| This dissertation examines how mass media has framed the political issue of tort reform in the United States and with what effects on public attitudes about the issue. It makes use of an inductive content analysis of newspaper articles about tort reform and an experiment in which subjects are presented with various frame types (based on the results of the content analysis) to examine which frame types are persuasive. Additionally, it measures potential mediators of framing effects, including prior beliefs and emotional responses to frames, to set the groundwork for future experiments that make use of causal mediation analysis. It finds that thematic frames are the dominant form of coverage about tort reform, which runs counter to extant research on media coverage of tort reform, and also finds that thematically-framed articles proved to be more effective than episodic frames in altering people's perceptions about the tort system in the United States. |
