Framing History: An Analysis of News Coverage of the 2016 Presidential Debates

honors thesisCollege of HumanitiesCommunicationHelene ShugartThis thesis analyzes news coverage from the 2016 presidential election, looking specifically at the coverage of the three presidential debates between Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump. I engage in content analysis of the news coverage and identify the frames that overarchingly characterized the media's reports. This analysis assesses coverage of the debates across three news sources: The New York Times, CNN, and Daily Beast. In particular, I assess what frames, respectively, characterized each nominee; whether frames shifted across the debates; and whether and how gender factored into any of those frames. Finally, I discuss how these findings relate to past research on media framing in politics and provide possible explanations for differences in this case