Journalism Studies

ISSN: (Print) (Online) Journal homepage: https://www.tandfonline.com/loi/rjos20

Who is to Blame? Analysis of Government and

News Media Frames During the 2014 Earthquake
in Chile

Magdalena Saldaña

To cite this article: Magdalena Saldaña (2022) Who is to Blame? Analysis of Government and
News Media Frames During the 2014 Earthquake in Chile, Journalism Studies, 23:1, 25-47, DOI:
10.1080/1461670X.2021.1997152

To link to this article: https://doi.org/10.1080/1461670X.2021.1997152

Published online: 16 Nov 2021.

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JOURNALISM STUDIES
2022, VOL. 23, NO. 1, 25–47
https://doi.org/10.1080/1461670X.2021.1997152

Who is to Blame? Analysis of Government and News Media

Frames During the 2014 Earthquake in Chile
Magdalena Saldaña
School of Communications, Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile, Researcher, Millennium Institute for
Foundational Research on Data (IMFD), Santiago, Chile

ABSTRACT KEYWORDS
This study relies on Entman’s definition of frames and framing Framing; structural topic
functions to analyze how the Chilean government and news modeling; earthquake; Chile;
media framed a natural disaster occurring in Chile in 2014. Using disaster coverage
structural topic modeling, 705 news stories and 174 official press
releases were analyzed to identify under which conditions the
media may attribute blame when natural disasters are framed
beyond the realm of an accident. Findings indicate the
government portrayed its own performance as a successful one
where all actors did their job to minimize disaster consequences.
Yet, the media narrative did not reflect the government’s
efficiency frame, portraying the official response as a result of
lessons learned from a previous disaster. Taken together, the
results suggest that when the media align with a particular
political side, disaster characteristics are not the main issue to
report on. This study departs from a description of journalistic
practices in time of disasters towards a more complex view of the
relationship between government and the press when it comes
to disaster coverage.

In April 2014, three weeks after Chilean President Michelle Bachelet began her second
presidential term (2014–2018), an 8.2-magnitude earthquake struck off the northern
coast of Chile. President Bachelet quickly declared a state of emergency, issued a precau-
tionary tsunami warning for the entire coast, and evacuated 900,000 residents from the
northern part of the country. Despite a timely response, the government encountered
strong criticism from both the public and the media deriving from how Bachelet and
her team handled a previous disaster that occurred at the end of her first presidential
term (2006–2010). On 27 February 2010, an 8.8-magnitude earthquake—also referred
to as 27/F—struck center and southern regions of Chile. Bachelet’s government failed
to set a tsunami alert right after the earthquake, and when the tsunami hit the coast,
around 150 people died by drowning (Rafferty 2021).
This critical mistake triggered disapproval of Bachelet’s performance by a high percen-
tage of Chileans in 2010, and was probably the reason why citizens’ criticism remained
harsh regarding Bachelet four years later, in 2014. Despite executing a successful crisis-
management plan the night of the 2014 disaster, the government’s performance did

CONTACT Magdalena Saldaña magdalena.saldana@uc.cl; @magdalenasaldan

© 2021 Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group
26 M. SALDAÑA

not merit public approval. News stories and political analysts constantly compared Bache-
let’s decisions in 2014 with those made in 2010. A great deal of attention was devoted to
observing how the president would act this second time around, and Chilean news media
reported President Bachelet and her team “learned the lesson” from the 2010 earthquake
(Medina 2014, April 2).
Guided by framing theory, this study observes how the narratives of the Chilean gov-
ernment and news media framed the earthquake and tsunami occurring on 1 April 2014.
Previous research on disaster coverage has investigated how journalists cover earth-
quakes (Pellegrini, Puente, and Grassau 2015), tsunamis (Kivikuru 2006), hurricanes
(Dworznik-Hoak 2020), and terrorist attacks (Li 2007). Some studies have also explored
authorities’ response to a disaster and how the media evaluate those responses (Ström-
bäck and Nord 2006; Williamson 2019). Yet, not much empirical research on frame-build-
ing and framing is available beyond Western contexts, especially to assess competing
frames between stakeholders (government and media). A remarkable exception to this
trend is the study by Liu and Chang (2018), who analyzed government and media
frames regarding a deadly train crash in China in 2011. Given the coercive nature of
the Chinese government (Liu and Chang 2018), the media sought to legitimize the
official discourse. Consequently, media narratives in the Global South where news organ-
izations do not respond to state control are yet to be observed. This study aims to fill this
gap, at least to some extent. This project studies how journalists framed the 2014 earth-
quake and tsunami while also observing the government rhetoric about the disaster, with
the goal of identifying under which conditions the news media may attribute blame when
disasters are framed beyond the realm of accident.

Framing—Definitions and Functions

Framing researchers study how elites compete to define issues their way and how such
definitions are disseminated to the public through the news media (Berinsky and
Kinder 2006). The term “framing” refers to modes of presentation journalists and other
communicators use to present information in a way that resonates with existing under-
lying schemas among their audience (Shoemaker and Reese 2014). Framing is often
traced back to roots in both psychology and sociology (Borah 2011; Cacciatore, Scheufele,
and Iyengar 2016; Pan and Kosicki 1993), and it assumes that how an issue is characterized
in news reports influences how it is understood by audiences (Chong and Druckman
2007).
Scholarly literature provides several definitions of frames and framing incorporat-
ing different concepts. According to Entman (1993), to frame is “to select some
aspects of a perceived reality and make them more salient in a communicating
text” (52). For Gamson and Modigliani (1987), a frame “suggests what the controversy
is about, the essence of the issue” (143), while Reese (2001) highlights the socially
shared reality of producers and consumers of media content when arguing that
frames “are socially shared and persistent over time” (11). Gitlin (1980) adds the
concept of ideology, suggesting news frames transmit the ideology of news produ-
cers to media audiences, and Carragee and Roefs (2004) call attention to consider
the power asymmetries that help some actors to be more successful than others to
shape the news agenda.
 JOURNALISM STUDIES 27

Framing is, to a large extent, “unavoidable” at both the institutional and individual jour-
nalist level (Gitlin 1980), as frames are necessary to interpret, organize, and understand
information (Houston, Pfefferbaum, and Rosenholtz 2012). This study uses Entman’s
(1993) definition of frames and framing functions to identify how the Chilean government
and news media framed the 2014 earthquake and tsunami in northern Chile. For Entman,
frames “highlight some bits of information about an item that is the subject of a com-
munication, thereby elevating them in salience” (Entman 1993, 53). Entman identifies
four framing functions: frames define problems, identify causes, offer moral judgments,
and suggest solutions. The problem definition function determines what the issue is
about and/or what relevant actors are involved. The causal interpretation function attri-
butes blame for failure or responsibility for success regarding a specific outcome. The
moral evaluation function evaluates the consequences of the problem: risk or benefit,
gain or loss. As such, evaluations can be positive, negative, or neutral. The treatment rec-
ommendation function suggests solutions and may include a call for or against a certain
action (Entman 1993; Matthes and Kohring 2008).
Frames may not necessarily include all four functions, and two frames may share the
same problem definition, causal analyses, and moral evaluations, while remedies may
differ. To Entman (1993), the omission of any of these functions is as critical as
inclusions in guiding the reception of a message. Elements not mentioned are left
out for a reason, and those reasons are also important to understand how a situation
is portrayed.

Frames in Disaster News Coverage

Semetko and Valkenburg (2000) developed five frame categories applicable to a variety of
issues: conflict, attribution of responsibility, economic consequences, human interest, and
morality. These genres have been widely used in framing analysis as they are supposed to
be generic frames—frames that offer a systematic platform for comparison across issues
and topics (De Vreese, Peter, and Semetko 2001).
Using Semetko and Valkenburg’s frames as a baseline, Yang (2012) proposed six frames
applicable to the study of natural disasters: attribution of responsibility, human interest,
economic consequences, denial, leadership, and rescue/treatment. Yang argued the mor-
ality and the conflict frames proposed by Semetko and Valkenburg (2000) are not necess-
arily applicable to the context of natural disasters, while frames such as denial (not seeing
a disaster as a major problem) and rescue/treatment (in terms of official response to a dis-
aster) are a better fit for the study of disaster-related news.
Other studies have also modified Semetko and Valkenburg’s frames to study disaster
coverage. Li (2007) introduced the religion frame to observe whether the news coverage
of the 9/11 disaster in the U.S. mentioned Islam or Muslims in the narrative, and Houston,
Pfefferbaum, and Rosenholtz (2012) added the environmental impact frame to study
major American natural disasters. In general, these studies have found human interest
is the most prominent angle to frame disaster-related stories (Houston, Pfefferbaum,
and Rosenholtz 2012; Yang 2012), especially in crises involving a large number of casual-
ties (Li 2007). Studies also show journalists give preference to testimonials and dramatic
descriptions of the event over expert analysis (Pellegrini, Puente, and Grassau 2015) as a
way to humanize disasters (Scanlon 2007). However, these studies focus on frames in
28 M. SALDAÑA

journalistic news content, and have not examined framing from official sources such as
government press releases.
Although Semetko and Valkenburg’s generic frames have proven to be a valuable
classification to identify frames, the goal of the present study is not to identify framing
categories but framing functions. Entman described how U.S. elites provided two reme-
dies (treatment recommendations) when discussing the pre-war situation of U.S. policy
toward Iraq, “while problem definitions, causal analyses, and moral evaluations were
homogeneous” (1993, 55). In the case of this study, the media and the government
could agree on the cause of the problem (a natural disaster) but might disagree on the
consequences of the disaster, particularly based on the role the 2010 disaster played in
understanding the 2014 disaster portrayal. Based on this assumption, this study induc-
tively searches for elements emphasized by the Chilean government and media to deter-
mine which functions were most prominent in each narrative about the 2014 earthquake
and tsunami in northern Chile, and whether such functions might be affected by news
outlet ideology.
Natural disasters are arguably less political than crises such as man-made disasters or
terrorist attacks. Yet, they might create an environment of political significance or carry on
political implications (Cottle 2009). The following section explains the characteristics
required for a disaster to become a political problem.

Can Disasters be Political in Nature? Causal Stories to Understand Policy

Problems
Stone (1989) analyzed how difficult conditions such as natural disasters, accidents, or
other types of crises become political problems that move on to policy agendas. For
Stone, a bad condition does not become a problem until people see it as amenable to
human control, i.e., when bad conditions are attributed to human behavior instead of
to accident, fate, or nature.
According to Stone’s typology of causal theories, “problem definition is the active
manipulation of images of conditions by competing political actors. Conditions come
to be defined as problems through the strategic portrayal of causal stories” (1989, 299).
In other words, political actors want a situation to become a problem and frame it as
such. These portrayals can be categorized in four causal theories: accidental causes
(such as earthquakes or tsunamis), mechanical causes (like airplane accidents), intentional
causes (wars, for instance), and inadvertent causes (poverty or diseases).
Stories in the intentional cause category relate to direct human control: there is an
actor who is purposively and consciously causing a situation. In contrast, stories in the
accidental cause category are those where there is a total absence of human control.
There is no one to blame because natural disasters caused by weather conditions or earth-
quakes cannot be avoided or prevented. Authorities are tasked with taking care of the
situation as well as they can, as the public still expects them to cope with the conse-
quences of a disaster. If they fail, people may attribute responsibility to human causes
as those in charge to reduce damage did not react on time (Strömbäck and Nord 2006).
The intentional cause and accidental cause categories explain what occurred in Chile
during the 2010 and 2014 disasters. Chile is one of the most seismically active countries in
the world, where earthquakes continually test the quality of the country’s building and
 JOURNALISM STUDIES 29

infrastructure construction, and the authorities’ ability to react on time (Reyes Ortíz et al.
1986).
As described above, an 8.8-magnitude massive earthquake hit center and southern
regions of Chile on 27 February 2010. The lack of information about the disaster and
the erratic performance of the authorities in their initial assessments caused a social
and economic crisis in the main cities. Chilean President Michelle Bachelet and her
team failed to release tsunami warnings on time, and they also underestimated the
danger of the subsequent waves (Ramírez and Aliaga 2012). Many people died in the
tsunami because they listened to the Chilean Navy’s statement that suggested there
was no danger.
Following Stone’s typology of causal theories (1989), the 2010 earthquake in Chile
belongs to the accidental category and, as such, no human responsibilities should be
involved. Yet, a public opinion poll released in August 2012 showed that Chilean citizens
blamed President Bachelet’s government for the earthquake and tsunami consequences:
73% of the respondents attributed legal responsibilities to the authorities for their poor
response to the crisis and expected them to be fined or even to go to jail. Similarly,
81% said they would flee from the ocean in case of an earthquake even if the National
Emergency Office indicated no risk of tsunami (Cavallo 2012). The accidental cause
story became one of intentional cause where the problem was seen as caused by
human intervention and malpractice.
Two years after the poll, the 2014 earthquake struck the north. Chileans already held a
negative opinion regarding the government’s performance in 2010, and such opinion
might have permeated their evaluation of the authorities during the 2014 disaster.
Actors seeking to define a problem—in this case, the Chilean media—will attempt to
push the interpretation of a bad condition out of the realm of accident and into the
realm of human control (Stone 1989). At the same time, those blamed for a problem—
namely, President Bachelet and her team—will tend to portray the condition as acciden-
tal, as caused by someone else, or as one of the indirect forms of causation (Stone 1989).
As such, this study observes how problems were defined by the government and the
media and what causes were identified, in order to understand how both actors
framed the 2014 disaster.

The Influence of Media Ideology on News Framing

Several authors agree that media ideology has an impact on the content the media
produce. Gitlin (1980) argues that news content is permeated and driven by the political
ideology of each news outlet, and Altschull (1984) states that mass media content reflects
the ideology of those who finance the media. Carragee and Roefs (2004) argue that under-
standing media frames requires understanding the context in which they are produced,
including the impact of power asymmetries on frame production. The outcome of this
impact is “covering issues and events in a manner that conforms to—and consolidates
—the established social and political hierarchy” (Shahin 2016, 365).
In the case of Chile, audiences get their news from organizations politically aligned
with the right wing, mostly due to the lack of diversity in terms of ownership and ideology
in the national news media landscape (Mönckeberg 2009). The country’s main quality
newspapers are El Mercurio and La Tercera, which belong to El Mercurio S.A.P and
30 M. SALDAÑA

Copesa S.A., respectively. These are the most important news conglomerates in the
country (Rao 2012) and control most of the print press in Chile (Navia and Osorio
2015), as well as the most visited online news sources (Reuters Institute for the Study
of Journalism 2020). Both groups have been historically linked to Chile’s right political
wing (Gronemeyer and Porath 2015) and have shown negative bias when covering left-
wing political figures, especially Bachelet (Navia and Osorio 2015). As such, their coverage
of the 2014 disaster might have been less oriented to informing the public about the
crisis, and more inclined to criticize Bachelet’s actions. Statements suggesting President
Bachelet “learned the lesson” from the 27/F disaster in 2010 (Medina 2014, April 2)
were common in first stories covering the disaster.
That is not to say that mentioning the 27/F is a sole indicator of an ideologically biased
coverage. Research has shown journalists often turn to past events to provide context for
current ones. The U.S. media considered Hurricane Gustav as “not as bad as Katrina” when
releasing information about the scope of the storm in 2008 (Miller and Goidel 2009), and
journalists in Taiwan used the 921 earthquake1 in 1999 as a benchmark to explain
Typhoon Morakot in 2009 (Su 2012). Yet, the 27/F disaster was said to be President Bache-
let’s political nightmare: she and her team were highly criticized for their crisis-manage-
ment skills during the disaster in 2010, and four government officials were accused of
involuntary manslaughter as “not enough was done to avoid the catastrophic results”
of the 27/F earthquake, according to Chilean Judge Ponciano Sallés (Bonnefoy 2013,
para. 2). Then, bringing the 2010 disaster up for comparison may have been driven not
only by the desire to increase the quality of the 2014 disaster coverage, but instead by
political attempts to expose past mistakes made by Bachelet’s government. Conse-
quently, this study expects right-wing newspapers to mention the 27/F more often
than left-wing and independent outlets when covering the 2014 disaster.

Research Questions and Hypotheses

This study observes how the government and the news media framed the 2014 earth-
quake and tsunami in northern Chile. Previous research identified the human-interest
angle as the most common frame in disaster news coverage (Houston, Pfefferbaum,
and Rosenholtz 2012; Yang 2012), but more research is needed to identify common
frames in official information regarding natural disasters. As stated by D’Angelo (2018;
xxv), “a news story is a different kind of discourse from, say, press releases or online infor-
mation purveyed by issue advocates,” which accentuates the need of observing news
stories and press releases together.
To achieve this goal, this study first identifies the topics emphasized in both the media
and the government discourses and then observes framing functions embedded in the
topics. While this study does not reduce frames to themes or story topics (following
the advice of Carragee and Roefs 2004; D’Angelo 2002; Pan and Kosicki 1993), identifying
the topics both the news media and the government made more salient in their narratives
is crucial to understand how each actor framed the disaster. Entman himself indicated
that frames are defined by what they include but also what they omit (1993). As such,
dominant topics in the news stories and press releases help understand issues the
media and the government paid more attention to, as opposed to those that did not
gain prominence. This study makes inquiry regarding the following:
 JOURNALISM STUDIES 31

RQ1: What were the dominant topics in (a) news stories, and (b) government press releases
informing about the 2014 earthquake and tsunami in northern Chile?

As stated above, this study expects the media to push the interpretation of the 2014
disaster out of the realm of accident and into the realm of human control, while the gov-
ernment would tend to portray the condition as accidental and out of the scope of human
action. To test this assertion, this study examines the topics found in RQ1 to look for differ-
ences between elements highlighted by the government and those highlighted by the
media. This study predicts:
H1: Topics emphasized by Chilean news media will link disaster consequences with govern-
ment policy.

H2: Topics emphasized by Chilean government will reject linkages between disaster conse-
quences and government policy.

In 2014, some journalists used the 27/F disaster as a benchmark when reporting the
2014 earthquake and tsunami occurring in the north. Given that previous research has
shown that right-wing newspapers in Chile are negatively biased toward former President
Michelle Bachelet (Navia and Osorio 2015), this study expects mentions of the 27/F disas-
ter to be related to the political ideology the newspapers align with. Consequently:
H3: Right-wing newspapers will be more likely than left-wing and independent outlets to use
the 27/F disaster as a benchmark to explain the 2014 earthquake and tsunami in northern
Chile.

The last research question refers to the framing functions used in the narratives of the
Chilean media and government. As stated above, frames define problems, identify causes,
offer moral judgments, and suggest solutions (Entman 1993). The same frame might vary
in terms of the provided solution or even the identified problem. How did the govern-
ment and the media frame the disaster? Moreover, did these actors focus more on
certain functions while ignoring others? This study asks:
RQ2: What were the most prominent framing functions used in (a) the news stories and (b)
the government press releases informing about the 2014 earthquake and tsunami in north-
ern Chile?

Methods
Data Collection
To identify media frames, this study analyzed 705 earthquake-related stories published by
national newspapers EMOL (the acronym for El Mercurio on line), La Tercera, and La Nación,
and local newspaper El Longino from April 1 (the night of the earthquake) to 30 April 2014.
As explained before, El Mercurio and La Tercera are considered the most important news-
papers in the country (Mönckeberg 2009), and despite not being openly partisan, are said
to politically align with Chile’s right wing (Gronemeyer and Porath 2015; Mönckeberg
2009; Navia and Osorio 2015). La Nación used to be state-owned and it is usually associ-
ated as left wing (Sorensen 2011). El Longino has a regional scope in northern Chile, and it
was the main source of information in the areas struck by the earthquake. There is no evi-
dence of this paper being close to a political party or a particular ideology. As such, it was
32 M. SALDAÑA

considered as “independent” for the case of this study. These four newspapers provide
diversity in terms of political ideology and geographic scope.
To identify government frames, the analysis included 174 press releases retrieved from
the websites of (a) 14 ministries directly involved with the earthquake’s consequences, (b)
the National Emergency Office, (c) Prensa Presidencia (Chilean Presidency Press Office),
and (d) the local government of the two regions most affected by the earthquake—the
Tarapacá Region, and the Arica and Parinacota Region.
News stories and press releases were retrieved directly from the news outlet/office
websites by using the search terms “earthquake,” “tsunami,” “Iquique,2” “Arica,3” and
“April 2014.” It is worth mentioning that even though all stories and press releases
retrieved from the websites were analyzed without further sampling, the material ana-
lyzed in this study is still considered a sample of the population of stories generated by
Chilean media in the 1–30 April 2019 timeframe. As such, the hypotheses and research
questions posed by this study were tested/answered with the use of inferential statistical
analysis.

Data Analysis
News stories and press releases were analyzed using topic modeling—an inductive, quan-
titative method that belongs to the automated text analysis methods family. It is defined
as “an exploratory technique, useful for imposing order upon large bodies of textual data
and for discovering information that helps analysts see beyond their priors” (DiMaggio,
Nag, and Blei 2013, 582). This method has proven to be more efficient than other auto-
mated text analysis techniques to extract topics from media content (Guo et al. 2016).
Based on the algorithm of Latent Dirichlet Allocation (LDA), the modeling process
treats the corpora as an unordered “bag of words” which occurs with different frequen-
cies. The analysis assumes there are hidden topics in textual bodies, and each topic is
formed by some specific words occurring together more frequently than one would
expect by chance (Blei, Ng, and Jordan 2003). If, for instance, the corpus includes
stories from different sections of a newspaper, the analysis might identify words such
as “candidate,” “campaign,” and “voters” as being part of one topic, because the prob-
ability of these words appearing together is higher than the probability of words such
as “ball,” “coach,” and “quarterback” being part of that topic. In fact, the latter group of
words would be probably part of a different topic, which the researcher might label as
“sports” as opposed to the “political campaign” topic identified earlier.
The algorithm behind LDA analyzes the corpus to simultaneously estimate topics,
words associated with each topic, and how the analyzed documents exhibit such
topics (DiMaggio, Nag, and Blei 2013). The modeling provides a solution with n
number of topics, and it is the researcher’s task to specify how many topics the model
will produce, based on interpretability and analytic utility (Blei and Lafferty 2009). The
final number of topics will depend on how diverse/heterogeneous the content is.
This study used Structural Topic Modeling (STM) developed by Roberts, Stewart, and
Tingley (2014), to extract topics from news stories and press releases. Several models
were run with different numbers of topics, using the Structural Topic Model stm R
package implemented by Roberts, Stewart, and Tingley (2014). Before estimating the
best model, several preprocessing steps: the text was normalized by removing
 JOURNALISM STUDIES 33

punctuation and transforming all words to lowercase; “stop words” (such as articles and
conjunctions) were removed, and the endings of conjugated verbs or plural nouns were
also removed, leaving just the “stem” for the analysis.
The accuracy of the final solution was validated by carefully observing the most pro-
minent words associated with each topic, as well as the most prominent documents
(news stories/press releases) associated with the topic. Most prominent words are
divided into two categories: (1) high-probability words, which are the most probable
words under a given topic based on their frequency of co-occurrence within documents
and (2) exclusive words, top words for that topic that are unlikely to appear within top
words of other topics (Roberts, Stewart, and Tingley 2014). Most prominent documents
are documents highly associated with a topic. Such documents contain high proportions
of the topic and represent accurate examples of what the topic is about (Roberts, Stewart,
and Tingley 2014). Together, most prominent words and most prominent documents are
useful parameters to evaluate topic models, and identify the best solution to meaningfully
answer the research questions of the study. The final step is to label each topic accord-
ingly, depending on what the topic is about.
After fitting the model, the analysis returns a matrix of topic proportions providing an
estimate of each document’s association with every topic in the matrix. Structural Topic
Modeling is based on mixed-membership modeling, where a document does not have to
cover only one topic, but it may use a mix of topics. For example, if a three-topic model
was estimated, a document may have a distribution of .3, .6, and .1, indicating that 30% of
that document is associated with Topic 1, 60% is associated with Topic 2, and 10% is
associated to Topic 3. For the case of this study, the matrix of topic proportions was
used to answer and test this study’s research questions and hypotheses, respectively.

Statistical Analyses
RQ1 asked about the topics emphasized in (a) news stories and (b) government press
releases. To answer RQ1, the proportions of the topics were inspected to determine
which topics were more prominent (had a higher proportion) in the news stories and gov-
ernment information about the disaster.
H1 and H2 predicted differences between topics emphasized in news stories (inten-
tional cause, political responsibilities) and government press releases (accidental cause,
no human responsibilities). To test these hypotheses, one-way analyses of variance
(ANOVA) were performed to identify statistically significant differences in the topic pro-
portions depending on the source (local news media, national news media, and govern-
ment). H1 was supported if the topics emphasized by the news stories focused
significantly more on the political angle of the disaster, mentioning President Bachelet
and the 27/F disaster. H2 was supported if the topics emphasized by the government
focused mostly on non-political topics, such as the tsunami evacuation and the aid and
reconstruction programs.
H3 suggested that right-wing newspapers were more likely than left-wing and inde-
pendent outlets to use the 27/F disaster as a benchmark to report on the 2014 disaster.
To test H3, topics identified in RQ1 were inspected to determine if any of the topics
described or mentioned the 27/F disaster in 2010, and whether the proportion of those
topics varied depending on outlet ideology.
34 M. SALDAÑA

RQ2 asked about the most prominent framing functions used in the coverage. To
answer RQ2, topics found in RQ1 were examined using qualitative textual analysis
(Tracy 2013). In several rounds of coding, topics were inspected to answer four main ques-
tions based on Entman’s definition of framing functions (1993): Does the topic identify or
describe a problem? Does the topic identify a responsible of the problem and its conse-
quences? Does the topic evaluate the consequences of the problem? Does the topic
provide solutions for the problem? To answer these questions, the qualitative textual
analysis paid attention to key words contained in each topic, but also headlines of the
most prominent documents (news stories and press releases) in each topic.

Results
A 20-topic solution emerged as the best-fitting model for the corpora, as models with
fewer topics left some relevant issues out, while models with more than 20 topics pro-
vided repetitive topics, or ones that were not semantically meaningful.
Figure 1 illustrates the 20-topic model and the proportion of each topic in the docu-
ments, starting from the most prominent topic (Authorities) to the least prominent
topic (Highways). One of the topics (“Other”) was removed from further analyses as no
clear pattern was found on this topic. Figure 2 describes what each topic is about,
based on the most prominent documents (news stories/press releases) and most promi-
nent words (high-probability/exclusive words) containing the topic. Topics were labeled
by the author based on words and documents associated with each topic.
As illustrated by Figure 1, national media focused the coverage on the topics of
Tsunami (11.9%), Seismology (10.8%), and Flights (8%). The local media, in contrast,
paid less attention to the characteristics of the earthquake and more to local issues,
such as Help (12.4%), Schools (8.5%), and Medical assistance (8%), while the most dis-
cussed topics in government press releases were Valparaíso (13.4%), Authorities (13%),
and Reconstruction (11.8%). Figure 3 groups these topics in six cells, depending on
whether they were more prominent in the local news coverage, in the national news cov-
erage, or in the official press releases, either in the coverage immediately after the earth-
quake, or in subsequent coverage.4
These findings reveal a very little overlap between the media and the government, and
even between national and local media. Such a gap leads us to H1 and H2, which pre-
dicted significant differences between news stories and press releases regarding the
topics the government and the media emphasized when portraying the disaster. Nine-
teen one-way ANOVAs were performed to compare the topics emphasized by the govern-
ment, national media, and local media (see Table 1).
Table 1 illustrates results from the one-way ANOVA analyses. Findings showed signifi-
cant differences in 18 out of the 19 topics in the analysis.5 Post hoc tests (Bonferroni—
multiple comparisons) indicated the government press releases emphasized the topics
of Authorities (F (2, 876) = 10.329, p < .001), Valparaíso (F (2, 876) = 19.599, p < .001), Recon-
struction (F (2, 876) = 23.852, p < .001), and Highways (F (2, 876) = 12.433, p < .001) signifi-
cantly more than both the local and the national media. In contrast, the Local
commerce topic (F (2, 876) = 10.226, p < .001) was significantly more important for both
local and national news coverage as compared to the official press releases (see
Appendix).
 JOURNALISM STUDIES 35

Figure 1. 20-topic model of the 2014 Chile earthquake and tsunami’s news coverage and government
press releases (N=879). Proportions by source.

Regarding differences between government and national media, Bonferroni post hoc
tests showed government press releases emphasized the topics of Jobs (F (2, 876) = 4.738, p
< .01) and Housing (F (2, 876)=4.712, p < .01) significantly more, while the national media
coverage paid significantly more attention to the topics of Seismology (F (2, 876) =
17.786, p < .001), Tsunami (F (2, 876) = 34.5, p < .001), Jailbreak (F (2, 876) = 7.407, p < .001),
Human interest (F (2, 876) = 11.164, p < .001), and Explanations (F (2, 876) = 10.065, p
< .001). Compared to the local media, the government informed significantly less about
the topics of Help (F (2, 876) = 24.517, p < .001), Schools (F (2, 876) = 5.188, p < .01), and
Medical assistance (F (2, 876) = 5.313, p < .01). No significant differences were found
between government press releases and local and national press coverage regarding
the topics of Flights,6 Water,7 Bachelet, and Fishermen.
Results in Table 1 suggest each source (local media, national media, and government)
had its own pattern of coverage. The local newspaper El Longino devoted more coverage
to local issues such as price increases and medical needs in the paper’s coverage area.
National newspapers paid more attention to the political implications of the disaster
and the human-interest angle—inmates escaping from jail, families losing their houses,
and fatalities caused by collapsing walls.
36 M. SALDAÑA

Figure 2. Description of the 20 topics based on the most prominent news stories/press releases in
each topic.8

Government press releases emphasized the work of the authorities (mostly Bachelet’s
ministers), the reconstruction in Valparaíso and Iquique, and the constant monitoring of
workers, housing, and highways. National media also reported these topics but at a sig-
nificantly lower rate.
Findings from the one-way ANOVA analyses support H2 and partially support H1.
Though natural disasters are not considered political events, the media coverage of the
2014 disaster (and particularly the national media coverage) took a political angle and
used the 2010 disaster as a benchmark to report heavily on the lessons learned by the
government from the 27/F experience. These stories were contained in the Explanations,
 JOURNALISM STUDIES 37

Figure 2 Continued

Seismology, and Tsunami topics, which were emphasized in the national news stories sig-
nificantly more than the local news stories and the government press releases. Yet, no
differences were found regarding President Bachelet, despite the fact she emerged
from the modeling as a topic herself. Findings show the media and the government
paid similar attention to the president when informing about the disaster, while this
study expected news stories to focus on Bachelet at a higher rate than the official
press releases. As such, H1 was partially supported. The government, on the other
hand, distanced itself from the disaster and reported on the ministers’ efforts to solve
people’s needs, based on stories contained in topics such as Authorities, Housing, Jobs,
and Reconstruction, as expected by this study. Consequently, H2 was supported.
38 M. SALDAÑA

Figure 3. Summary of topics in the news media and government press releases (N=879).

H3 predicted right-wing organizations would use the 27/F disaster as a benchmark to

explain the 2014 earthquake and tsunami in northern Chile. Topics found in RQ1 show
that stories about the 27/F were contained mostly in the Explanations topic (see Figure
2). A one-way ANOVA determined the four newspapers analyzed in this study emphasized
the Explanations topic differently (F (4, 874) = 8.028, p < .01) (see Table 2), and Bonferroni
post hoc tests show La Tercera covered this topic significantly more (see Appendix). In
addition to this, a manual examination of the stories indicated La Tercera was the only
outlet using the 2010 earthquake as a benchmark to explain the 2014 disaster in northern
Chile. Therefore, H3 was partially supported, as only one of the two right-wing newspa-
pers in this study significantly relied on the 2010 disaster to provide context for the 2014
earthquake and tsunami.
Finally, RQ2 asked how (a) the media and (b) the government framed the disaster. This
question was answered using qualitative textual analysis (Tracy 2013). First, topics were
inspected to identify problem definition and causal interpretation. While not all topics in
the analysis were useful to observe these framing functions, topics related to the charac-
teristics of the earthquake and tsunami (such as magnitude and scope) and the political
responsibilities associated with the disaster (especially President Bachelet’s
 JOURNALISM STUDIES 39

Table 1. One-way analyses of variance. Comparison of topic coverage by source (N=879).

Topic Source Mean SD F
Authorities National Media 6.2% 16.0 10.33***
Local Media 5.4% 17.5
Government 13.0% 25.2
Seismology National Media 10.8% 25.3 17.79***
Local Media 4.3% 16.8
Government 0.9% 2.3
Tsunami National Media 11.9% 25.0 34.5***
Local Media 1.3% 6.0
Government 1.2% 5.3
Valparaíso National Media 3.8% 14.8 19.6***
Local Media 4.7% 16.4
Government 13.4% 25.5
Flights National Media 8.0% 21.1 8.99***
Local Media 2.1% 8.3
Government 5.0% 13.0
Help National Media 3.4% 11.5 24.52***
Local Media 12.4% 24.6
Government 4.3% 13.3
Housing National Media 4.4% 14.9 4.71**
Local Media 6.2% 16.3
Government 8.9% 22.2
Schools National Media 4.0% 15.0 5.19**
Local Media 8.5% 24.6
Government 4.1% 15.6
Reconstruction National Media 1.9% 10.1 23.85***
Local Media 6.6% 18.8
Government 11.8% 25.9
Medical assistance National Media 3.9% 15.1 5.31**
Local Media 8.0% 20.8
Government 4.0% 12.5
Jailbreak National Media 6.5% 18.9 7.41***
Local Media 4.3% 15.5
Government 1.0% 3.7
Water National Media 3.3% 14.2 3.16*
Local Media 6.4% 20.5
Government 5.7% 18.1
Human interest National Media 6.5% 17.8 11.16***
Local Media 3.2% 10.9
Government 0.8% 3.4
Bachelet National Media 4.3% 16.0 2.20
Local Media 3.2% 13.4
Government 6.6% 18.7
Fishermen National Media 3.8% 16.3 0.49
Local Media 4.2% 14.3
Government 5.3% 19.3
Explanations National Media 5.8% 17.2 10.07***
Local Media 2.4% 12.9
Government 0.5% 3.5
Local commerce National Media 3.7% 13.8 10.23***
Local Media 7.0% 20.8
Government 0.3% 2.3
Jobs National Media 2.6% 12.6 4.74**
Local Media 4.1% 13.7
Government 6.6% 20.2
Highways National Media 1.0% 6.4 12.43***
Local Media 1.8% 9.8
Government 5.9% 20.0

responsibilities) defined problems and diagnosed causes, suggesting that the problem
was a natural disaster. But blame could still be attributed to human actions, based on
the mistakes made in 2010. As these topics were more prominent in the national
40 M. SALDAÑA

media, the three national newspapers tended to use the problem definition and causal
interpretation framing functions to a larger extent than the local newspaper and the
government.
Second, topics were inspected to identify moral evaluations. This function was more
evident on topics prominent in the local coverage. Descriptions of price increases,
schools unable to resume classes, and health problems are examples of the local media
evaluating causal agents and their effects. Thus, the local newspaper was more specific
in terms of moral judgment. Though to a lesser extent, the national coverage also
reported on disaster consequences: inmates escaping from jail, families losing their
houses, and fatalities caused by collapsing walls were topics carrying judgment regarding
the effects of the disaster.
Third, topics were observed to identify treatment recommendation. The qualitative
analysis showed that topics emphasized by the government—such as the work of local
authorities as well as Bachelet’s ministers, the reconstruction in Valparaíso and Iquique,
and the constant monitoring of workers, housings, and highways—describe the official
response to the disaster and the solutions implemented to deal with the consequences.
In the language of framing, the government topics suggest remedies for the problems
identified by the media, providing treatment recommendation.

Discussion
Results reveal that when the media align with a particular political side, disaster charac-
teristics are not the main issue to report on. Despite natural disasters not being political
in nature, the coverage of the disaster was extremely political, focusing more on the auth-
orities’ performance than on disaster consequences. These findings are important
because they illustrate that disaster news coverage (and mostly any type of coverage)
is highly influenced by factors other than journalistic norms and routines, such as
power asymmetries and hegemonic actors (Carragee and Roefs 2004). As stated by Shoe-
maker and Reese (2014), social systems, institutions, and organizations play a significant
role in news content production. In this study, political ideology of the newspapers par-
tially affected the topics that emerged within the discourse.
In terms of framing, findings indicate the government portrayed its own performance
as a successful one where all actors did their job to minimize disaster consequences. Yet,
the narrative emerging from Chilean media did not reflect the government’s efficiency
frame—instead, the media used the previous disaster as a benchmark to frame the gov-
ernmental response as a result of the lessons learned back in 2010, when President Bache-
let and her team had to deal with the 27/F disaster. The apparent failure surrounding the
government’s response in the 2010 disaster was used to evaluate and contextualize
Bachelet’s administrative efforts to manage the current crisis.

Table 2. One-way analysis of variance. Comparison of topic coverage by source (N=879).

Topic Source Mean SD F
Explanations EMOL 4.4% 14.7 8.03***
La Tercera 8.4% 21.1
La Nación 3.1% 11.7
El Longino 2.4% 12.9
Government 0.5% 3.5
 JOURNALISM STUDIES 41

Entman (1993) proposed that frames perform four functions: they define problems,
identify causes, offer moral judgments, and suggest solutions. The findings show national
newspapers highlighted problems and causes thereof. Both national and local media dis-
cussed moral evaluations, and the government omitted defining problems, identifying
causes, or making judgments, as the official information released focused mostly on pro-
viding solutions.
Stone’s (1989) typology of causal theories may explain why the official press releases
did not focus on problem definitions but mostly on treatment recommendations. For
Stone, a bad condition does not become a problem until people see it as amenable to
human control, i.e., when bad conditions are attributed to human behavior instead of
to accident, fate, or nature. As such, the 2014 earthquake and subsequent tsunami
were not defined as a problem by the Chilean government as no human intervention
could be blamed for it—there is no scientific way to prevent an earthquake or a
tsunami. Human control can only be exerted to manage earthquake or tsunami conse-
quences. Then, the government’s story portrayed authorities acting quickly and efficiently
to evacuate the coast and send food and medicines to the affected regions.
Conversely, right-wing media attributed the government’s performance in 2014 to the
lessons learned from the 2010 disaster in southern Chile. Right-wing outlets did not
portray the 2014 disaster as a problem in Stone’s sense of the concept (attributable to
human action), but it was framed as the outcome of a previous disaster that did
become a problem as hundreds of people died because of human error (Ramírez and
Aliaga 2012).
Many framing studies identify frames in communication focusing on words, phrases,
and presentation styles (Druckman 2001), as the present study does. However, a signifi-
cant portion of such studies develop “unique” frames which, in many cases, are
“unable to make any connection to the broader theoretical or conceptual issues of
framing” (Borah 2011, 256). Findings from this study, in contrast, align with previous
research on generic frames as well as disaster coverage. The national media used the attri-
bution of responsibility frame (Semetko and Valkenburg 2000) and the political impli-
cations frame (Houston, Pfefferbaum, and Rosenholtz 2012; Li 2007) when covering the
2014 disaster, as the tone of the coverage strongly emphasized political responsibilities.
Local media used the economic impact frame (Houston, Pfefferbaum, and Rosenholtz
2012; Li 2007; Semetko and Valkenburg 2000) and to some extent the human interest
frame (Houston, Pfefferbaum, and Rosenholtz 2012; Li 2007; Semetko and Valkenburg
2000), as they reported on economic losses and problems affecting citizens in the
north. The government focused on the economic impact frame (Houston, Pfefferbaum,
and Rosenholtz 2012; Li 2007; Semetko and Valkenburg 2000) and the rescue/treatment
frame (Yang 2012).
Though previous studies have looked for framing functions in media content
(Matthes and Kohring 2008), most research on framing focuses on identifying frames
with no closer examination. In some cases, this might be problematic, as the same
frame might vary in terms of the provided solution or even the identified problem
(Entman 1993). As this study found, both the local media and the government
described the economic impact of the disaster but in significantly different ways—
the local media described it in terms of moral evaluations and not in terms of solutions,
as the government did. Thus, looking for framing functions is a more nuanced and
42 M. SALDAÑA

precise path to understand how different actors portray the same issue and with what
intentions.
Carragee and Roefs (2004) call attention to the neglect of power in the studies of frame
building, as much framing research ignores that journalistic discourse is shaped by exter-
nal sources that might undermine journalists’ autonomy in the coverage of any issue. Fol-
lowing this argument, the present study departs from a description of journalistic
practices in time of disasters towards a more complex view of the relationship between
government and the press when it comes to disaster coverage. In Chile, media ownership
has become a serious problem when writing stories—Saldaña and Mourão (2018) found
Chilean reporters see media ownership as an obstacle for objectivity and fair coverage.
Thus, the Chilean case provided an opportunity to examine how news outlet ideology
may have a significant impact on issues that are not political in nature, such as natural
disasters. Based on this study’s findings, the political angle of the coverage had more
to do with the newspapers’ ideology than with the disaster itself, and much of this
influence is explained by media ownership. As such, this study shows the problems
faced when the media overstep their role of objective observers and attribute blame
based on ideological reasons, i.e., when the media take advantage of the authorities’
poor crisis management to impose their own political agenda. In a broader sense, disaster
news coverage is important because audiences turn to the media to satisfy their need for
orientation (Matthes 2006; McCombs 2014), and such a need is higher during catastrophic
events (Houston, Pfefferbaum, and Rosenholtz 2012).

Limitations and Future Research

This study is not without limitations. Newspapers are the most important agenda setters
and the most frequently used source for political information in Chile (Godoy and Gro-
nemeyer 2012). Yet, including only stories from print press might provide a limited
picture of disaster news coverage in the country. Future research could look at other
sources of information such as broadcast television or “populist”-oriented newspapers.
Digital platforms such as Twitter or Facebook should also be considered, given the high
level of social media penetration in the country (Reuters Institute for the Study of Jour-
nalism 2020).
Despite these limitations, this study has helped to understand the importance of a
nation’s political context when natural disasters occur. The news coverage of the 2014
earthquake, particularly by right-wing newspaper La Tercera, put the disaster in context
and the government was held accountable for past actions. Yet, the ultimate intention
of the newspaper might not have been to increase coverage quality, but to expose a gov-
ernment the outlet disagreed with. Studies on disaster coverage should consider the
specific context in which catastrophes occur as factors beyond the realm of the disaster
might also serve to influence news content.

Notes
1. The 921 earthquake was a 7.3-magnitude earthquake occurring in Taiwan on 21 September
1999.
2. Iquique is the capital city of the Tarapacá region.
 JOURNALISM STUDIES 43

3. Arica is the capital city of the Arica and Parinacota region.

4. To improve the visualization of topics, Figure 3 illustrates topics emerging during the immedi-
ate coverage of the disaster (between 1 April and 6 April 2014) and during subsequent cover-
age (from 7 April to 30 April 2014).
5. Nineteen instead of 20 as the “Other” topic was not included in the analysis.
6. There were significant differences between local and national media regarding the Flights
topic, but not between the government and the media.
7. There were significant differences between local and national media regarding the Water
topic, but not between the government and the media.
8. Headlines translated from Spanish by the author of this paper.

Acknowledgements
The author wishes to thank her dissertation committee members Gina Chen, Bethany Albertson,
Steve Reese, Jörg Matthes, and Homero Gil de Zúñiga, and her dissertation chair Tom Johnson,
for their valuable guidance during the dissertation process.

Disclosure Statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

ORCID
Magdalena Saldaña http://orcid.org/0000-0002-1218-0091

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Appendix

Post hoc tests—topic comparison by source (media and government)

Bonferroni—Multiple Comparisons
Topics (I) Outlet (J) Outlet Mean Difference (I–J)
Reconstruction National Media Local Media –.04714930*
(M=1.9%, SD=10.1) Government –.09903768*
Local Media National Media .04714930*
(M=6.6%, SD=18.8) Government –.05188838*
Government National Media .09903768*
(M=11.8%,SD=25.9) Local Media .05188838*
Human Interest National Media Local Media .03282755*
(M=6.5%, SD=17.8) Government .05657295*
Local Media National Media –.03282755*
(M=3.2%, SD=10.9) Government .023745
Government National Media –.05657295*
(M=0.8%, SD=3.4) Local Media –.02375
Help National Media Local Media –.08967290*
(M=3.4%, SD=11.5) Government –.00894
Local Media National Media .08967290*
(M=12.4%,SD=24.6) Government .08073034*
Government National Media .008943
(M=4.3%, SD=13.3) Local Media –.08073034*
Fishermen National Media Local Media –.00399
(M=3.8%, SD=16.3) Government –.01446
Local Media National Media .00399
(M=4.2%, SD=14.3) Government –.01047
Government National Media .014459
(M=5.3%, SD=19.3) Local Media .01047
Flights National Media Local Media .05824890*
(M=8.0%, SD=21.1) Government .029258
Local Media National Media –.05824890*
(M=2.1%, SD=8.3) Government –.02899
Government National Media –.02926
(M=5.0%, SD=13.0) Local Media .028991
Highways National Media Local Media –.00812
(M=1.0%, SD=6.4) Government –.04913353*
Local Media National Media .008115
(M=1.8%, SD=9.8) Government –.04101817*
Government National Media .04913353*
(M=5.9%, SD=20.0) Local Media .04101817*
Jobs National Media Local Media –.01496
(M=2.6%, SD=12.6) Government –.03960109*
Local Media National Media .014965
(M=4.1%, SD=13.7) Government –.02464
Government National Media .03960109*
(M=6.6%, SD=20.2) Local Media .024636
Jailbreak National Media Local Media .021568
(M=6.5%, SD=18.9) Government .05435172*
Local Media National Media –.02157
(M=4.3%, SD=15.5) Government .032784
Government National Media –.05435172*
(M=1.0%, SD=3.7) Local Media –.03278
Tsunami National Media Local Media .10642933*
(M=11.9%,SD=25.0) Government .10693592*
Local Media National Media –.10642933*
(M=1.3%, SD=6.0) Government .000507
Government National Media –.10693592*
(M=1.2%, SD=5.3) Local Media –.00051
Water National Media Local Media –.03121
 JOURNALISM STUDIES 47

(M=3.3%, SD=14.2) Government –.02433

Local Media National Media .031214
(M=6.4%, SD=20.5) Government .006886
Government National Media .024328
(M=5.7%, SD=18.1) Local Media –.00689
Valparaiso National Media Local Media –.00896
(M=3.8%, SD=14.8) Government –.09656512*
Local Media National Media .008963
(M=4.7%, SD=16.4) Government –.08760261*
Government National Media .09656512*
(M=13.4%,SD=25.5) Local Media .08760261*
Authorities National Media Local Media .008197
(M=6.2%, SD=16.0) Government –.06820089*
Local Media National Media –.0082
(M=5.4%, SD=17.5) Government –.07639834*
Government National Media .06820089*
(M=13.0%,SD=25.2) Local Media .07639834*
Schools National Media Local Media –.04519149*
(M=4.0%, SD=15.0) Government –.00059
Local Media National Media .04519149*
(M=8.5%, SD=24.6) Government .04459992*
Government National Media .000592
(M=4.1%, SD=15.6) Local Media –.04459992*
Explanations National Media Local Media .03394198*
(M=5.8%, SD=17.2) Government .05236434*
Local Media National Media –.03394198*
(M=2.4%, SD=12.9) Government .018422
Government National Media –.05236434*
(M=0.5%, SD=3.5) Local Media –.01842
Medical assistance National Media Local Media –.04150817*
(M=3.9%, SD=15.1) Government –.0009
Local Media National Media .04150817*
(M=8.0%, SD=20.8) Government .04061005*
Government National Media .000898
(M=4.0%, SD=12.5) Local Media –.04061005*
Housing National Media Local Media –.01811
(M=4.4%, SD=14.9) Government –.04538662*
Local Media National Media .018106
(M=6.2%, SD=16.3) Government –.02728
Government National Media .04538662*
(M=8.9%, SD=22.2) Local Media .027281
Bachelet National Media Local Media .010977
(M=4.3%, SD=16.0) Government –.0225
Local Media National Media –.01098
(M=3.2%, SD=13.4) Government –.03348
Government National Media .022505
(M=6.6%, SD=18.7) Local Media .033482
Local Commerce National Media Local Media –.03311078*
(M=3.7%, SD=13.8) Government .03394761*
Local Media National Media .03311078*
(M=7.0%, SD=20.8) Government .06705839*
Government National Media –.03394761*
(M=0.3%, SD=2.3) Local Media –.06705839*
Seismology National Media Local Media .06516490*
(M=10.8%,SD=25.3) Government .09918320*
Local Media National Media –.06516490*
(M=4.3%, SD=16.8) Government .034018
Government National Media –.09918320*
(M=0.9%, SD=2.3) Local Media –.03402
Note: *The mean difference is significant at the .05 level.