The Anarchy of Events and the Anxiety of Story Telling

Bibliographic Data

ID6333993
AuthorsM Schudson (0000-0002-0086-0743, Columbia University, corresponding author)
Year2007
Volume24
Issue3
Pages253-257
Publication date2007-08-06
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessNo
TypeARTICLE
VenuePolitical Communication (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 1058-4609 • E-ISSN: 1091-7675
PublisherInforma UK Limited (PUBLISHER • GB)
DOI10.1080/10584600701471534
OpenAlexW2028516120
LanguageEN
Citations received13

Although news is a social construction that narrates events in the world by assimilating them to existing cultural categories, there are many cultural categories from which to choose. How do journalists determine whether an event calls for a melodramatic frame or an ironic frame or some other narrative convention? Reviewing two recent studies—of news coverage of 9/11 and news coverage in the early 1990s of an accidental killing of a Japanese exchange student in New Orleans—this article argues that the character of "the events themselves" helps limit what narrative frames journalists select

Art · Character (mathematics · Convention · Event (particle physics · Frame (networking · Literature · Media studies · Narrative · Political science · Sociology · Computational and Text Analysis Methods · Computer Science · History · Law · Media Studies and Communication · Psychology · Rhetoric and Communication Studies · Social Psychology

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