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Portrait of Lisa Flower. Photo: Emma Lord.

Lisa Flower

Associate Professor | Associate Senior Lecturer

Portrait of Lisa Flower. Photo: Emma Lord.

Constructing clickable criminal trials: : Framing trials and legal professionals in digital news reports

Author

  • Lisa Flower

Summary, in English

Journalistic live blogging entails the conundrum of capturing emotions in a context where they should be absent in order to snap up the sensational in the subtle drama of the courtroom and present it in a way that attracts readers, thus making it clickable.
Applying an inductive frame analysis of live blogs and drawing on criteria of newsworthiness and an emotion sociological framework, this article shows two frames of understanding criminal trials are constructed in live blogs: prosecutorial power and teamwork. These frames serve to construct and reconstruct understandings of criminal trials in Sweden. The frames are partially embedded in the legal sphere thereby reproducing the ideological underpinnings of unemotional rationality whilst concomitantly conveying a more contemporary understanding wherein reason and emotion are conflated. The study shows further that the media frame shapes how criminal trials are reported in live blogs leading to a somewhat distorted understanding of trials being conveyed. Legal professionals are made newsworthy by drawing on news values, in particular on emotionalization, which constitutes a crucial tool for the live blogging journalist.

Department/s

  • Department of Sociology

Publishing year

2023

Language

English

Pages

48-66

Publication/Series

Emotions and Society

Volume

5

Issue

1

Document type

Journal article

Publisher

Bristol University Press

Topic

  • Sociology (excluding Social Work, Social Psychology and Social Anthropology)
  • Law and Society
  • Media Studies

Keywords

  • frames
  • digital
  • criminal trials
  • emotionalization
  • newsworthiness

Status

Published

Project

  • Direct From the Courtroom

ISBN/ISSN/Other

  • ISSN: 2631-6897