Citation

Di Salvo P. Int. J. Commun. 2017; 11: 1149-1168.

Copyright

(Copyright © 2017, USC Annenburg Press)

DOI

unavailable

PMID

unavailable

Abstract

Aaron Swartz has been one of the pivotal characters in the recent history of the Internet. As an American activist, programmer, hacker, and open access advocate, Swartz was involved in the launch of now established Web standards and services and has been vocal in some of the recent debates about digital rights, copyright, and free access to the Web. Beginning in 2011, Swartz was involved in a legal battle for copyright infringement, having allegedly downloaded thousands of academic papers from the JSTOR archive. In 2013, at age 26, Swartz committed suicide. This article, based on a content analysis of 272 articles, sheds light on how eight news outlets (mainstream newspapers from Italy, UK, U.S., and two online-only technology websites) portrayed Swartz over the course of a three-year time frame, from July 2011 to December 2014. © 2017 Philip Di Salvo.

Language: en

Keywords

Aaron Swartz; Framing; Hacking; Hacktivism; Journalism