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Unpacking Social Bias: An Analysis of Socioeconomic Group Status and Transcaribe-Related in News Item Media Framing

With an estimated cost of $175 million for 11 kilometers of rail (DNP, 2014), Transcaribe, a bus rapid transit system (BRT) was designed to facilitate mobility and sustainability throughout the city of Cartagena, Colombia, while stabilizing usage costs and fees and reducing emission rates linked to carcinogenic pollutants. It is expected that under optimal conditions the system would mobilize 39% (15.7 million) of the more than 40 million passengers transported via the corridor (Canabal, 2015); however, as of January 2017 adoption rates are calculated to have reached a mere 1.2 million (Boyano, Romero, & Ramos, 2016). As such, it has become imperative to understand what factors might be contributing to lowers than expected usage rates. Understanding how the media portrays Transcaribe-related news items is an important first step. Therefore, the study consisted of a deductive examination of Transcaribe-related stories in the Cartagena, Colombia regional’s newspaper El Universal. Through applying a media framing scale (Semetko & Valkenburg, 2000; Wendorf Muhamad & Yang, 2017) news items were examined for the presence or absence of five new frames: (1) attribution of responsibility (AR); (2) conflict frame (CF); (3) morality frame (MF); (4) human interest (HI); and (5) economic consequences (EC). Differences in absence or presence of frames between low and high socioeconomic neighborhoods were noted. Results indicate attribution of responsibility frame (n = 287) was the most frequently employed frame, followed by human interest frame (n = 165), conflict frame (n = 193), economic consequences frame (n = 104), and morality frame (n = 20). Attribution of responsibility is the most frequently used frame, present in low socioeconomic level (n = 173) and high socioeconomic level (n = 177). There were two hypotheses (HI, EC) supported and three (AR, CF, and MF) hypotheses rejected. / A Thesis submitted to the School of Communication in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts. / Spring Semester 2018. / April 2, 2018. / bus rapid transit (BRT), Cartagena, framing theory, integrated mass transportation systems, social bias, socioeconomic status / Includes bibliographical references. / Jessica Wendorf Muhamad, Professor Directing Thesis; Juliann Cortese, Committee Member; Stephen McDowell, Committee Member.

Identiferoai:union.ndltd.org:fsu.edu/oai:fsu.digital.flvc.org:fsu_653410
ContributorsEscobar Salazar, Nivia (author), Muhamad, Jessica Wendorf (professor directing thesis), Cortese, Juliann (committee member), McDowell, Stephen D., 1958- (committee member), Florida State University (degree granting institution), College of Communication and Information (degree granting college), School of Communication (degree granting departmentdgg)
PublisherFlorida State University
Source SetsFlorida State University
LanguageEnglish, English
Detected LanguageEnglish
TypeText, text, master thesis
Format1 online resource (47 pages), computer, application/pdf

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