Hero, victim, and charity case: How the news media frame U.S. military veterans on Twitter

In the initial post for this blog, I highlighted how Americans - especially younger Americans - are less likely to have immediate family connections to the military than in past generations.  One consequence is that many Americans get most of their information about the military from media as opposed through conversations with those who have served.  Thus, it becomes important to understand how media represent the experiences of military veterans.

A recent study,  led by Dr. Scott Parrott, Associate Professor of Journalism and Creative Media at the University of Alabama, explored this issue in depth.  News organizations increasingly use Twitter to broadcast their stories to audiences, and hence Dr. Parrott and his colleagues analyzed tweets from 50 regional news organizations that used the term "veteran" or "veterans" over a 10 year period.  Specifically, the authors analyzed tweets from the largest regional newspapers in each of the 50 states.  In my home state of Florida, for example, the authors analyzed tweets from the Tampa Bay Times, which has the largest media market in the state.  In cases where the largest paper served a national rather than a regional audience, the second largest news organization was selected (e.g., for the state of New York, the authors analyzed tweets by the New York Post rather than New York Times).  From 2008 to 2017, the authors identified 8,417 tweets about veterans by these 50 news organizations; hence, they randomly identified a subset of 20% of those tweets (n = 1,460) to analyze in terms of how military veterans were framed.

Media framing theory argues that news organizations help shape the public's perceptions of social issues by highlighting certain elements of a story while downplaying other elements.  Just as placing a picture into different frames may draw attention to different elements of a painting, framing a news story in different ways can draw attention to different elements of an issue.  In a classic 1993 article, Professor Robert Entman of George Washington University described framing as a process in which communicators "select some aspects of a perceived reality and make them more salient in a communicating text, in such as way as to promote a particular problem definition, causal interpretation, moral evaluation, and/or treatment recommendation" (p. 52).  By consistently highlighting certain aspects of the veteran experience, news organizations inadvertently may create and/or reinforce stereotypes about military veterans.

To identify frames, Dr. Parrott and colleagues coded for the presence or absence of about a dozen different topics or themes that they anticipated (based on prior research) might be discussed in each of the 1,460 tweets.  After this, the authors analyzed which themes tended to occur together in the same tweets.  In this way, they were able to identify 3 main frames present in their sample of regional news organization's tweets about military veterans.

First, the charity/assistance frame represented stories in which veterans received free goods or services from businesses or non-profit organizations.  Common themes in the first frame included charity, content that would elicit feelings of happiness, and discussions of physical health.  Example tweets that illustrate this first frame include "Wounded at war, Army veteran gets new home" (Arkansas Democratic-Gazette) and "7-Eleven offering veterans a fee-free franchise" (Times Dispatch, Richmond, Virginia).  About 35% of the news tweets fell into this first frame.

Second, the hero frame included stories about acts of courage and heroism by veterans.  Common themes in this second frame included reference to honor, content that would elicit pride, and specific mentions of WWII veterans.  Examples illustrating this second frame include "Dallas photo exhibit focuses on bravery, sacrifice of WWII veterans in senior living center" (Dallas Morning News) and "We offer our greatest gratitude to our veterans and those who are active in the U.S. military" (Burlington Free Press).  About 35% of tweets feel into this second frame.

Third, the victim frame was composed of stories about hardships faced by veterans.  Common themes in this third frame included veterans being wronged, veterans struggling with mental health issues, politics, the post-9/11 conflicts, and content that would elicit sadness.  Examples of this third frame include "News at noon: Report shows VA staff left veterans' body in shower nine hours" (Tampa Bay Times) and "Suicides of young veterans top those of active duty troops" (Detroit Free Press).  About 30% of stories fell into this third frame.

One concerning aspect of these findings is how they highlight only certain aspects of the veteran experience.  Some veterans (at some points in time) do need assistance; some have performed incredible acts of courage that merit recognition, and some struggle to reintegrate to civilian life after returning from combat and/or separating from the military.  But the danger comes when repeated frames lead readers to move from inferring "some veterans" to "most" or "all veterans."    

Consider the victim frame. As noted in a previous blog, the best evidence to date suggests that about a quarter (23%) of veterans of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan struggle with post-traumatic stress symptoms.  After being encouraged by family and military peers, many of these veterans seek professional help and go on to live productive lives.  What's left unsaid in this statistic, however is that most veterans (77%) transition back to civilian life remarkably smoothly.   If the public believes that most military veterans suffer from PTSD, then it's easier to understand why employers might be cautious about hiring veterans or younger Americans might be reluctant to consider serving.

A second concerning aspect of these findings is what frames are missing from news tweets about military veterans.  Military veterans bring a range of experiences and skills into the civilian world - whether they are searching for employment, continuing their education, or volunteering for non-profit organizations in their community.  So where is the veterans as valuable resources frame?

Given that more of the public rely on media as their primary source of information about the military, what are ways of moving forward?  The point of this blog isn't to blame the media.  As Dr. Parrott notes, reporters at regional news organizations often are tasked with writing more than one story per day; hence it is understandable that they may write routine stories at particular times (e.g., around Memorial Day and Veterans Day) rather than digging deeper to write about broader aspects of the veteran experience.  One option is for academics and activists to collaborate with news organizations to improve coverage of veterans issues.  The Center for Media Engagement at the University of Texas offers a model for how this might work.  Equally important, we need to create more opportunities for civilians and military-connected individuals to have productive conversations about a range of issues (e.g., the benefits and challenges of military service, the role of the military in our larger society), including on our college campuses.  Regardless of your opinion about the military as an institution, surely we all have something to learn from more opportunities for dialogue.

 

Growing military-civilian divide: Fewer Americans have immediate family connections to the U.S. military

The news often features stories about a growing U.S. military-civilian divide.  For example, the U.S. Department of Defense published a story earlier this year arguing that a widening military-civilian gap was endangering the country's ability to recruit and sustain the all-volunteer force. In that story, Anthony M. Kurta, acting undersecretary of defense for personnel and readiness, said that the growing divide "is characterized by misperceptions, a lack of knowledge and an inability to identify with those who serve."  As an example, Mr. Kurta (who retired from the Navy in 2013 as a Rear Admiral after 32 years on active duty) cited DOD survey data showing that a majority of youth believe that those who serve and then separate from the military inevitably will have psychological or emotional issues.  Although some veterans of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan do struggle with issues such as post-traumatic stress symptoms (a 2015 review of 33 studies estimated the prevalence rate at 23% of veterans), the fact is that most post-9/11 veterans have displayed remarkable resilience as they have transitioned to civilian life.  Mr. Kurta goes on to argue that "While the American public has faith in the efficacy of our military, they feel little to no personal connection with it."

There are a number of factors contributing to this sense of a growing military-civilian divide, one of which is that the active duty military today is much smaller than during past conflicts.  A 2018 report by the Rand Corporation estimated that 2.77 million U.S. service members had deployed to Iraq or Afghanistan since the post-9/11 conflicts began.  That's actually less than 1% of the total U.S. population.  In contrast, nearly 10% of Americans served during World War II.  Because a smaller percentage of families have borne the brunt of service during the post-9/11 conflicts relative to previous conflicts, Americans are less likely to have immediate family connections to the military.

The best data on this issue come from a nationally representative survey of over two-thousand Americans conducted in 2011 by the Pew Research Center.  Among other things, the survey asked participants whether they had an immediate family member who had served in the U.S. military - where "immediate family members" were defined as parents, spouses, children, and/or siblings.  The survey found a large inter-generational gap on this measure.  For example, 77% of adults 50 year or older said they had an immediate family connection, whereas only 33% of adults 18-29 years of age had such a connection.  Younger Americans, in particular, tend to lack immediate family connections, which (among other things) means that they learn most of what they know about the military from media rather than from talking with those who have served.

In a recent post, Lt. Commander Arlo Abrahamson, a career Navy public affairs officer, spelled out the basic premise on which I hope to build in this blog:  "The military doesn’t have a visibility problem, it has a conversational disconnect with civilians."  We see military veterans being honored regularly during sporting events and community parades.  Yet Americans, especially younger Americans, lack the immediate family connections that typically existed for prior generations - which limits opportunities for more meaningful conversations between military and civilian communities.  Stereotypes abound on all sides.  As a communication scholar, I see opportunities to talk about how the work my colleagues are doing might help inform ideas for improving the quality of conversations between military-connected individuals and civilians. 

In my own case, I am a military parent - my son, Brendan, served 14 years in the Army and Army Reserves and deployed twice to Iraq.  Three of my uncles also served during the Korean War, my father was drafted shortly after that conflict ended, and both my father-in-law and brother-in-law served in the Navy.  Despite these family connections, I am an "outsider" in that I have never served in the military myself.  I am also a communication professor interested in the potential of dialogue to bridge divides.  In upcoming posts, I plan to explore issues that have created a growing sense of military-civilian divides as well as ways of promoting more productive conversations between military and civilian communities.  If you're interested in these issues, I hope that you'll read and comment on my periodic posts and share them with others.