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Different Media, Same Messages: Character Assassination in the Television News during the 2014 Ukrainian Crisis
Character assassination (CA) is the deliberate destruction of an individual’s reputation. Within the sphere of international affairs, char- acter assassination is often used as part of framing media strategy to impact public opinion and emotion. The purpose of this study is to iden- tify and compare the use of CA tactics in television news coverage of the 2014 Malaysia Airlines crash by U.S. and Russian broadcast television networks. The findings indicate that both Russian and U.S. news cover- ages contained various types of character assassination with differences in frequency and complexity. These results also suggest that television media in both countries offered one-sided framing of the event to their audiences with no alternative narrative. The study advocates for further application of the CA typology in mass media studies.