Samenvatting

In January 2016, several newspapers reported on the sexual assault of women at Dom Square in Cologne. The aim of this study was to find out, whether the sexual assaults that occurred in Cologne in 2015 were the result of facts or framing. The scope of this research is based on 87 letters to the editor, and articles which were published in five Dutch newspapers from 5-17 January 2016. This research was drawn from the academic database LexisNexis. The Dutch newspapers which were selected for this research were: Trouw, Algemeen Dagblad, NRC Handelsblad, The Telegraaf and The Volkskrant.
The definition of framing, which is used in this research, was provided by Stanton. The author defines framing as, “the act of shaping and forming a story so that it resonates with a particular viewpoint” (Stanton, 2007, p. 236). Two types of frames have been identified: the episodic frame, and the thematic frame. According to Iyengar, the episodic frame “leads to the blaming of individuals, typically politicians for social problems” (as cited in Ott & Mack, p.68). However, the thematic frame “tends to hold all of us responsible for social ills” (idem). The definition of a fact in this research was established by Patterson and Wilkins. These authors determined whether information was presented with, “no apparent bias” (Wilkins & Patterson, 2008, p.126).
In this research, two types of methods were used. Journalists from the five selected newspapers were approached in order to gather qualitative research. However, this approach yielded no results. The quantitative research was based on 87 articles and letters to the editor. These articles were organized around 16 different themes and how frequently each theme was mentioned in the selected newspapers. Ultimately, three main themes were selected: refugees (immigration), sexual assault and women. A discourse analysis was carried out on the denominations “refugees” and “women”.
The conclusion of this research states, that the facts that have been confirmed are the date and location of the sexual assaults. The time of the assaults was determined to be after 11 P.M. on 31 December 2015. The location of the assaults was Dom Square in Cologne. It also concludes that additional research is needed. This study recommends practicing more ‘slow journalism’ and spending more money on editors abroad. This is merely an initial assessment; however, newspapers could also print disclaimers when not all of the facts surrounding an event are known at the time of publication.