Coming into focus: an examination of how political actors and media outlets in Canada framed the Chaoulli v. Quebec case.

"This paper presents the findings of a study that examined how different political actors and the media presented the Chaoulli v. Quebec case to public. As should be clear, the Chaoulli v. Quebec case was both an extremely important case and an extremely complicated one. As a result, it is important to understand how it was presented to the public. The study was conducted in two parts. First, the specific issues frames expressed by political actors at the Supreme Court hearing were identified and mapped. This was done by examining the transcripts and factums from the hearing and noting the different problem definitions, causal interpretations, suggested remedies, and moral appeals expressed by political actors there (Entman 1993). This review revealed that three distinct specific issues frames were put forth during the hearing by three distinct sets of actors. Next, media coverage of the case was examined. Specifically, media coverage in the Toronto Star, the National Post, the Globe and Mail, and the Ottawa Citizen was examined from the day the Supreme Court heard arguments in the case until six-months after the Supreme Court announced its ruling. Using content analysis, this part of the study identified (1) the presence or absence of the specific issue frames identified in the first part of the study; (2) the type of generic news frames (e.g. the Human Interest Frame) (Semetko and Valkenburg, 2000) used to present the case, and (3) which political actors were directly quoted in coverage of the case."--Page 4.