Why understanding framing the news is important in agenda-setting research

because “mass media have a strong impact on people – how they construct social
reality

 Frames are important because:

 with frames agenda can be set.
 In all media (print, radio, TV, Internet
etc.) space is important, so journalists must frame the
news and present it.
 frames make journalists work easy. By having
certain types of clichés journalists are writing their
news easily.
 Frames show how ideology works in the media.
 For Edelman (1993), “the choice of frames often
is ‘driven by ideology and prejudice’” (Quoted
in Scheufele, 110)
Frames
 Straight News Account: No dominant narrative frame other than outlining
the basic who, what, where, why, and how. In other words, straight
news account can be defined as the 5Ws and H principle in journalism, which
is known as inverted pyramid.
 Conflict Story: A focus on conflict inherent to the situation or brewing
among the players.
 Consensus Story: An emphasis on the points of agreement around an issue
or event.
 Conjecture Story: A focus around conjecture or speculation of what is
to come.
 process Story: An explanation of the process
of something or how something works.
 Historical Outlook: How the current news fits into
history.
 Horse Race: Who is winning and who is losing.
 Trend Story: The news as an ongoing trend.
 Policy Explored: A focus on exploring policy and its
impact.
 Reaction Story: A response or reaction from one of
the major players.
 Reality Check: A close look into the veracity of
a statement made or information is given.
 Wrongdoing Exposed: The uncovering
of wrongdoing or injustice.
 Personality Profile: A profile of
the newsmaker.
 The most common frame in the news is
the straight news account.
To be able to identify framing in the news, (Entman, 1991)
identifies five popular ways for framing news stories:
Conflict – conflict between parties can be prioritised, as
opposed to the actual decision made. Human
Interest/Personalisation – presenting a story with human
face, personality is promoted over more important aspects.
Consequence – consequences can be wide ranging.
Pursuing a policy may be unwise in terms of unity within a
party or coalition or in terms of the status of a nation
globally. Morality – media coverage can often moralise,
sometimes due to the indiscretions of political actors; or
alternative, policies can be seen as morally questionable.
E.g Michael Moore’s editorialising of the US Patriot Act,
worldwide critique of US foreign policy all take a moral tone
© 2017 Responsibility – attributing responsibility, either for
a cause or a solution. In the wake of Asian Tsunami one
frame was “global responsibility” for find solutions as well
as blaming the lack of preparedness on the local
governments
 
Types of frame
 Specific – For instance, reporting the Asian Tsunami was linked to
consequences, how many further deaths there could be if aid was not received,
and issues of responsibility.
 b) Generic – For example, conflict and the game of politics as opposed to
frames of Values
framing technique – fair

 Metaphor: To frame a conceptual idea through comparison to

something else.
 Stories (myths, legends): To frame a topic via narrative in a vivid
and memorable way.
 Tradition (rituals, ceremonies): Cultural mores that imbue
significance in the mundane, closely tied to artifacts.
 Slogan, jargon, catchphrase: To frame an object with a catchy
phrase to make it more memorable and relate-able.
 Artifact: Objects with intrinsic symbolic value – a visual/cultural
phenomenon that holds more meaning than the object itself.
 Contrast: To describe an object in terms of what it is not.
 Spin: to present a concept in such a ways as to convey a value
judgement (positive or negative) that might not be immediately
apparent; to create an inherent bias by definition.

Framing

 Framing is a way communication source defines and constructs any piece of communicated
information
 Framing is used to represent the communication aspect which leads to the people’s
preference by consenting one meaning to another
 The theory stimulated the decision-making process by highlighting certain aspects and
eliminating others
 Framing plays an important role in how a particular issue is presented before the people
and how they perceive it
 News that is presented creates a frame for that information
 Framing is the way a communication source defines and constructs a any piece
of communicated information. Framing is an unavoidable part of human
communication – we all bring our own frames to our communications.
 Premise: Media provide a focus and environment for reporting a story,
influencing how audiences will understand or evaluate it.
 Evidence: Framing theory deals with social construction on two levels:
- Perception of a social phenomenon by journalists presenting news
- Interpretation of that phenomenon by audience
 Framing is an unavoidable part of human communication – we all bring our
own frames to our communications.

 “Frames are organizing principles that are
socially shared and persistent over time, that work symbolically to
meaningfully structure the social world” (Stephen D. Reese (2001: 11) in Reese, Gandy
& Grant (eds.): Framing Public Life, L. Erlbaum Associates, New Jersey/London)

 “To frame is to select some aspects of a perceived reality and make

them more salient in a communicating text” (Robert Entman 1993: 52)

 “The frame suggests what the controversy is about, the essence of the
issue” (Gamson & Modigliani 1989, in Vreese: 27)
 Framing has been called an exercise in power (who tells the story
first) and persuasion (manipulation of audiences).
Frame Building contest
 The frame building process takes place in a continuous
interaction between journalists and elites and social movements.
The outcomes of the frame-building process are the frames manifest
in the text (Vreese 2003: 24, 43)

 If politicians or PR-practitioners are to succeed getting their
frames wholly or partly presented in the media, they have to
adhere to certain news conventions and genre demands from
commercial news organisations giving priority to conflicts, power
struggles and drama (Allern 2001, Ihlen & Allern 2007)
Frame building

 The term frame-building refers to “the factors that influence the structural qualities of
news frames”. Framing is applied to how journalists select stories, facts, etc.
 Deals with the creation and social negotiation of frames - journalistic norms, political
actor and cultural context (Tewksbury, 2011)
 News frames are formed through internal factors like occupational constraints of
journalists, particularly editorial policies and news values and also through external
factors like interactions between journalists and elites.
  Frames inevitably highlight some issues but downplay others.
 Journalists frame stories in particular ways in order to get people to either read or
view.
 These important factors influence how a frame is built.

Frame setting

 The interaction between Media frames and individuals’ prior knowledge and
dispositions.
 What scholars are concerned with studying, focusing most on the
consequences of framing.
 Research has shown that frames do affect how viewers view stories.
 In particular, the way a story is framed can affect what appears as most
important, who the victim appears to, who is to blame, etc.
 Research has shown that political and election stories are framed in an
episodic way, focusing on winning and losing, using a game or competition
schema,

George Lakoff About Framing Theory

 George Lakoff, a professor at UC Berkeley makes the following points about
frames and framing:
 “Communication itself comes with a frame.
 The elements of the Communication Frame include: A message, an
audience, a messenger, a medium, images, a context, and especially,
higher-level moral and conceptual frames.
 The choice of language is, of course, vital, but it is vital because language
evokes frames — moral and conceptual frames.

Example

When a journalist selects a topic that he or she is going to write about, they are
inevitability drawing the audience’s attention to a particular topic, which is the
original concept behind the agenda setting theory.

 However, the way or the frame in which the information is presented to the
audience is also decided by the media practitioners or the gatekeepers.
 The framing theory refers to not only how the audience is influenced and
interprets what is presented to them by the media, but also refers to the
media’s ability to persuade its audiences to accept one meaning of a concept
over another.
 Through initial reporting, the media may present the facts of a story in
such as way that the audience is given a particular point of view or frame of
reference and interpretation. The media may report that a political candidate has
 extreme views on an issue, that a budget proposal is harmful to a particular group,
that a new medicine is of questionable safety, and so on. By such reporting,
the media thus have presented a frame through which the story is interpreted
by audiences. It also sets the baseline for future reporting on the issue.
Framing analysis
 —stereotypes, attitudes, typification schemes, and racial or ethnic bias.
 Expectations are based on previous experience of some kind, whether derived
from a media message or direct personal experience
 Expectations are socially constructed
 Expectations are often associated with strong
 Expectations can be quite resistant to change
 Expectations are often applied without conscious awareness

Frames

Episodic and thematic

 Iyengar, 1991
 Media tend to present social problems in episodic terms (individual, short-term)
instead of thematic terms (collective, long-term)
 This patterns encourages audiences to attribute responsibility for solving the
problem to the individual instead of the collective

Strategy and policy

 News coverage tends to focus on the game of politics, and the competition
between players, instead of the features of policy
 Particularly true during elections
 Leads to audience cynicism and may contribute to the erosion of efficacy

Ethical material

 News media tend to construct issues in terms of opposing rights / moral

principles, as opposed to economics or pragmatics
 Encourages simplified electoral decision making and character attribution

Individual and social

 News media tend to frame issues at the individual level, as opposed to the
societal level, due to dominant news values
 This frame distinction interacts with other coverage elements to influence the
complexity of thought, tolerance judgments
Political ads provide valuable lessons in framing. In one ad, President Obama touts his job creation
record, citing over 4 million jobs added to the economy since he took office. In another ad, Governor
Mitt Romney criticizes President Obama’s job creation by pointing out that unemployment is still
hovering around 8 percent and the economy still lacks 261,000 jobs that were lost during the
president’s tenure. Both ads rely on the same set of facts. However, one ad frames the numbers in a
positive manner, while the other frames it negatively.

Media in communication

 News is a window of the world. Through its frame,

American learn of themselves and others, of their institutions,
leaders, and life styles, and those of other nations and their
peoples…

 …The view through a window depends upon whether the
window is large or small, has many panes or few, whether the
glass is opaque or clear, whether the window faces a street or
a backyard. (Making News, 1980)
Frames refer to that way the media act as gatekeepers that organize and present
ideas and topics the journalist cover

Frames from a particular point of view that can change the way readers perceive

In other words, by framing the news, agenda can be set.

 he result is news stories in which events are routinely framed in ways that
eliminate much of their ambiguity and instead reinforce socially accepted and
expected ways of seeing the social world.
 Framing theory challenges a long accepted and cherished tenet of journalism—
the notion that news stories can or should be objective. Instead, it implies that
journalism’s role should be to provide a forum in which ideas about the social
world are routinely presented and debated. As it is now, this forum is dominated
by social institutions having the power to influence frames routinely used to
structure news coverage of the social world.
Some framing theorists have begun to advocate changes in journalism that might
overcome these limitations. Gans (2003) advocates for participatory news. This is
news that reports how citizens routinely engage in actions that have importance for
their communities. He points out that this type of coverage has vanished even from
local newspapers, but it could be a vital part of encouraging more people to become
politically engaged. Participatory news could range from covering conversations in
coffee shops to reports on involvement in social groups. Reports on social
movements could be “reframed” so they feature positive aspects rather than threats
posed to the status quo. He argues that coverage of participation is the best way for
journalists to effectively promote it.


Framing, as a theory of mass communication, refers to how the media packages and presents
information to the public. According to the theory, the media highlights certain events and then
places them within a particular context to encourage or discourage certain interpretations. In this
way, the media exercises a selective influence over how people view reality. Anthropologist Gregory
Bateson is credited with first positing the theory in 1972. Framing is sometimes referred to as
second-level agenda setting because of its close relation to Agenda-Setting Theory.

How Frames Work

Rather than selecting a frame to process information when confronted with news, people instead
view the world through their frames and make new information fit into them. Information that
contradicts a frame is usually written off as an exception to the rule or distorted to fit the frame. As a
result, people are most likely to notice information that fits into their frames and ignore facts that do
not.

Journalists or politicians who want to introduce a new frame to audiences must, therefore, reference
culturally popular ideas and develop novel phrases that link existing frames in a compelling way. A
professor at UC Berkeley, for example, points to the appearance of the words “tax relief” during
George W. Bush’s administration. In the frame evoked by the word “relief,” there exists several
ideas: a crime or accident that has occurred to inflict suffering, a perpetrator of the crime, a victim, a
reliever of the suffering and the method of relief. By using this frame in conjunction with taxes, taxes
become associated with crime, or the cause of suffering. As a result, those who promote “tax relief”
are seen as heroes, or the relievers of suffering. Those who call for increased taxation, however
necessary it may be, are viewed as criminals.

What makes frames so powerful is how easily they are evoked and, therefore, reinforced. To
reference the “war” frame, one only has to mention an idea contained within that frame, such as
“tanks.” Negating a frame—such as stating, “There’s no such thing as war”—only reinforces that
frame by calling up the images associated with it. The only way to combat a frame is to reframe an
issue in another, more powerful way.

Framing’s Effects

Framing affects audiences in startling ways. Aside from restricting the information by which people
judge events, framing can motivate people to make riskier decisions than they otherwise would.
Researchers have found that when problems are expressed negatively, to imply a loss, people tend
to choose the riskiest option for solving the problem. Problems framed positively result in safer
decisions.

Framing can also cause audiences to deflect responsibility for solving social and political problems
away from elected leaders. In his studies of framing, communications professor Shanto Iyengar
identified two types of media news coverage: episodic and thematic. Episodic coverage treats issues
as individual events, while thematic coverage links events together in a type of case-study format.
When audiences are exposed to episodic news frames, they fail to make logical connections
between the issues being covered—such as crime and poverty—and elected leaders or economic
realities. Iyengar found that when reporting on poverty in particular, the media is more than twice as
likely to frame the issue episodically than thematically. As a result, audiences place responsibility for
poverty on the poor and hesitate to support government efforts to solve the problem.

Ref
 Carver, R, R. Waldahl & J. Breivik(2008): ’Frame that gene’, EMBO reports.
 De Vreese, Claes (2003): Framing Europé. Television News and European Integration, Amsterdam: Aksant
 Entman, R. (1993): ’Framing. Toward Clarification of a Fractured Paradigm’, Journal of Communication 43 (4): 51-58
 Entman, R. (2004): Projections of Power, Chigcago, University of Chigago Press
 Gitlin, T. (1980): The Whole World is Watching.. (Berkely..: Universityof California Press)
 Goffman, E. (1974): Frame Analysis, Cambridge: Harvard University Press
 Ihlen, Ø & S. Allern (2008): ’This is the Issue: Framing Contests and Media Coverage’, in Strömbek, Ørsten & Aalberg (eds.): Communicating
Politics, Gothenburg: Nordicom.
 Iyengar, S.: (1994): Is anyone responsible. How television frames political issues, Chcago: University of Chicago Press
 Norris P., M. Kern & M. Just (2003): Framing Terrorism, New York/London: Routledge
 Reese, S.D., Gandy O.H. & Grant, A.E (eds.) (2001): Framing Public Life: Perspectives on Media and Our Understanding of the Social
World. Mahwaa, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum.
 Tuchman, G. (1978): Making News. A Study of the Construction of Reality, New York: Free Press
 Van Gorp, B (2007): ’The Construct