Of minorities, media and misinformation: A framing analysis of the U.S. news media coverage of the Wisconsin Sikh temple shootings

Abstract

Religion reporting without the use of a controversy or conflict frame has become a rarity in the mainstream media. This study focuses on what frames the U.S. mainstream news media used to cover the Wisconsin Sikh temple shootings, which occurred on, August 5, 2012. The study used a framing analysis to identify frames used to cover the incident in 10 hard news articles each from The New York Times, Huffington Post and Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, from August 5, 2012, the day of the shooting, to November 2012. Some of the frames that emerged from the analysis were Silk's established frames, while others were new frames identified by the researcher, specific to this study and incident. This study also substantiates previous research to show that the conflict frame is the most dominant frame adapted by journalists to cover religion, and establishes that this event is no different. The conflict frame emerged as the dominant frame used by all three selected news outlets, in their news coverage of the Wisconsin Sikh temple shooting.