Framing Papal Visits - Vatican Connections

Emilie Callan

June 12, 2017
What’s behind the frame? When Pope Francis is photographed during a papal trip, it’s more than just a simple snapshot. Researchers at the University of Missouri School of Journalism wanted to know what we’re actually seeing in these photographs. By looking at Pope Francis’s apostolic visit to Cuba, they found the cultural background of photojournalists shaped the way they “framed” the visit in the media.  They looked at hundreds of photographs taken by journalists from different countries and their research “Politicans, Photographers, and a Pope: How state-controlled and independent media covered Francis’s 2015 Cuba visit” was published in Journalism Studies. One of the researchers, T.J. Thomson, a scholar in Visual Communication, was interviewed on the show to share more about their findings.