News framing of the 2014–15 Ukraine conflict by the BBC and RT

Abstract

This article explores the dynamic relationship between international news organisations and politics in the United Kingdom and Russia. Using the 2014–15 Ukraine conflict as its case study, this research argues that humanitarianism has been applied to set the news agenda by RT. The BBC, on the other hand, used relatively less human rights frames but depicted Russia and Russia-backed separatists as responsible for the conflict. Despite the concepts of manufacturing consent and indexing may not capture the arguments in journalistic practice comprehensively, they are useful in explaining and revealing broader insights into the market and politics-driven media industry and the illiberal tendency in the reporting of international war/conflict in that news framing constitutes a vital soft power tool. This also raises the question that where should we draw lines of distinction between the state-sponsored soft power media RT and the publicly funded BBC.