Frames and Deliberate Metaphors of the Financial Crisis: How the Banks Manipulated the Press (and Us)

With the financial, economic and banking crisis in the rear-view mirror, it is worth studying how press coverage evolves and what consequences this entails. Previous studies show that crisis triggers highly emotive press reactions- journalists employ the simplifying power of metaphors to explain complex crises and to invoke emotions within the public (e.g., De Landtsheer, 2015). Journalists also use different kind of framing during economic recessions by focusing towards political and away from economic actors (e.g., Bennett, 1991). Nevertheless, the combination and relation between metaphors and frames remains mostly untouched in today’s literature (Burgers, Konijn & Steen, 2016). This paper presents a study that for the first time, in a cross-domain effort, relates frames and metaphors in a large longitudinal quantitative content analysis. The results are based on 3730 news articles in Dutch and Flemish newspapers during the financial 2007-2013 crises, and the preceding year 2006. Will powerful metaphors and political frames increase during years of crisis? Do strong metaphors effectively function as framing devices and do they reinforce the frame building process? This paper uses metaphors as prime indicators of emotional imagery in crisis discourse and found that metaphors are indeed powerful tools in the frame building strategies of journalists. The August 2, 2007 headline “A cluster bomb on the financial market” in the Flemish quality newspaper De Standaard, subsequently reinforced by many other equally strong headlines such as “the whole world economy is on the governments infuse” testify of the efforts by journalists to cover the latest financial crisis with utter creativity. With their powerful and original "dirty bomb" or "medical practice" images, journalists lean upon an arsenal of emotional comparisons. Our data suggests that crisis coverage does not imply faulty behavior of the financial elites and therefore journalists seem to serve the interests of the bankers. The relationship between frames and metaphors allows concluding that news producers deliberately use conceptual metaphor to reinforce their framing strategies. Bennett, W. (1991). Toward a theory of press-state relations. Journal of Communication, 40(2), 103-125. Burgers, C., Konijn, E.A., Steen, G.J. (2016). Figurative Framing: Shaping Public Discourse Through Metaphor, Hyperbole, and Irony. Communication Theory 26, 410-430. De Landtsheer, C. (2015). Media Rhetoric Plays the Market: The Logic and Power of Metaphors Behind the Financial Crises since 2006. Metaphor and the Social World 5:2, 205-222 Keywords: Framing, Content analysis, Financial crisis, Metaphor. Paper by Christ'l De Landtsheer & Nicolas Van de Voorde (nicolas.vandevoorde@UGent.be)