Media coverage of Malaysian Airline Flight MH370: a preliminary study on the framing of the crisis in the Malaysian mainstream and alternative newspapers

This study proposes to investigate and compare the coverage of the disappearance of Malaysia Airlines flight MH370 by Malaysian mainstream and alternative newspapers – The Star newspaper and Malaysiakini. The MH370 crisis in March 2014 is considered as the greatest aviation crisis in the history of Malaysia because of its magnitude and attracted massive local and international media coverage. It presented Malaysian authorities with a new form of challenge, resulting in various criticisms from aviation, media and crisis communication experts over how information regarding the crisis was handled by Malaysia Airlines (MAS) in particular, and the Malaysian government in general. On the other hand, the role of the media during a crisis is not only to provide information regarding the crisis, but also to act as the peoples' advocate by providing an avenue for public engagements and discussions. However, the ability of the media to play this role depends to a certain extent on ownership, and a large extent on the degree of freedom it enjoys in a country. Through quantitative content analysis, the study compares the framing of the crisis by the selected newspapers, the sources of information for their news stories, and slants of the news. The study found that the mainstream newspaper The Star provided general and limited viewpoints with a concentration on the human interest frame, while the alternative newspaper, Malaysiakini, had more critical news reports with a focus on the attribute of responsibility frame

A Comparative Analysis of Crisis Reporting in the Malaysian and Nigerian Newspapers

In practically every country across the globe today,there are spontaneous and long-standing crises that couldjeopardize the corporate existence of the nation and on a largerscale disturb the stability of the world. Crises resulting fromeconomic, political, health, environmental and social situationsamong others appear to be threatening global population.Malaysia and Nigeria are no exceptions to crisis and each of themdo experience crisis now and then. The news media in bothcountries have a unique and exceptionally important role to playwhen covering a national crisis. In this wise, accurate andappropriate information about a crisis is an expectation that isrequired if governments of the two countries want to allay fearsfrom the public. This is because modern democracy depends on avibrant news media to keep the public informed. At no point isthis more important than in times of crisis. This is a comparativestudy on how newspapers in Malaysia and Nigeria reported thepolitical, economic, health and environmental crises that the twocountries experienced from 2007 to 2009. The reason for thiscomparison is because of the fact that Malaysia and Nigeria sharesame colonial experience, and both have the press that is modeledafter the British standard. In these two developing countries, theaudience depends heavily on the mainstream for direct access toinformation; hence what constitutes a crisis is determined by themainstream media, owned and controlled by the government.The choice of newspapers for this research work is as a result ofits significant role in informing the people of both countries,irrespective of the fact that the internet, with its attendant socialmedia has changed the media landscape across the globe. Theresearch used content analysis to compare the coverage of thesecrises by newspapers in the two countries, with the aim ofdetermining the differences in the rate of coverage between thetwo. Other objectives are to observe the trend of crisisoccurrence in the two countries, and determining the sources ofinformation for the newspapers. The research relied on theframing theory. One of the findings of the paper is that Nigeriannewspapers have significantly reported more crises stories thanthe Malaysian newspapers