Study title

Abstract copyright UK Data Service and data collection copyright owner.The purpose of this project was to evaluate media performance during the 2003 Iraq War. The war provided a fascinating case study, creating unprecedented levels of popular and political dissent, while questions surrounding media coverage generated accusations of media bias. Through analysing the success of media at maintaining autonomy and balance, this project provided research-based evidence to inform on-going public and political debates regarding the media's role during this conflict. A combined content and framing analysis of both UK TV news coverage and UK press enabled the researchers to assess, in great detail, how media reported the war. The breadth and depth of analysis far exceeds other equivalent studies. The analysis included four principal TV news programmes (from BBC, ITV, Sky News and Channel Four) and seven national daily newspapers and their Sunday equivalents (Daily Telegraph, The Times, The Guardian/The Observer, The Independent, The Daily Mail, The Mirror, The Sun/News of the World), thus enabling a thorough assessment of the quality of the UK public sphere during the conflict. With the story as the unit of analysis, media reports were systematically analysed in multiple ways, including documentation of story length, format (from a range of types of newspaper story or TV news report), use of new technology (e.g. video-phone), subject matter, sources quoted and cited, use of visuals or photographs, etc. Reports were also assessed for their tone toward the main actors in the conflict whilst a detailed framing analysis provided measures of more subtle forms of media bias. A key aim of the research was to identify the contours of framing in British TV and newspaper news of the war, uncovering the range, autonomy and boundaries to debate across media outlets, the extent to which news coverage reflected elite sources as well as dissenting voices, and the relative salience of...