News Frame of Typhoon Haiyan Disaster Coverage A Comparative Study of Philippines Inquirer and The Wall Street Journal News Sites
Natural disasters, which strike without warning and leaves limited scope of preparedness, is a potentially traumatic event that is collectively experienced with severe consequences. With its high news values, natural disasters gain attention of the media, and therefore is given foremost and extensive coverage, particularly on news sites which allow readers to access to the updates anytime anywhere. Natural disaster coverage is always of great concern for people as it involves massive deaths, human suffering and brings huge impact to the aftermath life of the victims. Debates were going on that media depicted natural disaster from different perspectives, especially between the Asian media and the Western media, due to the geographical, cultural, political interest and ideological divergences. Therefore, by taking Typhoon Haiyan news coverage as case study, this research aims to investigate the differences of news frame featured in the Asian local media, Philippine Inquirer and Western media, The Wall Street Journal news sites. The findings indicated the news framing of Typhoon Haiyan disaster showed resemblance in primary news source and theme coded for both Philippine Inquirer and The Wall Street Journal. Both local and international news media "mediatised" disaster which has gone beyond national spectrum of interest. The proliferation of new media, irrespective of Western or Asian media, has transformed the world of disaster into a global context.