The Samsung–Apple patent war: Socio-cultural comparative study of news frames in a business conflict issue

Abstract

This study explored a comparative analysis of how the South Korean and United States media framed the Samsung–Apple patent lawsuit. The South Korean and U.S. media have a tendency to report Samsung–Apple patent disputes in a completely different angle. While framing in favor of Samsung was frequent in South Korea, neutral frames were dominant in the United States. The South Korean newspapers showed a stronger nationalism in favor of Samsung, whereas the U.S. newspapers portrayed the business conflict in the market logic. The South Korean and U.S. newspapers also showed differences in framing according to the ideological characteristics of the newspaper. In South Korea, the main conservative newspaper (Chosun Ilbo) framed the issue in favor of Samsung and the largest liberal newspaper (Hankyoreh) revealed a tendency to frame it in favor of Apple. However, in the United States, only the main business newspaper (Wall Street Journal) favored Apple. This study contributes to news framing research in that socio-cultural divergences, framing pool (e.g., generic frames vs. issue-specific frames), and journalistic contexts considered systematically. © 2018, The Author(s) 2018.