Towards A Typology of Conflict Frames: Substantiveness and interventionism in political conflict news

Conflict-framing literature has suffered from a lack of consistent conceptualization and consequently the aim of this paper is to unravel the dimensionality of conflict frames. We conducted a content analysis (N=1536) to develop a typology of conflict news coverage. Using factor analysis, different aspects of conflict news are distinguished with level of substantiveness and interventionism as the main dimensions. Furthermore, the study focuses on the occurrence of these different types of conflict frames in the news and the role of contextual factors. For example, results indicate that articles with conflict frames contain more interventionism and less strategic framing online, more journalistic intervention in quality newspapers and less substantive news in election times when compared to routine periods. The study contributes to the literature by offering a more nuanced view of the presence of different types of conflict news in the media.