, identified in 93 percent of the coverage. Closely associated with the various iterations of the conflict frame, this frame was identified whenever North Korea’s actions were framed as a breach of international norms. North Korea’s nuclear program was universally framed as inherently immoral and in conflict with the international community. While North Korea’s nuclear program was commonly depicted as the most immediate threat to international peace and security, universally absent within the coverage was any discussion of the morality of nuclear weapons more broadly, or of the morality or logic of existing nuclear power states. Less than 1 percent of the coverage referenced terrorism, arising only with regard to President Trump’s designation of North Korea as a member of the ‘axis of evil’ and ‘sponsor of terrorism’. Nonetheless, the morality frame invoked in the coverage can be seen as congruent with War on Terror scholarship with regard to the manner in which an ‘us vs them’ narrative is commonly employed. North Korea and its leader are framed as ‘rogue’ actors locked within a good versus evil narrative in which the US is cast as the global defender of peace and security. Such findings are congruent with Van Dijk’s ideological square paradigm, wherein strategies of positive presentations of ‘self’ and negative presentations of ‘others’ serve to divide individuals into the categories of ‘in-group’ versus ‘out-group’.
The morality frame also arose with respect to President Trump’s ‘America first’ policy, framed as the administration’s declaration that all states should prioritize the needs of their country and citizens above all else. Representing a dramatic break from President Obama’s theme of ‘cooperation and integration’ and ‘crude populism’, one Trump statement repeatedly emphasized that ‘sovereign nations let their people take ownership of their future and control their destiny’. Coverage of this foreign policy approach relative to North Korea’s actions was most frequently characterized as a ‘clear eyed outlook’ dismissing a ‘global community’ narrative in favor of an arena where state and non-state actors and business compete for advantage.
A human-interest frame was identified in 79 percent of the articles. This frame most commonly emerged in the coverage’s depictions of President Trump and Kim Jong-un, whose adversarial rhetoric was invoked to provide a human face and an emotional dimension to the conflict; 32 percent of the coverage framed President Trump as an ‘unstable’, ‘unpredictable’ actor whose ‘brinkmanship’ could lead to dangerous miscalculations, humanitarian disaster and nuclear war. Within this context, President Trump’s ‘fitness to be in office’ is frequently brought into question, and concerns over his oversight of ‘a nuclear option’ are routinely raised. In contrast to this narrative, 32 percent of the coverage framed President Trump as a leader willing to break with established political conventions in order to deter threats to international peace and security. In this regard, the former president’s use of Twitter was framed as a dramatic break from the restrained, statesman-like diplomacy of previous US presidents who had failed to rein in the ‘rogue state’. President Trump’s pronouncement that ‘all military options’ were on the table was positioned against President Obama’s ‘policy of strategic patience’, in turn casting the former as a leader willing to take action against despots. Such coverage framed President Trump’s unpredictable rhetoric as an asset for dealing with North Korea, making Kim Jong-un ‘cautious’ and ‘afraid of starting war’.
Competing human interest frame also emerged though the coverage’s characterizations of Kim Jong-un: 28 percent of the articles examined framed the North Korea leader as ‘irrational’ and ‘unstable’, a ‘ruthless’ ‘despot’ clinging to power whose ‘unpredictable’ nature holds a legitimate capacity for starting a nuclear war. This human interest frame contrasted with an alternative human-interest narrative, in which Kim Jong-un was depicted as a rational actor; 9 percent of articles challenged both the ‘buffoonish’ characterization of Kim and the ‘irrationality’ of Kim and North Korea’s nuclear program. Emphasizing that Kim Jong-un was not ‘suicidal’, such coverage cast the leader’s actions and rhetoric in terms of a logic for survival. The presence of this contrasting frame seemingly suggests the increasing need to reconcile the dichotomy between longstanding dehumanizing and reductive characterizations of the regime and Kim, and the continued success of North Korea’s ballistic missile and nuclear programs. Of notable absence with regard to the human-interest frame was any discussion of human rights, present within less than 1 percent of the coverage.
An economic consequence frame was identified in 46 percent of the coverage; 29 percent of the coverage framed the continued success of North Korea’s nuclear program as the product of China’s economic support of the regime. An economic consequence frame also emerged through the framing of the role of international sanctions: 24 percent of articles invoked the role of sanctions when attempting to provide context for understanding the unfolding conflict. Prior to the announcement of the meeting between President Trump and Kim Jong-un, the failure of international sanctions is attributed universally to China’s economic support of North Korea, with the ramp-up of US sanctions under President Trump’s ‘maximum pressure’ campaign subsequently credited for opening up negotiations. This in turn served to reinforce the narrative of the US as the global defender of peace and security.
An economic consequence frame also emerged through discussions of North Korea’s relationship to modernity. North Korea was often framed as an ‘isolated’, ‘hermit nation’, and ‘the world’s most secretive authoritarian state’, yet one capable of unleashing a nuclear missile strike within distance of the US. When South Korea is addressed in the coverage, it is in direct contrast to its ‘impoverished’ northern neighbor, a ‘thriving democracy’ and ‘global powerhouse’ that, ‘fueled by determination and hard work’, built a ‘modern economy’ despite its own war-torn impoverishment. In invoking this dichotomy, the coverage reinforces the promise of modernity that adherence to the US-led international system provides, in turn reinforcing the deviant nature of North Korea’s actions, to which the population’s poverty is solely attributed.
Conclusion
Examination of the five frames reveals that the US media framed the ‘North Korean crises during the Trump administration in a manner consistent with ‘Cold War’, ‘North–South’, and ‘War on Terror’ framing scholarship. Reminiscent of the Cold-War frame, analysis of the conflict frame revealed that North Korea was nearly universally framed within a particular perceptual lens within which coverage of emerging events, issues and actors were understood relative to an ideological conflict between the US and North Korea. As analysis of the attribution of responsibility and economic consequence frames reveals, China’s economic support of the regime is credited for the longstanding failure of international sanctions.
Examination of the human interest frame revealed that the leader and the country were most commonly depicted in a manner consistent with North–South framing scholarship. North Korea was defined in terms of its opposition to US foreign actions and interests. North Korea is presented as an ‘isolated nation’ run by a ‘despot’, whose ‘irrational’ actions are responsible for the impoverishment of the country’s population, a population of ‘have-nots’ denied the fruits of modernity attainable through acceptance of the international economic world order, and the acceptable international norms that underpin it.
Consistent with Dai and Hyun’s (2010) findings, coverage also emerged within a broader War on Terror framework. Analysis of the morality frame revealed that North Korea was routinely framed as a ‘rogue’ nation, that administers terror ‘seeking weapons of mass destruction’ – an ‘enemy’ engaged in a ‘good versus evil’ struggle with the global defender of freedom and democracy, and ‘the American way of life’. Within this ‘us vs them’ narrative, the US, as opposed to the UN or North Korea’s regional neighbors, emerged as the dominant arbiter of the ‘crisis’. Echoing War on Terror framing scholarship findings, such framing serves to legitimate US unilateral action on the world stage, and the moralistic and ideological prerogatives that underpin them.
However, inconsistent with prevailing scholarship was the existence of competing human interest frames with regard to Kim Jong-un and President Trump. While Kim is routinely depicted as an irrational actor, also present in the coverage was the framing of Kim Jong-un as a rational actor whose actions and rhetoric can be understood in terms of a logic for survival. The ascension of this narrative relative to the dehumanizing and reductive characterizations of the country and its leader served to facilitate an explanation for the continued success of the regime’s ballistic missile and nuclear programs. The emergence of this rational actor human interest frame arises alongside the nearly complete absence of a human interest frame centered on human rights. This is particularly notable given the salience of human rights narratives in the construction of irrational rogue actors in existing framing scholarship.
Competing human interest frames also emerged with respect to President Trump. While the president’s provocative rhetoric was initially framed as irresponsible and belligerent, potentially leading to an escalation of the crisis, the same rhetoric was subsequently heralded as leading to North Korea’s willingness for nuclear talks. This rational actor human interest frame was in turn positioned in relation to the failures of former presidential administrations, namely with regard to his predecessor’s policy of ‘cooperation and integration’. Coupled with the notable absence of any human rights narrative in the coverage, the coverage ultimately served to legitimate President Trump’s America First policy, representing a significant shift in an understanding of the nature of the international system.
However, both the competing human interest narratives with regard to the two country’s respective leaders and the notable absence of reference to human rights within the coverage can be seen as a notable departure from the consistencies inherent to foreign affairs framing scholarship. Previous literature reveals that, in defining America as the defender of the post-WWII international system, and in turn the global protector of freedom, democracy and human rights, the US media has consistently framed the US’s pursuit of self-interest as inherently aligned and in service to a particular notion of an international community. President Trump’s America First doctrine represents a clear deviation from this narrative, dismissing a ‘global community’ narrative in favor of an arena where state and non-state actors and business compete for advantage. This policy shift ultimately came to be framed as the impetus for the initial détente between the two governments and the meeting between the two leaders.
The coverage framed the denuclearization negotiations as an historic victory for the Trump administration, and a monumental moment for the international community. Analysis revealed that the announcement of the meeting between Kim Jong-un and President Trump accounted for the shifts in the human interest frames of both leaders. While both leaders’ provocative actions and rhetoric were routinely framed as irrational and belligerent before the announcement of the negotiations, following the announcement, these frames were replaced by rational actor frames and the accompanying legitimation of Trump’s America First doctrine. Inherent to the framing of the denuclearization negotiations was ultimately a shift away from a post-WWII narrative of the international community, a positive-sum system bound by respect for democracy and human rights, toward a framing of a realpolitik international arena where state and non-state actors and business compete for advantage. While this shift represents a significant departure from the dominant ideological frames underlying Cold War, North–South and War on Terror framing scholarship, it also serves to position the US as the protector of global peace and security.
Analyzed alongside a review of prevailing foreign affairs news framing scholarship, this study ultimately revealed the continued presence of a US defender ideological frame underlying the US news media’s coverage of foreign affairs broadly, one that guides dominant interpretations of the international system and US interests and actions within it. In doing so, this investigation serves to further legitimate the findings of Cold War, North–South, and War on Terror framing scholarship. This study also revealed that the announcement of the denuclearization negotiations between the US and North Korea led to the emergence of competing Kim Jong-un and President Trump human interest narratives, and an ideologically-based narrative distinct from that found in Cold War, North–South, and War on Terror framing scholarship. This narrative was predicated on the rejection of an international system based on the moral imperatives of democracy and human rights, in favor of a realpolitik interpretation of the international system in which actors compete for advantage. Personified by President Trump’s America First doctrine, this narrative also serves to construct an ingroup/outgroup dichotomy in service of US interests and foreign policy, thus furthering scholarly arguments regarding the inherent tendency of US news media’s coverage of world affairs to reinforce an ingroup/outgroup distinction.
The degree to which US news media was quick to embrace an ideologically-based framework for interpreting the nature of foreign affairs that deviated notably from a longstanding prevailing ideological narrative indicates both the willingness of US news media to embrace emerging elite political discourses, and their ability to appropriate ingroup/outgroup dichotomies as long as it serves their capitalist interest. Future US foreign affairs framing scholarship would benefit from inquiries that attempt to understand the role of US foreign affairs news framing in the construction of ingroup/outgroup dichotomies and attempt to deconstruct that nature of embedded ideological discourses relative to the inherent continuities found within Cold War, North–South, and War on Terror scholarship.
Footnotes
Appendix A
Funding
The authors received no financial support for the research, authorship, and publication of this article.
