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The Harvard International Journal of Press/Politics
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News

Facing the Muhammad Cartoons: Official Dominance and Event-Driven News in Swedish and American Elite Press

Adam Shehata

Holmgatan 10, 851 70 Sundsvall, Sweden, adam.shehata @miun.se

Past research has shown that official actors have an advantage when it comes to accessing and framing political issues in the news media. This study examines the dynamics of official dominance and event-driven news from a comparative perspective, focusing on the Muhammad cartoons controversy. A model of official dominance and event-driven news, taking media system factors into account, is developed and tested using a quantitative and qualitative research design. The results show that an intolerance frame dominated over a freedom-of-speech frame in both the Swedish and the American elite press. Furthermore, although dramatic events opened windows of opportunity for unofficial actors, the consequences of intensified coverage for the ratio between unofficial and official voices were more profound in the United States. Finally, there is some evidence of more active journalistic framing in the Swedish papers.

Key Words: framing • indexing • event-driven news • objectivity • journalism • comparative research • news coverage • Muhammad • cartoons

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The Harvard International Journal of Press/Politics, Vol. 12, No. 4, 131-153 (2007)
DOI: 10.1177/1081180X07307869
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This Article
Right arrow Abstract Freely available
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What's this?