The Construction of Frames in News Journalism

Framing theory

• Framing theory - or theories about framing - today represent one of the most common research approaches in the field of communication and media studies.

• The origins of the frame metaphor lie in other fields like cognitive psychology, anthropology (Bateson) and sociology (Goffman).

• A frame specifies the relationship between a number of connected elements in a text, helping us to define or interpret what is going on, making sense out of events

Why words matters

• Experimental studies by cognitive psychologists: choices between risky projects can be powerfully altered merely by changing the terms in which equivalent choices are described. (“Will die” or “will be saved”)

• Preferences for tax policies can be manipulated by framing the financial outcomes differently (benefits or penalties?).

• Surgery as cancer treatment: use statistics in terms of survival rather than mortality!

Media frames (Todd Gitlin, 1980)

• “What makes the world beyond direct experience look natural is a media frame”.

• “Frames are principles of selection, emphasis, and presentation composed of little tacit theories about what exists, what happens and what matters”

• “Thus for organizational reasons alone, frames are unavoidable, and journalism is organized to regulate their production”

Gaye Tuchman: News as frame

• 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)

Defining framing

• “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.):

• “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 essence of framing is selection to prioritize some facts, images or developments over others, thereby unconsciously promoting one particular interpretation of events (Norris, Kern & Just 2003)

How frames work

• “The frame suggests what the controversy is about, the essence of the issue” (Gamson & Modigliani 1989, in Vreese: 27)

• Frames are ..interpretative packages that give meaning to an issue (Gamson & Modigliani, 1989: 3)

• Framing involves implicit information between the lines, the frame provides a context for the interpretation of a news message

Journalistic tools in framing the news

• Choosing the news angle

• Selecting the sources (and avoiding others)

• Formulating the headline, the lead of a news story and selecting the visual image

• Culture bound narratives: formulating a new episode in a longer and well known story.

Framing contests

• 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)

Frames are part of a culture..

• “Frames are part of a culture and are institutionalized in various ways” (Goffman 1981, p 63).

• Van Gorps (2007) six premises:1. There exist a cultural stock of frames, alternatives are available

(like in Vladimir Propp’s Morphology of the folk tale)2. The text and the frame is not identical; the readers connect

framing devices in a news story with familiar cultural phenomena3. The use of frames seem normal, natural and the social

construction are often invisible. Frames as a power mechanism.4. Frames are part of the culture, more stable than personal

schemata5. A frame changes gradually or little over time6. Frames are negotiated and part of a social interaction

Frames are not the same as topics

• Topic: Asylum seekers and undocumented immigrants

• Alternative frames (van Gorp 2007):• Misgovernment frame• Intruder/strangers frame• Our hospitality frame• The innocent victim frame• The donor/support frame• The “not in my backyard” frame

Frames as regular patterns

• “Through frames, apparently scattered and diverse events are understood within regular patterns…

• ..the terrorist frame can be used to explain the nightclub attack in Bali, the Chechen rebels holding hostages in the Moscow theatre, the bombing of Israel tourists in a Mombassa hotel, the suicide bombers in Tel Aviv, or the capture of communist insurgents in the Philippines (Norris, Kern & Just 2003: 11).

Bali, Moscow Theatre, Mombasa hotel: The same Story?

Framing early student protest against the war against Vietnam (1965)• Todd Gitlin: The whole world is watching (1980):

analyzing the earliest framing devices in main stream media outlets.

• “15000 White House pickets denounce Vietnam War”

Framing devices in coverage of Vietnam protests

• Trivialization (of age, dress, language, style, goals)• Polarization (emphasizing counterdemonstrations)• Emphasis on internal dissention• Marginalization (deviant or unrepresentative)• Disparagement by numbers (under-counting)• Reliance on statements by government officials

Framing the WTO• “A few Starbucks windows smashed by a hundred

‘anarchists’ where all the shallower news reports needed to see to decide “what’s the story”, even if tens or hundreds of thousands of demonstrators were marching by playfully, in peace” (Todd Gitlin about Seattle 1999)

Contrasting guilt and innocence

• Robert Entman (in Projections of Power, 2004), comparing the media coverage of a Soviet Air Force Fighter who shot down Korean Air Flight 007 (1983, killing 269 people) and the coverage of a US Navy Ship (Vincennes) who in 1988 shot down an Iranian Air Flight 655 (killing 290).

• The media framing varied dramatically. Soviet covered with “the murder frame”, US by the “technical glitch frame”. Contrasting magnitude, causes and the use of humanizing or neutral terms (quantitatively)

Episodic or thematic framing?

Shanto Iyengar (1991): Is anyone responsible? How television frames political issues.

• Predominantly episodic or thematic news stories in CBS, NBC and ABC. Key word search of different topics (like crime and terrorism, unemployment and poverty).

• Experimental study: how did did the groups react to different types of framing?

• Conclusion: In the long run episodic framing contributes to the trivialization of the public discourse

New Example: Ferguson

The police violence frame:

-Emphasizes the centrality of Michael Brown’s murder as the key issue and focal point-Emphasizes the impunity of the Ferguson Police Department-Puts this specific incident in a larger context of police repression in Ferguson-Puts this specific incident in a larger context of both police violence and police militarization on a national scale

New Example: Ferguson

The peaceful protesters frame:

-Emphasizes the righteousness and necessity of peoples’ response to murder

The rioters/looters frame:

-Emphasizes the criminality of protest, despite the circumstances or the specifics of the incident-Links this specific incident to other acts of civil unrest and competing philosophies of ‘direct action’

New Example: Ferguson

The black criminal ‘thug’ frame:

-Relies on racist ‘dog whistles’ utilized by public figures and politicians since the 1950s, as well as gross news characterizations of black criminality that extend back into the late 1800s-Implies that police actions are/were justified, if not provoked-Implies that all black men, especially youth, are potential criminals (the same treatment applied to Treyvon Martin coverage).-Re-frames the issue as one of ‘law breaking’ as opposed to racism, regardless of context or circumstance-Subsequently, it relies on false notion of ‘reverse racism’

Conclusion:

•Framing matters!

Literature

• 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 Constructionist Approach to framing: Bringing the Culture back’, Journal

of communication, 57 (1): 60-78