ANALYZING NEWS FRAMES IN PRESS PHOTOGRAPHY, APPLYING RODRIGUEZ AND DIMITROVA’S FOUR-LEVEL FRAMEWORK

Abstract

While framing theory has been widely used to analyze the textual aspects of media products, examining how issues or events are framed in standalone images or those accompanying text is less commonly explored. Rodriguez and Dimitrova suggested a four-level framework for identifying and analyzing visual frames that can be applied to study different types of visuals and mediums. The proposed framework considers the tangible components of images and the implicit meanings and cultural experiences that audiences bring to the analysis. This article aims to apply Rodriguez and Dimitrova's four levels of visual framing to analyze news frames in a press photograph about a typhoon, a domain of images with tremendous potential and challenges for scholars. The morality news frame was identified by a qualitative analysis of the examined photograph's denotative meaning, stylistic aspect, connotative meaning, and ideological aspect. This study further strengthens the significance and relevance of this visual framing analysis model in disaster framing. Conceptual consistency is reinforced and extended by revisiting and applying the proposed framework in previous research to examine images in different domains.