Media Scanning

Analyzing the media therefore is central to our scanning role, and in turn central to providing ethical counsel to our organization. Moreover, as the first lesson demonstrated, in the process we cannot limit our understanding to one or two sources. Ethically, we have a responsibility to understand as many perspectives as possible—in this case as many media frames as possible—in order to craft the most effective, appropriate response that addresses the concerns and expectations of our publics.

In fact, often the first thing a public relations practitioner does on a daily basis is scan the news to identify not only coverage about our own organization, but also news about our peers, and any topics or issues that could affect (or potentially affect) our organization. And this media scanning process requires that we are able to determine how our news is being conveyed, which is where our media framing analyses are useful. We must look at the big picture (our macro analysis), evaluating dynamics such as article length, headline, images, and callouts. Then we must look at the details (our micro-level analysis), analyzing dynamics such as the specific language/terms being used, types of content chosen, spokespersons used, and overall tone.