When the Waters Rise: How the Star Frames Floods in Malaysia

Abstract

Flooding is an annual occurrence in Malaysia and the public are inundated with news on floods, reporting the areas affected, damage, fatalities, rescue efforts and other flood mitigation measures. Television, radio and newspapers bring news of flooding to the public but what messages are conveyed by the articles? The study examined the framing of flood in The Star, a mainstream newspaper circulated throughout Malaysia. News articles on flood were searched in the The Star online archive using the search word “flood” and 165 articles were found from 1 January to 31 December 2023. Analysis of the newspaper articles was conducted for episodic versus thematic framing, frame dimensions, and valence. The results show that almost all the flood news articles were incident-based and there were few thematic articles offering contextual background information and analysis of the flood situation. The results on frame dimensions show an overwhelming focus on attributions of responsibility (64%), followed by economic consequences but there were few articles with the human interest and conflict dimensions, and none with the morality dimension. Although flood is a disaster and brings financial losses, damage to property, loss of life and inconvenience, surprisingly, the flood news articles were mostly written in a positive tone (79.6%) and only 17.8% of the articles were in a negative tone and 2.6% were in a neutral tone. The findings suggest that a predominance of a positive framing emphasizing official responses may foster public complacency, undermining the perceived urgency for personal preparedness and long-term policy engagement in the face of recurring climate-related disasters.