The Blaze at Grenfell: The Times of London's Framing of How a Fire Became a Driver For Social Change

Abstract

A qualitative crisis news framing study which examined the framing employed by The Times London following the Grenfell Tower fire. Grenfell Tower, a lower socioeconomic apartment tower block, once stood in Kensington, London. On June 14, 2017, a fire broke out on the fourth floor, which led to the death of 71 residents. The 153 articles published by The Times London yielded five frames: informational framing, tragic framing, assumptions of blame, responses, and looking forward. Every article was analyzed using open-axial coding. Each frame contributed to shaping the opinions of policy-makers and the public. In order to understand the power and effectiveness of crisis news framing, this study also observed the process of a crisis metamorphosing into a focusing event. Focusing events lead to transparency and open dialogue for change among the public and policy-makers. This study concluded with two theoretical implications for crisis news framing. First, crisis news framing is similar to an iceberg; the deeper one dives into the water, the larger the iceberg becomes, or the more frames produced to describe the crisis. Second, that there is a relationship between crisis news framing and focusing events.