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In the background of many framing studies are implicit normative assumptions about the hallmarks of journalistic quality. However, there has so far been little cross-pollination between scholarship in framing and journalistic quality. This book, the result of a study that integrates these two ascendant areas in the communication field, has achieved that. The author asserts that framing is a paradigm in communication, arguing that insufficiencies in traditional methods in news quality research could be tackled by using alternative instruments derived from the framing approach. This proceeds from the guiding methodological thesis that by measuring media frames, meaningful and empirical assessments can also be made about journalistic quality. Using both qualitative and quantitative analyses, the quality of a decade of coverage of the United Nations Development Goals is assessed in elite newspapers in Britain, France and Germany. It is demonstrated that an instrument exclusively constructed from media frames is indeed suitable for assessing journalistic performance.

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Clovis Atatah, Mag. phil.: Holds a postgraduate degree in Media and Communication from the University of Vienna, Austria. Award-winning journalist, columnist, editor, trainer of journalists and media consultant with nearly two decades of experience.

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