This paper, which is a part of a larger research project, aims at measuring the diversity of online news in France from a news framing perspective. Its goal is to complete previous quantitative results with a focus on a particular subject: the journalistic treatment of the Libyan Revolution in 2011. More precisely, it provides a lexicometrical analysis of the covering of this uprising against Muammar Gaddafi by French news websites.

1. War on the Web
The various frames of the Libyan conflict
in French online news
Emmanuel Marty,
University of Nice
Nikos Smyrnaios,
University of Toulouse
Franck Rebillard,
University of Paris 3
International Conference on Media and Communication (ICMC)
Porto, May 2012

2. The IPRI project
(Internet, Pluralism & Redundancy of Information)
Pluralism of journalism is a political and social stake:
•Pluralism of opinion depends on diversity of media
• Greater multiplicity of sources and more content available online than offline
Research questions:
Does the multiplicity of sources necessarily lead to pluralism ?
Does more content mean more diverse coverage of events ?
Research method and theoretical framework:
Agenda setting and framing theories (Dearing & Rogers 1992; Entman 1993),
Multifaceted analysis of online news through computerized methods

3. Defining online news agenda
Corpus Definition 209 French news websites
(portals, aggregators, online
media, blogs, pure-players) 11 days period
(7-17 March 2011)
Articles collection (RSS) 37 569 news headlines (text)
With
IPRI-NA
software Topics Identification  5 481 news topics (agenda variety)
Articles Indexing  A topic is an event or a theme that
liris.cnrs.fr/ipri
becomes a « news story » once
recounted by journalists through
differents angles or frames
Agenda balance:
How many articles per topic ?
What distribution between topics ?
What differences between sources ?

4. Diversity & redundancy of online news Libyan conflict
Concentration of news
production on a few
topics (17 topics include

50% of articles)
Most productive
sources
 (portals, aggregators, T
V, radio, press)
concentrate on the
same topics of the
dominant agenda

5. Frames analysis and pluralism in media discourse
• Pluralism in online media depends not only on agenda variety but
also on frame diversity:
« To frame is to select some aspects of a perceived reality and make
them more salient in a communicating text, in such a way as to
promote a particular problem definition, causal interpretation, moral
evaluation, and/or treatment recommendation for the item
described » (Entman, 1993)
• Identification of different frames inside a single topic: the Libyan
conflict
• Comprehensive sample of 179 full text articles on this topic on
one day (8 March 2011) including 115,975 occurrences (i.e.
words) and 9,890 forms (i.e. different words).
• Lexicometric analysis of the sample with Iramuteq software that
operates textual statistics following the method of hierarchical
cluster analysis iramuteq.org

6. The different media frames on the Libyan conflict
Frame 1 focuses on geopolitical stakes of
the Libyan conflict in an analytical and
 rather critical way towards governments
(mainly US and France)
Frame 2 reports on diplomatic
 negotiations within the UN in a neutral
“agency wire” style
Frame 3 reports from the Ras
 Lanouf battleground in a factual
but dramatic “embedded” style

7. Distribution of frames among sources
Frame 1 used by pure players
(Alterinfo, Le
Post, Agoravox, Le Grand
Soir, Bellaciao), blogs and Le
Monde daily
Frame 2 used by dailies
(LeFigaro.fr, LesEchos.fr, LeParisi
en.fr), radio & TV
(RMC.fr, Europe1.fr, France 24)
portals & aggregators
(Msn, Orange)
Frame 3 used by by TV
(TF1/LCI.fr, France2.fr) in articles
that accompany video The closer a source is to the center the more
footage & by some dailies « normalized » is its discource e.g. portals like
(Liberation.fr, LesEchos.fr, JDD.f Yahoo, MSN but also Le Figaro, RTL etc.
r)

8. Panorama of digital outlets of traditional media
✓ Digital outlets of traditional media avoid opinion and debate to the benefit
of factual and objective reports of diplomatic and military situations
✓ Each media imports to the web its discursive specificities: the way it covers
news online doesn’t change much compared to its original outlet
✓ Television and radio websites provide news with strong reactivity and offer
an “emotional thrill” to the audiences, as they do in their traditional outlet
✓ Print media recount stories online based on a wide range of sources, with a
clear advantage to governments and international organizations
✓ Dominance of professional norms such as objectivity & neutrality
✓ Great dependency on wire news for real time coverage and international
affairs

9. Panorama of pure players, blogs and portals
✓ Pure players and blogs distinguish themselves by focusing on comment and
debates about the situation, in a rather polemist approach.
✓ They neglect ground report because of the lack of means to carry it out or
to buy such wire material
✓ Bloggers oppose mainstream journalism. Political commitment and personal
opinion are omnipresent in their writings
✓ There is a distinction to make between amateur pure players and
professional ones. The former lean towards the bloggers type of
discourse, the latter towards traditional media
✓ Portals and aggregators rely exclusively on wire material and thus
reproduce a formatted type of discourse as well as a redundant news
agenda

10. Conclusion
1. Online news is simultaneously diverse and redundant from an agenda
and from a frame perspective
2. This means that the multiplicity of sources provides with different
editorial, economic and journalistic strategies and methods
3. The more redundant sources are those that are heavily dependant on
advertising. Their trafic centered models necessitate a highly productive
and low cost model based on shovelware (wire news, public
relations, official sources etc.)
4. The less redundant sources when it comes both on the topics covered
and on the type of discourse used to frame news are digital natives.
Nevertheless these players have small audience (in France) and poor
means in order to develop themselves