One Event, Multiple Media Frames: A Case-Based Protocol for Journalism Education

Abstract

This study develops and analytically pilots a case-based protocol for journalism education that operationalises media analytical competence as evidence-bounded interpretation. The protocol integrates framing analysis, source and voice attribution, evaluative differentiation, multimodal interpretation, comparative reasoning, and explicit control of inferential scope. A purposive corpus of 15 independently identifiable news publications reporting the Academy Award received by the documentary 20 Days in Mariupol was used as the pilot case. The corpus comprised nine Ukrainian publications and six international English-language publications from the immediate post-award news cycle. Historical National Achievement was the dominant frame in eight of nine Ukrainian publications (88.9%), whereas the international subcorpus was evenly divided between War Testimony and Journalism as Witness (three publications each). More importantly for the educational design, the analysis demonstrated that semantic presence did not necessarily equal frame dominance, representational presence did not necessarily entail communicative agency, and evaluative content could not be attributed to editorial voice without identifying its communicative source. These distinctions were formalised in a seven-stage protocol: Observation, Attribution, Differentiation, Framing, Comparison, Interpretation, and Inferential Control. A study-specific Media Analytical Competence Matrix translates the protocol into five assessable dimensions: Frame Recognition, Source Attribution, Evaluative Differentiation, Multimodal Interpretation, and Inferential Discipline. The study does not claim causal improvement in student competence or psychometric validation of the rubric. Instead, it demonstrates the analytical and pedagogical feasibility of a reproducible framework in which interpretations remain traceable to observable evidence and their inferential limits are explicit.