Politicizing Disaster: Examining the Effect of Ideology on Media Framing of the Itaewon Crowd Crush Disaster in South Korea

ABSTRACT Using the Itaewon Crowd Crush Disaster as a case study of an emerging large‐scale disaster, we examine how ideology is related to media framing. Emerging large‐scale disasters and crowd crushes are useful for examining the role of ideology in media framing because they do not have the same ingrained ideological biases as other disasters, especially environmental ones. Drawing on a data set of 830 articles published by six national newspapers in South Korea over the 16 months following the disaster, we apply a modified media frames content analysis approach to examine ideological differences in coverage. We find that conservative newspapers emphasized the economic consequences and moral components of the Itaewon Crowd Crush Disaster. On the other hand, liberal newspapers engaged in strategic political framing by emphasizing blame on the conservative governments and policy inaction. Our results suggest the importance of media ideology in framing, even in emergent domains.