In search of the pitiful victim: A frame analysis of Dutch, Flemish and British newspapers and NGO-advertisements

This article contributes to the ongoing debate on the representation of global poverty in Western media. Both NGOs and journalists are being criticized for their one-sided emphasis on the misery and dependency of people in developing countries. The objective of this paper is to measure the extent of such problematizing representation in newspaper articles and NGO-advertisements. A frame analysis was conducted of 876 articles and 284 advertisements from the Netherlands, Flanders and the United Kingdom. The results challenge some conventional assumptions. Overall, the 'victim frame' and 'pitiful images' do not dominate the discourse of NGOs and newspapers. However, British NGOs are an exception: they portray the poor as 'pitiful victims' twice as often as their counterparts in the Netherlands and Flanders. Furthermore, the findings confirm the conviction that the media predominantly highlight poor countries' dependence on the West