Frame Analysis On Political Podcasting

It has been 13 years since Podcasting appeared in 2005.This new technology,especially in the United States,has provided opportunities for many media outlets to revitalize their business.Among them,the National Public Radio has created many excellent podcasting programs,which are welcomed by social media users.And many podcasts even played an important role of guiding public opinions in the U.S.presidential election in 2016.In this respect,NPR's Morning Edition program stood out among the programs.This thesis focuses on the frame of the political coverage of the program during the U.S.presidential election and tries to analyze the reasons behind the frame,aiming to give some suggestion to Chinese podcasting programs.Based on the frame theory,this paper answers four main questions:What kind of frame does the political news of Morning Edition belong to?What are the features of this frame reporting?Why does this frame emerge?What can we learn from the Morning Edition program?Combining quantitative and qualitative analysis,the methods of content analysis,case analysis and text analysis are used to explain the frame presented by the text of the political podcast coverage.The specific research angles of frame analysis include the publishing frequency,topics,areas,sources,perspectives,style and length of the reporting.In addition,this research analyzes the media image construction of presidential candidates from the aspect of theme structure to narrative structure in news frame.In terms of the frame of publishing frequency,Morning Edition publishes its programs with the pace of important political dynamics during the presidential campaign;the reporting of presidential election is featured with obvious regional characteristics,which is inclined to focus on the swing states;Morning Edition covers the presidential election in the perspective of citizens according to the sources;it focuses on the news in style of conversations or interviews;Morning Edition focuses on the short and medium-length news.Finally,the author discusses these characteristics and the reasons for the frames.Because Morning Edition is dependent of government,the frame of reporting pretends to be pro-citizen.The thesis studies the frame design of sounds and voices in order to compensate for the deficiency of previous researches.Besides,the author summarizes the conclusion and proposes some suggestions for China's podcasts.