Newspaper framing of gay sex law in Singapore: Integrating inductive and deductive approaches to auto-coding

This study adopts Agenda Setting’s Framing Theory to examine how Singapore newspapers framed one of the nation’s most controversial laws—Section 377A (s377A)—which criminalised consensual sex between male adults. Through a qualitative content analysis of 808 news articles published over a 15-year period, we found that coverage of s377A peaked in 2022, with notable surges in 2007, 2009, 2013, and 2018. The most salient news frame was Legal (5,637 sentences), followed by Societal Morality (5,523) and Religion (4,660), with Medical (1,299) a distant last. These findings revealed that Singapore’s news framing of s377A was influenced by local activities and regional legal developments concerning similar laws. In addition, the two news sources analysed largely reflected the conservative stance of the Singapore government. Beyond these findings, this study makes an important methodological contribution to thematic analysis by employing a mix of inductive and deductive methods. This study also leveraged NVivo’s auto-code function to effectively analyse large textual datasets whilst ensuring reliability through multiple iterative rounds of open coding by human coders. This hybrid approach mitigates the limitations of both fully automated and fully manual coding in content analysis, offering a novel coding method that balances efficiency with interpretive depth.