A Tweet by Johnny Manziel: The Ethics of Journalism and the Framing Theory

The purpose of this research study was to determine whether the introduction of social media and the blogosphere has effected the ethical behavior of journalists. Using a Tweet from Johnny Manziel, a former quarterback at Texas A&M University, this study utilizes a combination of qualitative and quantitative research methods to determine how framing applies to blogs, news articles and social media comments, and the biased nature of each of those artifacts. The research in this study can be used to determine the effectiveness of journalism in the era of social media and blogs, and whether journalists are affected by the opinionated spread of information on the Internet. The results from this study show that blogs and information on social media are biased, however, their opinions did not effect the ethics of journalists. While 15 percent of blogs and 14 percent of social media comments were unbiased, 80 percent of journalistic articles remained neutral, proving journalism is still a necessary outlet to represent the unbiased opinion to the public.