Framing theory insights: the co-existence of frame coupling and frame mirroring in social media and online news about a disaster-affected destination

Through the lens of framing theory, this paper explores social media and news media online narratives about a destination affected by a natural disaster. It presents original insights into the co-existence of frame coupling and frame mirroring in online content. Online news media, and local and overseas social media user-generated content (UGC) was examined. The aim of such triangulation of data, was to understand how different online sources framed the destination in the context of the disaster. 24,985 Twitter (now X) posts were sourced using Salesforce Social Studio and 1,248 online news media articles from Factiva. Leximancer-driven thematic analysis via data visualisation was used to explore the data. This study is the first to show the interplay of frame coupling and frame mirroring of a disaster-affected destination. It also uncovers the existence of online brand advocacy (OBA) in online framing. Our findings emphasise the importance of social media UGC in defending a destination brand, spreading positivity and activism during a disaster, and this has clear implications for the tourism industry, specifically marketing professionals.