Doing News Framing Analysis

Empirical and Theoretical Perspectives

Paul D'Angelo, Jim A. Kuypers

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2010
• ISBN:
  9781135194475
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Languages & Linguistics
• Subtopic: Journalism
• Index: Languages & Linguistics

Doing News Framing Analysis provides an interpretive guide to news frames – what they are, how they can be observed in news texts, and how framing effects are uncovered and substantiated in cultural, group, and individual sites. Chapters feature framing analysts reflecting on their own empirical work in research, classroom, and public settings to address specific aspects of framing analysis. Taken together, the collection covers the full range of ways in which framing has been theorized and applied—across topics, sources, mechanisms, and effects.

This volume fosters understanding among the scholarly camps of framing scholars, and encourages greater clarity from framing analysts in all aspects of their empirical inquiry. Chapters offer fresh perspectives from which researchers can begin new research programs, puzzle through perplexing problems in a current research program, or expand an existing program. Providing conceptual and methodological guidance, Doing News Framing Analysis will help framing researchers at all levels to better understand news framing and to improve their future news framing research.

Chapter 1
Introduction

Doing News Framing Analysis

Paul D’Angelo and Jim A. Kuypers

Framing is a rapidly growing area of study in communication research. Framing analyses noticeably populate our professional conferences, and hardly an issue of a communication journal is published today without a framing study. Much framing research focuses on ways that politicians, issue advocates, and stakeholders use journalists and other news professionals to communicate their preferred meanings of events and issues. The word use is important. Its dual meaning—use as a conduit of information and use as a manipulated channel for information dissemination— captures the essence of framing: sources frame topics to make information interesting and palatable to journalists, whom they need to communicate information to wider publics, and journalists cannot not frame topics because they need sources’ frames to make news, inevitably adding or even superimposing their own frames in the process (see Gamson & Modigliani, 1989; Kuypers, 2006).

Many of the growing number of review and synthesis articles refer to this process as “media framing” (Carragee, & Roefs, 2004; Reese, 2001; B. Scheufele, 2004; D. Scheufele, 1999, 2000; Wicks, 2005). In this volume, however, we call it news framing (cf. D’Angelo, 2002). News is easily the most prominent discursive site in which communication researchers strive to understand what framing is and how framing works.

Much research on news framing is situated within the subfields of political communication and mass communication. This work encompasses a wide array of topic areas, including political campaigns, policy formation, legislation, litigation and court decisions, and international affairs. But the purview of news framing research expands well beyond these quintessentially political sites and topics. For example, news framing research is conducted on health campaign coverage and on sports and religion news, to name a few areas that make up the specialized institutional architecture of mass communication.

A review of the field mass communication by Jennings Bryant and Dorina Miron (2004) attests to the ascendancy of framing, finding that it was the most frequently utilized theory in top mass communication journals since the beginning of the 21st century. Their choice of the word theory is interesting because it is but one of many different ways that framing has been described. Framing is, no doubt, a concept (e.g., Tewksbury, Jones, Peske, Raymond, & Vig, 2000). But scholars have used many other terms to classify this concept vis-à-vis epistemology and practice. Framing has been called an approach (e.g., a framing analysis approach to news discourse; Pan & Kosicki, 1993; see also McLeod & Detenber, 1999), a theory (e.g., a theory of media effects; Scheufele, 1999), a class of media effects (Price & Tewksbury, 1997), a perspective (Kuypers, 2005), an analytical technique (Endres, 2004), a paradigm (Entman, 1993), and a multiparadigmatic research program (D’Angelo, 2002). Some researchers have used more than one term; for example, Reese (2001) called framing an approach and a paradigm.

This brings us to a crucial concern underlying the works in this volume on news framing. Underlying Bryant and Miron’s seemingly simple conclusion about framing’s ascendancy are foundational questions about its nature. In our view, the most important set of questions about framing dovetails with a continuing debate about communication’s status as a “borrowing” discipline (see Hudson, 1931; Craig, 1999). Namely, is framing a communication theory that lays out unique propositions to guide empirical inquiry? Or, is framing better characterized as an approach to theory integration, one that allows researchers to draw from and build upon established theories within the broader social sciences and humanities in order guide empirical inquiry? The answers to these questions not only will give vital clues to how news framing research is conducted, but also to how communication sees itself as a discipline. In this vein, debate about the nature of framing may very well be a barometer of how communication “thinks” about itself within the academy (D’Angelo, 2002).

Added to these foundational questions is a continuing and unresolved debate about the composition and location of frames and about the mechanisms and processes of frame building and framing effects. Entman (1993) and others (e.g., Nelson & Willey, 2001) have located frames within audience members, news organizations, news sources, news texts, and, more heuristically, within the culture in which news is constructed. This leaves a great deal of leeway for theorizing the mechanisms and processes of news framing. Even still, one conjecture in the literature is that frames are powerful units of discourse (D’Angelo, 2002). With this in mind, it is reasonable to inquire about the discursive characteristics that make frames powerful and, in turn, about the mechanisms through which framing effects occur. For example, on the individual level, we may ask: Do frames shape attitudes of individuals directly by forming or changing opinions? Do frames make certain considerations more salient in the public domain, thereby making them more likely to be used by individuals to interpret an issue or topic? Do frames activate emotional responses that mediate the cognitive mechanisms through which framing effects occur? Are there limits of framing effects; for example, must individuals perceive the source who frames a message, or the journalist or media organization that passes along the frame, as being credible in order for an effect to occur (e.g., Druckman, 2001)? On the group level, we may ask: How do interest groups and advocates take into consideration the framing behaviors of journalists when designing frames they believe will influence the public? In other words, how do these groups react to coverage they receive in order to reshape both internal and external framing behaviors? It is questions such as these that the following chapters attempt to answer.

Interestingly, the news framing literature already contains close to two dozen theoretical and metatheoretical essays (e.g., Carragee & Roefs, 2004; D’Angelo, 2002; de Vreese, 2005; Chong & Druckman, 2007; Entman, 1993; McCombs, 1992; Pan & Kosicki, 1993; B. Scheufele, 2004; D. Scheufele, 1999, 2000; Simon, 2001) that address these foundational questions. Several of these essays were published in a 2007 issue of the Journal of Communication (see Kinder, 2007; Reese, 2007; Scheufele & Tewksbury, 2007; Van Gorp, 2007; Weaver, 2007), and before that, in what some consider the bible of news framing analysis, Framing Public Life, edited by Stephen Reese, Oscar Gandy, and August Gant (2001). Some of these big picture articles hold that framing research is, in essence, a victim of its own success. They maintain that academic specialization, along with theoretical and methodological pluralism, has led to a fragmented understanding of what framing is and how framing works. Other big picture articles praise the pluralist premises of framing research, arguing that framing research realizes in piecemeal fashion communication’s mission to meaningfully integrate theories and methods from across the social sciences and humanities in order to illuminate a complex process.

It is directly into this brew of theoretical concerns that we offer our project. Herein we present original, big picture articles about news framing. Our goal is not to judge which foundational position is correct; that is, framing is fragmented, or framing is necessarily pluralistic. Nor is it our aim to judge which theory or method yields the most important empirical findings or insights. Rather, we acknowledge the integrationist impulses that propel the use of different theoretical and methodological approaches and we aim to provide interpretive guides to the community of news framing scholars and interested readers regarding what news frames are, how they can be observed in news texts, and how framing effects are uncovered and substantiated in cultural, group, and individual sites. In short, we offer here theoretical insights commingled with practical applications.

To achieve these goals, each chapter in this volume features a framing analyst or team of framing analysts who take a reflective, and even at times self-reflexive, look at their own empirical work. We feel that giving talented researchers the opportunity to reflect on their work allows us to then provide interpretive guides about news framing. In turn, these guides will help framing researchers at all levels to better understand news framing and do better news framing research. These chapters offer fresh perspectives from which to begin new research programs, to puzzle through perplexing problems in an existing research program, or to expand an existing research program. The chapters here provide conceptual and methodological guides for future framing research.

Approach of the Book

The two models we shall draw upon to structure this book are the process models of D. Scheufele (1999) and D’Angelo (2002). Of course, there are other models that we could have used; for example, Price and Tewksbury’s (1997) cognitive processing model or B. Scheufele’s (2004) model of framing perspectives. But we chose to use the process models by D. Scheufele and D’Angelo for two reasons.

First, both of these models are process models: they comprehensively lay out the subprocesses of news framing, positing that these subprocesses are continuous, not discrete. As D. Scheufele (1999) noted, news framing can be conceptualized as “a continuous process where outcomes of certain [sub] processes serve as inputs for subsequent [sub] processes.” (pp. 114–115). Likewise, D’Angelo (2002) held that the various subcomponents of news framing “flow” into each other. Second, both models (D. Scheufele’s in particular) have provided the vernacular with which the process and subprocesses of news framing are broadly conceptualized and discussed in theoretical and metatheoretical discourses, as well as within empirical studies. For example, Scheufele discussed two frame building subprocesses; in one, journalists are audiences for the framing behaviors of other social actors; in the other subprocess journalists use those framing elements to construct news stories. D’Angelo (2002) also acknowledged the dual nature of frame building, calling it a “frame construction flow.” His model shows that the events and discourses drawn upon by journalists to make news (e.g., sources’ comments) are themselves shaped by framing processes internal to news organizations. In turn, framing analysts examine these composite units for evidence of the frames in news stories.

Taken together, these models demonstrate the complexity of news framing and allude to the practical necessity of studying manageable parts of it. These models allude, too, to the tendency for framing analysts to not only draw from core theoretical notions within the direct lineage of framing research—notions like “primary framework” from Goffman (1974), “typification” from Tuchman (1978), “script” from Schank and Abelson (1977) and Minsky (1975)—but also to import theoretical perspectives from various fields in the social sciences and the humanities in order to supplement or complement theoretical propositions that appear to be indigenous to framing research.

Thus, theoretical integration seems to be an ineluctable part of doing news framing analysis, evident in empirical work on each of the subprocesses of news framing. In fact, the framing analysts who have contributed to this volume have demonstrated remarkable creativity regarding theoretical integration. For example, Dhavan Shah and his colleagues have extended our understanding of framing effects by elaborating how the mind works when it processes frames. Specifically, they have extended our understanding of the associative networks that frames influence by developing and integrating notions of cognitive complexity and valuesbased judgments into framing research (Keum et al, 2005; Shah, Kwak, Schmierbach, & Zubric, 2004). Others have enriched framing analysis by integrating gender and feminist theory (e.g., Hardin, Simpson, Whiteside, & Garris, 2007), by extending our understanding of visual presentation (e.g., Coleman & Wasike, 2004), and by developing theories of journalistic norms and rules that, together, explain why certain frames are prominent in news coverage while others languish (e.g., Bennett, Lawrence, & Livingston, 2006).

In summary, news framing research is burgeoning, a situation which beckons interpretation and critique. And who best to interpret and critique news framing than those who empirically study it. In this book, we provide some of the most talented news framing analysts with a model and the settings from which to reflect upon their work and mull over the state of news framing analysis. That, in essence, is the approach of this book.

Outline of the Book

Doing News Framing Analysis consists of 13 individual chapters divided into three main sections. Part I deals with frame building and defining news frames. Paying homage to his pioneering coedited volume, Framing Public Life (Reese et al. 2001), which is on the bookshelf of every framing analyst, the first chapter is by Stephen D. Reese....

Table of contents

• Communication Series
• Contents
• About the Authors
• Foreword
• Acknowledgments
• Chapter 1 Introduction
• Part I Perspectives on Frame Building and Frame Definition
• Part II Perspectives on Framing Effects
• Part III Theoretical Integration in News Framing Analysis
• Index