This study examines how South Korean newspapers framed the Hebei Spirit oil spill disaster in 2007 with two key concepts of situational crisis communication theory (SCCT): crisis responsibility and severity. Also, we investigate how the political stances of newspapers—conservative and liberal—affect the selection of news frames. By using a content analysis from four nationwide South Korean newspapers, findings showed that frames regarding severity appeared more often than frames about crisis responsibility. Also, the results revealed that there were differences of frames according to time periods and the political stances of newspapers. This study provides empirical evidence to support that the two SCCT concepts can be used in the content analysis appropriately. Also, this study offers crisis managers with helpful information by showing how the media present a crisis in practice and, thus, can inform how organizations develop appropriate crisis communication responses.
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