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Running head: Framing Framing

Framing Framing: A Look At Some Current Literature On Framing

Mark Koeppen

University of Alberta

Acknowledgement

I would like to thank Dr. Gordon Gow for his supervision on this project. However any errors or

omissions are my responsibility.

Table of Contents

Introduction 1

Literature Review 1

Deconstructing the Frame 8

Roadblocks in Frame Analysis 11

Frame Analysis Conundrum 11

Metaphysical Muddle 13

Overlap with Related Theoretical Fields that are Similar To Framing 15

Empathy 15

The Theory Of Mind 15

Methodology 17

Review 22

Article 1 22

Article One Question Set 27

Article 2 30

Article Two Question Set 37

Article 3 39

Article Three Question Set 45

Article 4 49

Article Four Question Set 57

Conclusion 59

Summary 59

Analysis Of The Questions Set And Responses To The Question Set 63

Generalized Observations About Framing Literature 67

Final Thoughts 67

References 72

Abstract

Framing theory has gained wide usage since its development in the 1970’s. In 30 years the

concept of frames has entered into many fields of study and into common usage. However upon

a review of the framing literature many issues arise regarding the theory of frames. This paper

will look at four current articles from peer reviewed communication journals and see how well

they deal with this criticism.

Framing Framing 1

Framing Framing: A Look At Some Current Literature On Framing

Introduction

Framing theory as a tool to understand the human condition is both immensely useful and

immensely vexing. Useful because it has a lot explanatory utility and is an easily accessible idea

but vexing because as it currently stands it is a conceptually amorphous concept and there is no

unifying frame theory.

Framing theory is based on the real world phenomena that people will respond differently

to information depending on how that information is structured. For instance, when two

logically equivalent statements that have differing emphasis are presented to people, there is a

consistency in how those people will process this information depending on what gets

emphasized. With in the framing literature the paper done by Tversky and Kahneman (1981) is

usually cited as the study that demonstrates this phenomenon. In that study they found that

people responded differently to a hypothetical but logically equivalent life and death choice

depending on whether the question emphasized likely deaths instead of likely survival.

What seems to occur is that the structure of the communication is as important as the

actual content of the communication. The concept of framing has appeared in various fields of

literature such as communication, psychology, sociology and policy studies within the last thirty

years to explain how this phenomenon occurs. However there are several issues with framing

theory and its use.

Literature Review

The major work that first distilled the idea of framing was Erving Goffman’s 1974 book

Frame Analysis: An Essay On The Organization Of Experience. Goffman’s definition of a frame

is:

Framing Framing 2

“I assume that definitions of a situation are built up in accordance with principals of

organization which govern events –at least social ones - and our subjective involvement

in them; frame is the word I use to refer to such of these basic elements as I am able to

identify” (p. 10f)

The book attempts to be an encompassing treatise on how people make sense of the

world they live in and it delves quite a bit into the philosophical where it explores the

epistemological and ontological roots of framing. The book is quite dense with ideas and a

reviewer of this work (Davis & Gamson, 1975) makes a comment about it that is, to a degree,

applicable about frame analysis today.

Can one use this framework to do systematic social research? Can we train graduate

students to be Goffmans? . . . The question of whether we can train people to do frame

analysis really boils down to how well the enterprise is codified. If it remains a

sociological art form, then only certain talented individuals with inclinations in this

direction will grasp the underlying principles intuitively and be able to perform.

The more appropriate test is whether one can teach a conscientious clod to do this

kind of analysis. After all, the most ordinary graduate student can be taught how to

collect survey data and analyze it. (p. 605)

From this book the concept of framing, as a means of studying our world, began to

appear in the last thirty years in the literature of psychology, sociology, communication and

policy studies (to just name a few). However for all this work the big question never gets

satisfactorily or at least definitively answered: What is a frame? A brief review of some of the

definition of framing demonstrates the diversity of thought that goes into framing. Such as a

frame is:

Framing Framing 3

• “a shared sense of the way in which the discourse is framed, i.e. an overall sense of the

function of the discourse in the social situation.” (Ensink, 2003)

• “principles of organization which govern events—at least social ones—and our

subjective involvement in them.”(Goffman, 1974)

• “a central organizing idea or story line that provides meaning to an unfolding strip of

events weaving a connection among them. The frame suggests what the controversy is

about, the essence of the issue.” (Gamson and Modigliani, 1987 as cited in Kimberly,

2008)

• “is a mental structure that we use in thinking. All words are defined relative to frames.”

(Lakoff, 2003)

• “Framing essentially involves selection and salience. To frame is to select some aspects

of a perceived reality and make them more salient in a communicating text, in such a way

as to promote a particular problem definition, causal interpretation, moral evaluation,

and/or treatment recommendation for the item described.’’ (Entman, 1993)

With this diversity of definition comes much potential frustration to those who wish to

use framing as a tool in their research. As one delves into the framing literature significant

issues appear and one of the first to note this was Entman (1993).

Despite its omnipresence across the social sciences and humanities, nowhere is there a

general statement of framing theory that shows exactly how frames become embedded

within and make themselves manifest in a text, or how framing influences thinking. (p.

51)

He goes on:

Framing Framing 4

A literature review suggests that framing is often defined casually, with much left to an

assumed tacit understanding of reader and researcher. After all, the words frame,

framing, and framework are common outside of formal scholarly discourse, and their

connotation there is roughly the same. (p. 52)

Entman is not alone in criticism. Benford (1997) articulated that the framing literature

has, to varying degrees, the faults of:

Neglect of systematic empirical studies

That framing studies should be more “devoted to operationalization so that those

who are so inclined can begin testing hypotheses derivable from the framing

literature.”

Descriptive bias

That work in the framing literature has mostly been about identifying and

describing “the universe of specific frames.”

Static tendencies

The tendency of the framing literature to focus on frames as "things" rather than

on the dynamic processes associated with their social construction, negotiation,

contestation, and transformation.

Reification

The tendency of the framing literature to talk “about socially constructed ideas as

though they are real, as though they exist independent of the collective

interpretations and construction of the actors involved. We speak of social

movements, collective identities, ideologies, and frames as "things."”

Reductionism

Framing Framing 5

The tendency of the framing literature to “reduce collective action and interaction

to individual level explanations, to psychologize what is sociological. Frames are

often depicted in purely cognitive terms.”

Elite bias

The tendency of the framing literature to “focus on the framings of movement

elites to the neglect of rank-and-file participants, potential recruits, bystanders,

and others.”

Monolithic tendencies.

“There is a general tendency “to oversimplify, to treat movement frames or

framing processes as monolithic. Much of this literature neglects the multilayered

complexities of frames and framing activities.”

Benford goes on to list some of the frames that appear in the framing literature. See table

1.

Framing Framing 6

Table 1

List Of Some Of The Frames Found In The Framing Literature By Benford (1997)

Generic Frames

• injustice frames • justice frames • oppositional frames

• hegemonic frames • equal opportunity frames • rights frames

Specific Instances Of Frames

• special interest frame • growth is good frame • East-West conflict frame

• inclusion frame • realignment frame • revitalization frame

• anti-systemic frame • ideology of imperialism master

frame

• hegemonic power ideology master

frame

• identity politics frame • political economy frame • liberal frame

• agrarian fundamentalism frame • free market frame • producer frame

• civil rights master frame • student left master frame • gender-neutral frame

• environmental justice frame • law and order frame • state terror frame

• war frame • cold war frame • common security frame

• managed rivalry frame • arms control frame • anti- intervention frame

• interdependence frame • multilateralism frame • personalism frame

• nonviolence frame • doomsday frame • killer drunk collective action frame

• drunk driving frame • wild boys frame • public health frame

• auto safety frame • road design frame • progress frame

• energy independence frame • soft paths frame • no public accountability frame

• not cost effective frame • runaway technology frame • devil's bargain frame

• free enterprise frame • partnership frame • capital flight frame

• foreign investment frame • remedial action frame • delicate balance frame

• no preferential treatment frame • reverse discrimination frame • feuding neighbors frame

• strategic interest frame • Arab intransigence frame • Israeli expansionism frame

• dual liberation frame

Framing Framing 7

The list in table 1. is impressive but it creates some questions. For instance, how does

one arrive at these frames? The titles of these frames give the impression that a frame is just a

narrative snippet; a part of a grander unmentioned narrative statement, much like one would find

in a theme contained with in a book or a movie. How objective, or even a little more disquieting,

how valid are these frames? Are they universal, innate or idiosyncratic? Can two people look at

the same material and arrive at the same frame?

Take for instance the Israeli expansionism frame. Could not some one take a look at the

same material that derived this frame, but having a differing ideological perspective, instead call

it an Israeli aggression frame? Also how do these frames relate to each other? As one starts

asking questions about what frames are and what they do an unsettling feeling occurs that frame

analysis is, in essence, arbitrary.

Koenig (2004) goes on to describe the current state of the situation:

Since framing became a popular approach in the late 1980s, an extensive and disparate

laundry list of frames has emerged in the literature (Benford 1997: 414). This disparity of

frames leaves one wonder, whether anything can be framed as a frame. Unfortunately,

many studies leave the reader in the dark about the actual process of empirical frame

detection. Even otherwise exceptionally well argued studies laconically describe the

frame identification process in a footnote with "[f]rames were analyzed from the actual

language of the reported claim (direct and reported speech)" (Statham and Mynott 2002:

10, Fn. 6). In some cases, at least the measurement model for frames is clarified. In

these cases the reader is presented with a list of more or less parsimoniously identifiable

frame terms, "attributes" or "devices," which were used as manifest indicators for the

identification of frames (e.g., Ferree et al.2002; Koella [ 2003] 2003; Semetko and

Framing Framing 8

Valkenburg 2000; Semetko and Valkenburg 2000; Ullrich 1998). … While increased

transparency and accountability certainly render framing research more credible, they

still do not solve the problem of the missing systemization of frame construction. We

thus remain heavily so dependent on the creativity of individual scholars (Maher 2001:

84), that it has been alleged that frames are merely constructed through "researcher fiat"

(Tankard et al. 1991: 5; Tankard 2001: 98). (p. 3)

Deconstructing the Frame

A useful metaphor for dealing with this fracturing within the field of frame analysis is to

recall the Indian proverb, articulated in one version by John Godfrey Saxe (1873)1 where five

blind men who have never known an elephant each encounter different parts of it and by there

encounter attempt to speak about the whole elephant. It starts off like this:

It was six men of Indostan

To learning much inclined,

Who went to see the Elephant

(Though all of them were blind),

That each by observation

Might satisfy his mind.

One of the blind men feels the trunk, the other the leg and another the tail and so on.

When they come together to compare their experiences they find that each experience is

different. Saxe is very upfront regarding the moral of the story:

“Though each was partly in the right; And all were in the wrong.”

1 Full text of the poem can be found at http://www.noogenesis.com/pineapple/blind_men_elephant.html

Framing Framing 9

They are all in the wrong because the blind men bicker about who has the right

understanding when each has only a partial one. However, partial understanding is never wrong,

just the claim that it is a complete understanding. With frame analysis, currently, there does not

exist a universal frame theory, but many different theorists with differing theories. The illusion

can be made that these are differing blind men examining differing parts of the frame elephant.

However, unlike in Saxe’s poem, there is less fighting over who is right but there is still a lack of

understanding or a vision of the whole elephant.

There has been some work on categorizing the framing literature. The following is a

paraphrased list created by Fisher (1997) (except for the last one which is from Scheufele

(1999)) categorizing the type of framing literature:

Goffman and the Sociology of Framing

That culture generate two primary frameworks; natural and social frameworks.

Natural frameworks develop from purely physical experiences. Social

frameworks arise from the willful actions of an intelligence or a live agency.

Frames and the Study of Social Movements

Framing functions as the conceptual scaffolding which social movements erect to

construct new ideologies or to modify existing ones.

Psychology of Social Representation

The way people and cultures make sense by categorizing beings, objects, and

experiences, and how people develop systems of representing their shared

understanding of the world.

Framing Framing 10

Language and Framing

That discourse includes the domain of semantic superstructures or schematic

forms, such as narratives, myths, arguments, or scientific reports and the way

people use these different types to perform specific communicative purposes.

Frames as Metaphors

Based upon the belief that human thinking is largely metaphorical. Cultures

develop systems of conceptual metaphors, which organize the experiences all

members of that culture experience in a systematic way; that this highlights some

aspects of the relationship between the compared items, while hiding other

aspects.

Discourse Analysis

That discourse functions on two levels, a surface structure and a deep structure.

The surface structure contains codes, hypercodes, and signature elements. The

deep structure includes narrative structures, or storylines and plots, and

ideologies. Framing occurs at both the surface and deep structural level.

Cultural Frame Boundaries

Humans have evolved a natural capacity to use myths and language, and that all

cultures select from a set of myth types and language elements which can exist

universally across cultures.

Media Effect

That framing is part of the larger context of media effects research. Media

provide schemas for interpreting events.

Framing Framing 11

While the above is a very limited and most likely an incomplete review of the types of

framing literature that exist, the review does demonstrate the literatures diversity. There is a

more simplified way to categorize the framing literature and that is by using meta-categories,

categories that are overly broad but is useful to gain a sense of the thinking within a piece of

framing literature. There are three that will be used here:

Psychological Framing Literature

Framing literature that focus on individual cognitive processes.

Sociological Framing Literature

Framing literature that focus on framing as being a social process that occurs

among people.

Media Framing Literature

Framing literature that focus on framing as part of the process where people are

exposed to media.

Roadblocks in Frame Analysis

Within the field of frame analysis, there are a couple of issues, perhaps, that hinders

frame analysis. The following are some initial thoughts on this.

Frame Analysis Conundrum

Frame analysis is ultimately a search to understand how another person understands. To

fully examine frame analysis we have to take the entire system into account and once this is done

a process is revealed:

A frame is only understood through another frame.

Framing Framing 12

The consequence of this is the frame analysis conundrum: That when one attempts to

define an effect of a frame, there is confusion as to whether the effect is from the frame being

observed or from the frame that is used to examine that frame.

If we take the analogy that a frame is a lens through which a person sees the world, in

frame analysis what we would be attempting is to study the focal properties of that lens through

our own lens. The conundrum is that the resulting image is a function of the focal properties of

both lenses. While not articulated as a framing conundrum this problem about framing has been

addressed in other places.

For instance the work of Koening (2004) attempts to do quantitative measures of frames

by counting words in a document, but even Koening realizes there is a conundrum.

While avoiding researcher bias, this methods unfortunately creates three new problems.

To begin with, it starts out with exactly a researcher fiat, that is in deciding by convention

on the optimal number of eigenvectors (Miller and Riechert 2001b: 116). This decision

might sound more "objective," as a number can be pegged onto, but that number is just as

arbitrary as the decision on frames. Moreover, the procedure is deeply positivist,

assuming that concepts should arise unmediated from the data. But even within a

positivist logic, most statistical tests are based on a priori probabilities. By basing the

decision in the choice of keywords on ex post covariances, these tests become

meaningless. While this problem could be circumvented through a split sample, an even

more severe problem is that empirically identified keywords clearly cannot be interpreted

as indicator of meaningful frames. Miller & Riechert (1994), for instance, found besides

"environmental," "any," and "major" to be identifiers of the "environmental protection"

frame. It seems obvious that these are no meaningful framing terms. Indeed, Koella

Framing Framing 13

(2002: 8), who most closely follows Miller and Riechert, deviates in this point, wryly

noting that "each set of frame terms was reviewed in context." This proceeding, of

course, reintroduces research fiat through the back door. (p. 4-5)

A field outside of the social sciences also encounters an issue with frames, albeit in a

different context, but a truth that is postulated there is applicable here. The theory of special

relativity states that there are no privileged reference frame, or more specifically:

All uniform motion is relative, and that there is no absolute and well-defined state of rest

(no privileged reference frames) – from mechanics to all the laws of physics, including

both the laws of mechanics and of electrodynamics, whatever they may be. (Rindler,

2002)

The same goes for frame analysis in the social sciences. There is no privileged reference

frame or more specifically a universal frame in which to examine another frame. As social

scientists struggle with the actual physics of framing, so to speak, what is required is not just a

method to document the frame being observed but also the frame of the observer.

Metaphysical Muddle

Social scientists seeking empirical understanding of the human condition, if they take the

their exploration far enough, have to address how the world of metaphysics effects their

theoretical understanding. We humans exist both in the empirically observable and in an

intangible metaphysical universe. We exist in a world where we can measure the amount of

liquid in a vile or how fast an object goes. We also exist in a universe where we can have a

debate about what is knowledge or meaning or what it is to love or hate another person.

Metaphysics is used here as a term for phenomenon that exist beyond the means of the

natural sciences to measure or record them. Also this concept is not brought up to start an

Framing Framing 14

exploration of the field itself. Instead it is brought up because ultimately any social scientist

must have a metaphysical worldview, whether overtly mentioned or not, in their exploration of

the human condition. When examining a frame analysis it is very informative to examine the

metaphysical world view of the researcher involved, because frames used to examine another

frame are constructed in part from that metaphysical world view.

Metaphysics used here includes the ideas and concepts found within the field of

philosophy such as the field of ontology; the study of the nature of being, existence or reality in

general and epistemology; the study of what is knowledge. The nature of these fields of inquiry

is that perspectives and assertions occur within them and there is no method to empirically prove

that any one of them are true or untrue.

Human beings have a variety of metaphysical worldviews. Within the academic field

they are commonly judged on their validity based upon their logical consistency and their

explanatory and predictive utility in the empirical world. The reason that metaphysics muddle’s

frame analysis is because metaphysical worldviews are not overtly described or examined in

frame analysis and they are not consistent across the frame literature. However they are

implicitly are parts of what makes up a frame.

For example take George Lakoff, a cognitive linguist at the University of California, who

has written on frames. Earlier this was given as his definition of frames:

“is a mental structure that we use in thinking. All words are defined relative to frames.”

(Lakoff, 2003).

When examining his work on framing it is very useful to understand its philosophical and

thus metaphysical underpinnings. Lakoff proposes that we speak and think by metaphors. “Our

ordinary conceptual system, in terms of which we both think and act, is fundamentally

Framing Framing 15

metaphorical in nature.” (Lakoff & Johnson, 1980) This is a metaphysical proposition. If one

were to examine the framing literature of Lakoff, understanding how he conceptualizes

cognition, which is a part of his metaphysical worldview, is necessary, if we want to examine his

frame analysis. His metaphysical worldview is not empirical and can only be examined by the

noted criteria mentioned earlier: by how logically consistent it is and its explanatory and

predictive utility in the empirical world. However not all those who attempt frame analysis have

their metaphysical positions as clearly stated as Lakoff and thus it is far more difficult to

examine the metaphysical world view that is the bases for that frame analysis.

Overlap with Related Theoretical Fields that are Similar To Framing

One of the issues about framing is that at times it so ambiguously defined that it could be

compared to other theoretical propositions. If one examines other fields of study, one begins to

see shades of framing within them.

Empathy

With the advent of psychology the human emotion such as love and hate have been

studied but it is the theories about empathy that share many qualities with frame analysis. Take

for example Carl Rogers (1959) definition of empathy: “To perceive the internal frame of

reference of another with accuracy and with the emotional components and meanings which

pertain thereto as if one were the person.” Could not this definition of empathy fit into the

earlier list of definitions of framing?

The Theory Of Mind

Another frame like theory is the theory of the theory of mind, which was developed

within the field of cognitive psychology by Premack & Woodruff (1978) after examining the

behaviors of chimpanzees.

Framing Framing 16

“In saying that an individual has a theory of mind, we mean that the individual imputes

mental states to himself and to others. A system of inferences of this kind is properly

viewed as a theory, first, because such states are not directly observable, and second,

because the system can be used to make predictions, specifically about the behavior of

other organisms.”

Its main thesis is that there exists within people (and also, as suggested by Premack &

Woodruff, chimpanzees) a cognitive structure which allows one individual to conceptualize how

another individual cognitively operates and thus becomes behaviorally predictable. While a full

analysis of this theory is beyond the scope of this paper, it is interesting to note that some of the

issues within the field of theory of mind parallel those within the field of framing.

For instance take Wilde’s (1998) commentary where she describes how the theory of

theory of mind has fractured and defused since its introduction in 1978.

There are still problems, of course, because the word ‘theory’ is broadly used in ordinary

language and in philosophical discussion, and the ways in which it is used allow for

different equally justifiable interpretations of the term ‘theory of mind’.

This is similar to what is occurring with the field of frame analysis. (p. 33)

Framing Framing 17

Methodology

The purpose of this study is to examine how current framing literature is dealing with the

concerns mentioned earlier about framing literature and to see if these concerns have been

overcome. This project will examine four pieces of literature from peer reviewed

communication journals on the subject of framing between 2007 and 2008. The articles selected

for review were selected due to their diversity on how they approached the subject matter of

framing after their abstracts were reviewed.

The articles will be compared and contrasted on the following dimensions:

o How does the article define the term “framing.” Does the article just review how

others have defined it or does it explicitly claim and use a specific definition of

framing.

o How does the article hold up to the concerns brought up by Benford (1997)

regarding his concerns about framing literature (neglect of systematic empirical

studies, descriptive bias, etc)

o Which category of framing literature does the study belong to as defined by

Fisher (1997) and Scheufele (1999), if at all.

o Which meta categories does the study belong to.

o Is their evidence of these articles being affected by the framing analysis

conundrum?

These issues will be operationalized in this study by having the following questions asked about

each article:

1. Does the article review various definitions of frames?

Does the article discuss how others have defined framing?

Framing Framing 18

2. Does the article clearly declare or own a definition of framing?

Does the article unambiguously state the definition of framing they will be using?

3. What specific category of framing literature does this article belong to?

This question is to determine what categories the study belongs to, as defined by Fisher

(1997) and Scheufele (1999). These categories are:

• Goffman and the Sociology of Framing

• Frames and the Study of Social Movements

• Psychology of Social Representation

• Language and Framing

• Frames as Metaphors

• Discourse analysis

• Cultural Frame Boundaries

• Media Effect

There is reason to believe that this categorization is not complete so to have a little bit

more robustness to typing pieces of literature the meta-categories will be used.

4. What meta category does the article belong to? within the of

This question is to determine what meta category the study belongs to. These categories

are:

• Psychological framing literature

• Sociologically framing literature

• Media framing literature

The following questions are derived from Benford (1997) criticism of the framing literature.

Framing Framing 19

5. Does the article operationalize the concept of framing?

This question is derived from the observation of neglect of systematic empirical studies.

The main concern with this observation is that framing literature fails to operationalize

the concept of framing.

6. Does the article focus or concentrate on providing or describing a set of specific frames?

This question is derived from the observation of descriptive bias. The concern of this

observation is that a framing study’s only agenda is to provide a list of frames. As a

study may require the naming of frames as part of its logic, this question will only be

answered positively if naming of the frames is all that article does.

7. Does the article treat frames as a static concept instead of something that is dynamic?

This question is derived from the observation of static tendencies, where framing studies

treated frames as being "things" rather than a dynamic process associated with social

construction, negotiation, contestation, and transformation.

8. Does the article have within in it the fallacy of reification?

This question is derived from the observation of reification. What this means is does the

study treat any of the concepts or constructs it proposes as real world objects.

9. Does the article reduce sociological processes to merely the psychological?

This question is derived form the observation of reductionism.

10. Does the article focus on the population of the elites to the neglect of rank-and-file

participants?

This question is derived form the observation of elite bias.

11. Does the article oversimplify the framing process?

This question is derived form the observation of monolithic tendencies.

Framing Framing 20

12. Is there evidence that the frame analysis conundrum is occurring?

The concept of the frame analysis conundrum is a concept that still requires further

refinement. For now the question regarding the articles is whether any evidence is found

to support this line of reasoning.

Framing Framing 21

Table 2. Article examined in this study.

Title Authors Date Journal Type of study Brief summary

A Theory of Framing and Opinion Formation

in Competitive Elite Environments

Chong, Dennis

Druckman, James N.

2007 Journal of

Communication

Theory paper. How framing affects Public

opinion.

Frame Intensity Effects of Television News

Stories About a High-visibility Protest Issue

Detenber, Benjamin H.

Gotlieb, Melissa R.

McLeod, Douglas M.

Malinkina, Olga

2007 Mass

Communication &

Society

Experimental design-

post stimulus testing

for effect.

How news stories frame

protestors.

Making Sense of Intractable Multiparty

Conflict: a Study of Framing in Four

Environmental Disputes

Brummans, Boris H. J. M.

Putnam, Linda L.

Gray, Barbara

Hanke, Ralph

Lewicki, Roy J.

Wiethoff, Carolyn

2008 Communication

Monographs

Content analysis of

interviews.

How stakeholders in an

intractable multiparty conflict

group into four clusters of

framing repertoire regarding

their rhetoric.

Stages of a Crisis and Media Frames and

Functions: U.S. Television Coverage of the

9/11 Incident During the First 24 Hours

Li, Xigen 2007 Journal of

Broadcasting &

Electronic Media

Content analysis of

news stories.

How Television frame the

attacks of 9/11

Framing Framing 22

Review

Article 1

Review of: A Theory of Framing and Opinion Formation in Competitive Elite Environments

Authors: Dennis Chong & James N. Druckman.

Journal: Journal of Communication

Article’s Abstract:

Public opinion often depends on how elites choose to frame issues. For example,

citizens’ opinions about a Ku Klux Klan rally may depend on whether elites frame the

event as a free-speech issue or a public safety issue. Past research has focused largely on

documenting the size of framing effects in uncontested settings. By contrast, there has

been little research on framing in competitive environments in which individuals receive

multiple frames representing alternative positions on an issue. We take an initial step

toward understanding how frames work in competitive environments by integrating

research on attitude structure and persuasion. Our theory of framing identifies the key

individual and contextual parameters that determine which of many competing frames

will have an effect on public opinion.

Article One Overview

At the beginning of this study, the authors of this study demonstrate the frame analysis

conundrum when the describe what occurred when a contentious art exhibit call Sensation

opened in New York and how different parties attempted to control the public perception of that

exhibit’s content.

As the controversy over the Sensation exhibit illustrates, virtually all public debates

involve competition between contending parties to establish the meaning and

Framing Framing 23

interpretation of issues. When citizens engage an issue—be it social security, foreign aid,

a hate-group rally, affirmative action, or the use of public funds for art— they must

grapple with opposing frames that are intended by opinion leaders to influence public

preferences. (p. 100)

This statement is an assertion that public debates are most often competition, but is not this

idea possibly a frame itself? What this opening comment demonstrates is that the authors

already have a preconceived understanding of how to understand what they are going to

investigate.

This article then goes on to address what frames actually do. It states that communication

scholars and political scientists use framing concepts in one of two ways. The first is to describe

frames as the style of presented content. The second is to describe frames as a cognitive

structure that people use to find what is salient in a specific piece of communication.

The purpose of this article is clearly articulated by the question it asks: “What determines

the public’s preference for one frame over another.” This assumption in this question is that any

particular frame is something people choose or not choose to believe in. Also another

assumption is that a frame is a discrete thing that can be differentiated from another frame and

that people like or dislike particular frames. While not stated, these are fundamental assumptions

that this paper makes about frames.

Another concept that is the basis of this paper is that frames compete. However competing

requires a structure for a competition to occur. When businesses compete to win a consumer’s

dollar, one business wins when it receives that consumer’s dollar instead of another business.

When people compete for a job position, one person wins by getting the job and the other person

doesn’t. That frames compete makes sense on one level, as idea’s gain and loose popularity.

Framing Framing 24

However, within this article, frames are not clearly defined and so the question is, what is

actually in competition? Is it frames that are competition then what is won or lost? This remains

unclear.

This paper is a presentation of the authors’ theoretical ideas about framing. The paper

first presents a method to examine framing literature by creating a matrix to categorize it. On

one axis of the matrix is labeled frequency of exposure that has the following categories:

Asymmetric One-Sided, where a person is exposed to just one frame, and the category of

Competitive Situation which has two sub categories; Dual, where a person is exposed to both

frames in equal quantities and Asymmetric Two-Sided, where a person is exposed to both frames

in unequal quantities. The other dimension of the matrix has the categories of Strong Frames,

Weak frames and Strong and Weak Frames.

So what is a strong and weak frame? The paper states “loosely define[d] a frame’s

‘‘strength’’ as increasing with the persuasiveness of a given frame. Weak frames are typically

seen as unpersuasive, whereas strong frames are more compelling.” (p. 103) They go to state

that this is “typically assessed empirically by asking “pretest participants to rate the

persuasiveness of a message or frame by characterizing it as either strong or weak (Eagly &

Chaiken, 1993; Petty & Wegener, 1998).” (p. 104) This definition raises concern with validity

as one of the axioms of psychology is that self-reporting is prone to inaccuracy (Tasman, Kay,

Lieberman, First, & Maj, 2008).

This definition raises another interesting question about frames. What do we actually

measure to discover a frames empirical effect? Is it, as suggest by this article, by the degree it

affects the self-reporting by a person regarding their opinion about an issue or should we,

instead, be measuring another particular subsequent behavior? Also another question about

Framing Framing 25

frames is: is the strength or weakness of a frame an innate characteristic, or does this valence

depend upon an exposure of a frame to a person?

The main purpose of the article is the authors’ presentation of their theory of how frames

change opinion “in different competitive environments.” The authors state that: “An attitude

toward an object, in this view, is the weighted sum of a series of evaluative beliefs about that

object.” They go on to provide the following formula, inherently a psychological construct, to

articulate this:

Attitude = ∑ vi * wi ;

where vi is the evaluation of the object on attribute i and wi the salience weight ( ∑ wi =

1) associated with that attribute. (p. 107)

One possible interpretation of this is: a person’s attitude towards something is the sum of

a person evaluation of a specific attribute (frame?) multiplied by how salient (or strong, or

effective, or powerful) that frame is.

As the article progresses from this formula, the authors begin to interpret framing

through a more of a psychological lens. They bring up the process of considerations and how it

affects framing. They don’t define this term, but a dictionary definition of consideration is

"careful thought, typically over a period of time” (New Oxford American Dictionary, 2007).

The paper goes on to describe three dimensions when people are making a consideration: its

availability, accessibility, and applicability or appropriateness.

While a full deconstruction of the psychological theories presented by the article is

beyond the scope of this project, the article presents a couple of theories and concepts about

frames. The language used by the article may be a little confusing for some readers so in the

Framing Framing 26

following list of theories a possible interpretation is presented in the brackets. These theories

are:

• “Framing will have a greater effect on more knowledgeable individuals.”

• Individuals with strong opinions will draw upon chronically accessible alternative

considerations that take precedence over the temporarily accessible considerations

contained in a frame. [People who have strong opinions will draw from their own

thoughts on a matter instead of frames that they have recently encountered.]

• “Frequent exposure to a frame will increase the accessibility and availability of

considerations highlighted by the frame. “ [The more repeated a frame is, the more

chance people will think about the thoughts presented in a frame.]

• Motivated individuals will be affected only by strong frames in both competitive and

noncompetitive environments because they will identify and disregard weak

inapplicable considerations. [Motivated people will disregard weak and irrelevant

framing.]

• Individuals with low motivation will be affected by both strong and weak frames in

noncompetitive environments. [When presented with only one frame, people who are

unmotivated will be affected by strong and weak frames.]

• Individuals with low levels of personal motivation, however, will be stimulated (or

motivated) by competitive contexts to discriminate between strong and weak frames.

[Unmotivated people will get motivated if they encounter competing weak and

strong frames.]

• Conscious deliberation in competitive contexts over opposing frames of sharply

contrasting strengths may give rise to a counter effect. [If a person encounters a

Framing Framing 27

strong frame on one side of an issue and weak frame on the other, the weak frame

will move a person to support the strong frame.] (p. 110-111)

Article One Question Set


Yes. The article does explore various contemplation of framing.


No. There is no clearly declarative statement in the article about which definition of

frames it is using.


This article falls with the category of Psychology of Social Representation. The reason

for this main thrust is the presentation of psychological theories.

4. What meta category does the article belong to?

This article could be considered falling within Psychological Framing Literature.


This article is a theory based paper and does not present and overt operationalized

paradigm for the theories it presents.


This was not observed.


The article treats frames as a static concept.


Possibly, though unclear. The article at times refers to frames as “pushing opinion” and

being in competition.

Framing Framing 28


Unclear. This article focuses on psychological constructs but does not appear to be

reducing them.


participants?

Not observed. This article is a theory paper and so is not examining any group of people.


Unclear.


Yes. One example is the assertion that public debates are most often competitions.

Framing Framing 29

Article 2

Review of: Making Sense of Intractable Multiparty Conflict: a Study of Framing in Four

Environmental Disputes

Authors: Boris H. J. M. Brummans; Linda L. Putnam; Barbara Gray; Ralph Hanke; Roy J.

Lewicki; Carolyn Wiethoff

Journal: Communication Monographs


Intractable multiparty conflict is omnipresent in social life, but how do individuals in this

type of dispute make sense of their situation and therefore enact it in a particular way?

The current study investigated this question by examining how disputants from different

stakeholder groups framed conflict situations in Ohio, Pennsylvania, Minnesota, and

Texas that revolved around environmental issues. Qualitative and quantitative analyses

of interview transcripts and archival data suggested that, based on their framing

similarities, disputants could be grouped together in four clusters, each implying a

different framing repertoire. In turn, the analyses indicated that the repertoire differences

between these clusters fueled the intractability of each dispute.

Article Two Overview

Within this study, the authors attempt to understand framing through the content analysis

of structured interviews with stakeholders of four separate environmental disputes. The authors

state that the central argument of this paper is that:

conflict sensemaking is a matter of framing; that is, of organizing experience through a

certain way of defining what is going on in a situation. That this definition works

because it explains the communicative basis of multiparty intractable disputes in which

Framing Framing 30

various stakeholders stand in opposition to each other in defining a political, economic,

social, or environmental situation for extended periods of time without resolution. (p. 26)

The authors declares that there does not exist a consensus on what the concept of conflict

frames and conflicting framing mean and that framing is on one hand a social construct but on

the other hand a media effect. They also argue that framing is “an inherent part of people’s

ongoing everyday sensemaking. Moreover, it implies strategic as well as nonstrategic behavior.”

They also observe that frames are often defined as a dynamic concept but subsequently treated as

a static one.

They go on to say:

framing refers to using a particular ‘‘repertoire’’ of categories and labels to bracket and

interpret ongoing experience and inform action. In other words, it refers to the

communicative process through which people foreground and background certain aspects

of experience and apply a set of categories and labels to develop ‘‘coherent stor[ies] of

what is going on’’ and make decisions about ‘‘what should be done given [those]

unfolding stor[ies]’’ (Weick, 1999, p. 40). Thus a framing repertoire does not refer to a set

of cognitive knowledge schemas or structures of expectation (frames), existing prior to

framing, but to a pattern of highlighting similar aspects of experience to give a coherent

account of what is going on that is continuously shaped and reshaped in interactions. (p.

28)

The authors note that social movement scholars have argued that (cognitive) frames

align into a common belief system, yet they state this work has not provided insight into the ways

that frames cohere or stick together.

They go on:

Framing Framing 31

It can be postulated that, in intractable multiparty disputes, disputants share the

experience of being in a conflict, yet use framing repertoires for defining what is going

on that oppose (or at least are dissimilar to) each other. Presumably, this leads to the

constitution of different clusters of people with similar repertoires. The current study

sought to understand why these different clusters form. (P 28-29)

This article uses content analysis in its frame analysis, so it is worthwhile to quickly

review this methodology before examining how it was used.

Content analysis, according to Stemler (2001), “can be a powerful tool for determining

authorship, useful for examining trends and patterns in documents and provides an empirical

basis for monitoring shifts in public opinion.” Further Krippendorff (1980, as cited by Stemler

2001) states that there are six questions that must be answered in any content analysis:

1) Which data are analyzed?

2) How are they defined?

3) What is the population from which they are drawn?

4) What is the context relative to which the data are analyzed?

5) What are the boundaries of the analysis?

6) What is the target of the inferences?

Another important concept in content analysis is coding units. Ultimately content

analysis is the counting of something with in a specific population of content. There are usually

three types of coding units used. They are sampling units, context units and recording units.

• Sampling units will vary depending on how the researcher makes meaning; they could

be words, sentences, or paragraphs.

Framing Framing 32

• Context units neither need be independent or separately describable. They may

overlap and contain many recording units. Context units do set physical limits on

what kind of data you are trying to record.

• Recording units, by contrast, are rarely defined in terms of physical boundaries. [For

instance they can be the various ideas present in a text](Krippendorff, 1980 as cited

by Stemler 2001).

Another concept that is important in content analysis is reliability, which means the

ability to get the same results consistently. Reliability is usually measured in two dimensions:

• Stability, or intra-rater reliability. This is where a coder gets the same results try after

try.

• Reproducibility, or inter-rater reliability. This is where a coding scheme allows for

the same text coded by different people to be coded in the same category. (Stemler,

2001)

Also content analysis has several methodological caveats. Content analysis is only valid

and meaningful to the extent that the results are related to other measures (Stemler 2001) and has

no utility when faulty definitions for the categories and when non-mutually exclusive and

exhaustive categories are used (Stemler, 2001).

The environmental intractable multiparty conflict that this article examined was the

antidegradation issues in Ohio, the clean-up of the Drake Chemical Superfund site in

Pennsylvania, the use of land within Voyageurs National Park in Minnesota, and the allocation

and regulation of underground water in the Edwards Aquifer in Texas. The authors stated that

the conflicts were chosen because of their closeness to the definition of intractable multiparty

environmental dispute and based upon theoretical rather than probabilistic sampling.

Framing Framing 33

The article then goes on to describe how it collected its data to do the content analysis

and here we encounter the framework conundrum again. While analyzing the method of content

analysis is beyond the scope of this project to review, what can be examined are the inputs to that

content analysis, or more precisely, the decision to use certain types of inputs instead of others.

Take for instance the boundary conditions of what this article says it is sampling: “Key

representatives of different stakeholder groups were selected [from each side in the intractable

multiparty conflict].” So they are examining key representatives instead of rank-and-file

members. Could it not be considered that this decision to do this is based upon a framework?

The article describes how the key representatives were given semistructured interviews

that lasted between 60 and 120 minutes. The resulting contents of these interviews had a four

step process of content analysis applied to them. These steps were:

1. A qualitative analysis of the interview transcripts was conducted to uncover the main

aspects of disputants’ framing.

2. After checking these aspects against extant research literature, a typology of framing

categories was developed and used to conduct a formal quantitative content analysis of

the transcripts.

3. Cluster analysis was employed thereafter to explore how disputants clustered together

through the use of similar categories in framing their respective disputes.

4. In turn, the framing categories functioned as the starting point for reanalyzing the

transcripts and archival data to understand the framing repertoire that joined individuals

in each cluster and accounted for the ways in which differences in framing fueled the

intractability of each conflict.

Framing Framing 34

The work that is done at step three and four is all based upon the frameworks derived

from step one and two. However upon closer examination what seems to occur is another

example of researcher fiat. The content of the interviews are examined and through an unknown

process the “main aspects of disputants’ framing” are derived. This is subsequently morphed

into “typology of framing categories” by comparison to the literature. This process leaves many

questions as to the validity of the framing categories.

Further in the article the authors explained that they developed their categorization based

upon “constant comparative method” which is based within the fields of grounded theory.

Grounded theory, overly simplified, is a process designed to generate theory from observation.

While there’s not the space here to delve into issues that grounded theory has, one issue it has to

deal with is how much subjectivity plays a part in the theories generated. While grounded theory

may be systematic, it is likely that it can’t escape a connection to its user’s framework.

The authors eventually settled on five framing categories, which they claimed the

literature provided support for. They are:

• identity,

• characterizations of others in the conflict,

• conflict management,

• social control and

• power.

The authors then refined these 5 categories further into 10 inductively derived framing

categories. They are:

• positive or negative identity,

• positive or negative characterization of others,

Framing Framing 35

• collaborative or noncollaborative conflict management,

• hierarchist, egalitarian, or individualist social control, and

• power.

These 10 categories through content analysis are what is used to examine the interviews.

The subsequent analysis with the categorization provides very valuable insight and the

categories, on the surface, appear very logical but the nagging question remains are these

categories independent constructs or are they in part a function of the author’s own framework?

The authors in their analysis have two coders code the content from the interviews to fit

into one of these 10 categories. As mentioned earlier, coder reliability is an important part of

content analysis but if we add the concept of framework into this process another possibility

emerges. The authors mention they trained their coders to an acceptable level of reliability so

that they can consistently code material congruent with each other. If we follow through with

the concept of the framework conundrum, could it not also be possible that the authors, through

the training, are instilling a framework onto the coders? Cannot the assumption be made if two

coders are coding reliably with each other that they are coding within the same framework?

As the authors examine the results from the content analysis, the interviews grouped into

four clusters. The following is a list of those clusters along with the labels that the authors

attached:

• Cluster 1: Stories of Victimhood

• Cluster 2: Stories of Dispassion

• Cluster 3: Stories of Optimism and Hope

• Cluster 4: Stories of Power and Powerlessness

Framing Framing 36

The authors further in their analysis, provide another example of bringing their own

framework into the analysis. Take for example their comments about what occurs in Cluster 3:

Stories of Optimism and Hope:

‘‘The people of course are people that I grew up with. They are an extension to me and I

am an extension to them and naturally you feel more comfortable with your family or

extended family.’’ Comments like these illustrated the Pollyanna-like manner in which

Cluster 3 disputants viewed these intractable conflicts. Although Cluster 3 disputants

displayed a desire to end the conflict, they did not necessarily know how to accomplish

this goal. In other words, they seemed unable to translate hope into action or outcomes.

(p. 41)

For those who are not aware, Pollyanna was a character in a children’s book who had the

attribute of unfailing optimism no matter what the dire circumstances. By using this analogy, the

authors are using their frames to analyze their subject’s frame. Further, at least with me, this

analogy creates a feeling that the researchers may have had a bit of a dismissive and paternalistic

attitude about those who are in this cluster. Is my opinion valid? This is where the framework

conundrum obscures frame analysis. My interpretation is derived from the frame I am using to

examine the researchers frame that is used to examine the subject’s frame. Then of course it is

your turn, the reader, to use your frame to examine the frame I am using to examine the

researchers frame that is used to examine the subject’s frame. A conundrum it is.

Aside from the frame analysis conundrum, the authors do have some very useful

conclusions such as the observation that people within one side of an issue may use differing

rhetoric and have different understandings of that issue. In other words, people on one side of an

issue may have diversity of how they make sense of it. For example, a farmer and an

Framing Framing 37

environmentalist, who both disagree with the same environmental policy, may be framing the

situation differently.

This research has created a useful paradigm to examine intractable multiparty conflict

and the categories they create provide insight but the nagging question remains, are these

categories innate or tied to a framework of the researchers? This question remains unanswered.

Article Two Question Set


Yes. The article does explore various definitions of framing.


Possibly. There is no clearly declarative statement in the article about which definition of

frames it is using. However they do go on to define a framing repertoire as a “a pattern

of highlighting similar aspects of experience to give a coherent account of what is going

on that is continuously shaped and reshaped in interactions.”


This article falls within two categories. The first is Frames and the Study of Social

Movements because it is examining the social movements around environmental issues.

The second category is Psychology of Social Representation because part of the analysis

looks at how people define themselves and others.


This article could be considered falling within the Sociologically Framing Literature

because it examines how group of people relate to each other.


This article does operationalize the concept of framing through content analysis.

Framing Framing 38


No. This article does create 10 inductively derived framing categories however this not

the overall focus of the article.


They define frames as dynamic. However analysis they used came from interviews that

occurred at one point in time which suggest their analysis is examing frames as static.


Not observed.


Not observed.


participants?

Yes. This article interviewed “Key representatives of different stakeholder groups.”


Unclear.


Appears so. Please refer to the use of the Pollyanna allusion.

Framing Framing 39

Article 3

Review of: Frame Intensity Effects of Television News Stories About a High-visibility Protest

Issue

Authors: Benjamin H. Detenber , Melissa R. Gotlie, Douglas M. McLeod and Olga Malinkina

Journal: Mass Communication & Society


This study investigated the effects of the intensity of the protest paradigm frame in news

stories about social protests. In contrast to previous research, this experiment examined

framing effects in the context of a highly visible and familiar issue. The intensity of the

application of the protest paradigm frame and its attendant signifying elements and

framing devices were manipulated in television news stories about pro-choice and pro-

life protests. Specifically, the high-intensity protest paradigm frame conditions were

more critical of the protesters. We tested six hypotheses regarding whether this greater

frame intensity would lead viewers to be more negative toward the protesters. Results

showed significant main effects of frame intensity for some dependent measures but not

others. The findings offer more evidence of framing effects but also suggest limitations

on their influence.

Article Three Overview

This research is an examination of how media portrays civil protests and how people

respond to those portrayals and is also a continuation of McLeod’s previous work (McLeod &

Hertog, 1992, McLeod, 1995 and McLeod & Detenber, 1999) on this issue. In the first two

earlier articles framing theory does not appear but it is introduced in the 1999 article and further

refined in this 2007 article. The first two articles are more descriptive and exploratory where as

Framing Framing 40

the later two articles there is an attempt to operationalize how media may affect the attitudes

people have about protesters.

The authors of this 2007 article state that the purpose of the study is to examine the

effects of social protest frames on audiences by the way television news stories manipulate

various signifying elements through the use of combination of framing devices to communicate

an overall frame. The authors do not specifically define framing, instead they focus on the

concept of “frame intensity” which they define as: “the degree to which the elements of a

particular frame (e.g., the protest paradigm) are incorporated into news stories.” What they mean

by a protest paradigm is the common narrative devices that are regularly found in news stories

about protests that portray protesters as defying the status quo. These devices are:

• conflict narrative,

• the use of official sources,

• invocation of public opinion,

• use of stance adverbs,

• and the use of images.

In this article the authors are attempting to examine the media effect that framing has on

an audience’s perception of protesters but also to address the limitations of previous research on

this subject (specifically the methodology of McLeod’s earlier work). The limitations that

previous studies had were that it focused on examining an audience’s exposure to the media

effects on issues that the audience was unfamiliar with. The second limitation was that this study

hoped to gain more control over the media effect stimuli. The central question this article

wanted to examine is: Does frame intensity of news stories have a similar effect when audience

members are shown news stories about protests involving familiar issues?

Framing Framing 41

In this study, television news reports, specially created for this study, were shown to 256

undergraduate students who were in introductory communication courses at the University of

Delaware. The protest issue that was examined was abortion. The authors of the study claimed

that this issue was of high salience, which they validated by data, collected earlier from a similar

group of respondents to those that were in the main study. However, the authors don’t give

details on how this was done.

The authors claimed that an analysis of this data showed that the respondents were more

knowledgeable about the issue of abortion then about environmental issues or government

oppression. These two other issues were the focus of the previous media effect studies done by

McLeod. The authors claimed that the subject of their study would be more likely to think and

talk about and have stronger feelings regarding the issue of abortion.

The authors go into some detail of how they created the various media stories they would

be exposing their subjects to. They constructed four television news segments with two being

prochoice and prolife with each of these two positions having a high and low frame intensity

version. The details of these television news segments are summarized in table 3. The authors

of this study, most likely because of an unfortunate oversight, do not provide details about the

category of stated motivating factor behind the protests for the high and low intensity prolife

television new stories.

The authors describe how they checked to ensure that the high and low intensity

television new stories were high and low intensity. They did this through a manipulation check

where 25 respondents, after viewing the four types of news stories, rated those stories that were

labeled high frame intensity as significantly more critical, less sym pathetic, more hostile, and

less supportive of the protesters than the low-intensity story at the .001 level.

Framing Framing 42

After the subjects were exposed to one of the four television new stories through random

assignment, they were given a survey. The survey was constructed to measure the following,

mostly with a 5-point Likert-type scale, about the television news broadcast they had seen:

• Criticism of the Protesters;

• Identification with the Protesters;

• Effectiveness of the Protesters;

• Support for the Protesters’ Expressive Rights;

• Estimated Public Support for the Protesters; and

• Perceived Newsworthiness of the Protest.

The survey controlled for three covariates:

• Gender;

• Political Awareness (asking subjects about their interest in politics and an upcoming

presidential election);

• Political Ideology (being very liberal to very conservative).

After tabulating the data, the authors made conclusions regarding the six hypotheses they

had before doing this study. In the following list, the non-underlined sections are the hypothesis

and the underlined portions are the authors’ conclusions.

Viewers presented with a high-frame-intensity version of a protest paradigm news story

covering social protests will:

• Express greater criticism of protesters than will those who are presented with a low-

frame-intensity version. This theory was supported.

• Exhibit lower levels of identification with the protesters than will those who are

presented with a low-frame-intensity version. This theory was not supported.

Framing Framing 43

• Be less likely to see the protest as being effective than will those who are presented

with a low- frame-intensity version. This theory was partially supported.

• Be less likely to support the protesters’ expressive rights than will those who are


• Estimate public support for the protest group as being lower than will those who are

presented with a low-frame-intensity version. This theory was supported.

• Be less likely to see the protest as being newsworthy than will those who are


This study is an attempt at understanding how media stimuli affects us, yet this study

encounters one of the issues that the social sciences struggles with, that the foundational

concepts that is use to build our understanding of the social world is not easily measured. Take

for example the concept of conservatism, which is used as a measure in this study. On one level

there is something fundamentally consistent with the concept conservatism, so much so that we

can use this concept in our daily life. Yet how valid is this concept as something to be measured?

These aspects of the social condition to which we attempt to measure are in part a function of the

framework we use and something that is innate. How does one go about measuring this, besides

arbitrarily saying that A is or is not conservative?

To tackle this obfuscation, turning to statistics is a good place to start but it can’t be the

whole answer. Take for instance, within this study, the use of covariance (a measure of how

much two variables change with each other). While the actual process of doing covariance

analysis is beyond the scope of this project to examine, it is useful to remember what covariance

analysis does. It does not speak to what is being examined but instead speaks to how two things

vary with each other. It is not a measure of something’s innate validity.

Framing Framing 44

What is useful then is to examine the inputs that go into a covariance examination. If one

takes a naturalistic or a strictly empirical approach, the only objective data that exists in this

study are the numbers that the subjects of this study write down, next to questions, on a piece of

paper. Any measure of covariance in this survey is how those written down numbers and the

question they were written next to vary with each other (along with perhaps some other discrete

data points such as sex, age, etc). That this covariance is extended to say something about a

media effect is a deduction that is made up of, in part by, the innate aspects of a media effect and

the framework used to examine that media effect. The conundrum is, it is difficult to differentiate

these parts. The survey questions were derived from one of the author’s thorough investigation

of previous media coverage of protesters and undoubtedly that work is enormously valuable and

relevant. However the analysis of this phenomenon has occurred through, in part, the authors’

frame and so the question then becomes what is an artifact of the authors’ framework versus the

framework they are studying? For instance, take the basic premise that study has the abortion

debate is dichotomous. That there are only two sides to this issue and that aside from where a

position falls within a continuum, these two positions are interchangeable and that the only

operational difference between the positions is the structure of how it is communicated, or

framed. Could not this belief in a dichotomy on this issue, instead of a more multidimensional

nuanced look at the possible positions people hold on this issue be considered a frame?

What about the subject’s previous thoughts (or more importantly their framework) on the

abortion issue even before they were exposed to the stimulus? This study appears to not have

measured a subject’s pre-exposure position on the abortion issue but instead randomized

exposure to balance out for gender. But is this enough? Take for instance a person who has a

pro-life framework. One of the concerns that this community raises is that there exists a media

Framing Framing 45

agenda to dismiss their point of view. Now, if we take this belief at face value, for the sake of

argument, that a prolife position is more ridiculed in the media or -more to the point- that the

media ecosystem has treated these positions differently, would this not have an effect on

differing frame intensity so that a prochoice and prolife low intensity framework cannot be

considered equivalent? Here is the conundrum: What effect does the media environment pre-

study have to do with the results?

To be fair, it must be mentioned that in the discussion portion of the study the authors

articulate the limitations of this study. They state: “The design of the study does not permit

inferences to be made about the impact of specific preexisting knowledge and attitudes.”

However they go on to claim that this study demonstrates the “relationship between the protest

paradigm and specific audience perceptions.” But does it?

Article Three Question Set


Yes. The article does explore various definitions of framing.



frames it is using.


This article falls with the category of Media Effect.


This article could be considered falling with in Media Framing Literature.


Framing Framing 46

This article does operationalize the concept of framing through the application of a

survey to measure subject’s response after being exposed to media.






Not observed.


Not observed.


participants?

Possibly. This article used as subjects students in a university level communication

course. Some may consider this population to be elite.


Unclear.


Possibly. Please refer to the discussion of dichotomy.

Framing Framing 47

Table 3.

Details about the four television news segments used in Frame Intensity Effects of Television News Stories About a High-visibility

Protest Issue.

Pro-choice Pro-life

High frame intensity Low frame intensity High frame intensity Low frame intensity

Word choice by the reporter.

“feminist protesters” Citizen’s groups” “activist protesters” “citizen’s groups”

Whether the protesters were

allowed to speak on

Camera.

Used the voice-over to paraphrase

the protesters’ views.

Protesters speaking into the

camera

Used the voice-over to

paraphrase the protesters’

views

Protesters speaking into the

camera

Reported the results of call-ins

to the White House phone

banks in response to the

Supreme Court decision.

Opposed to the position of the

protesters

Overwhelmingly supporting the

position of the protesters

Opposed to the position of the

protesters

Overwhelmingly supporting the

position of the protesters

Portrayal of bystander reaction. “many [bystanders] were

frustrated by the traffic jams

caused by the protest.”

Reported that many of the

bystanders “joined in the march.”

“many [bystanders] were

frustrated by the traffic jams

caused by the protest.”

Reported that many of the

bystanders “joined in the

march.”

Framing Framing 48

Table 3. (Continued) Pro-choice Pro-life

High frame intensity Low frame intensity High frame intensity Low frame intensity

Stated motivating factor behind

the protests.

“The protesters were driven by the

fear of losing additional ground on

the abortion issue,”

“The groups were motivated by

the prospect of losing the civil

rights that they had fought so hard

for.”

Unmentioned by the authors Unmentioned by the authors

Described the purpose of the

speeches outside the White

House.

Protesters gathered to “shout their

objections … and express their

demands.”

The protesters wanted to “have

their say … and express their

concerns.”

Protesters gathered to “shout

their objections … and express

their demands.”

The protesters wanted to “have

their say … and express their

concerns.”

Framing Framing 49

Article 4

Review of: Stages of a Crisis and Media Frames and Functions: U.S. Television Coverage of

the 9/11 Incident During the First 24 Hours

Authors: Xigen Li. Journal: Journal of Broadcasting & Electronic Media


This study examined how five U.S. television outlets framed the 9/11 incident

during the first 24 hours and how stages of the crisis affected media frames and functions.

The study found media frames were dynamic rather than static, especially when events

changed rapidly. Television served primarily to inform rather than provide guidance and

consolation, and its functions changed according to its priority in the coverage during the

different stages of the crisis. Use of a wider range of sources led to a diminished role of

government sources in the coverage of this rapidly changing crisis of national magnitude.

Article Four Overview

This is another study that attempts to do frame analysis through content analysis but

instead of gathering the data through interviews, it is an examination of the television media

news stories of the five major broadcasters that covered the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks

on the World Trade Center and other American targets. This study examined the newscasts of

ABC, CBS, NBC, CNN, and FOX News within the first 24 hours of this event.

The authors, after a review, found and identified 2,647 news stories from within the first

24 hours of news coverage. The distribution of stores where that:

• 745 stories where from ABC,

• 612 where from CBS,

• 427 where from NBC,

Framing Framing 50

• 657 from CNN, and

• 206 from FOX News.

The authors of this study defined a news story “as a group of studio and field shots that

specifically address one topic or issue and run consecutively.” The author of this study also

noted when there was no clear delineation between news stories that the following criteria was

used: when the anchor or reporter changed the topic and started reporting on a different aspect of

the event instead of merely mentioning something briefly, and the coverage of the topic ran for a

significant amount of time (at least 30 seconds).

The study’s purpose was to examine how news media frames changed over time in a

crisis. To structure the examination, the author of this study divided the news stories into three

time periods (with the third divided into a further 4 sub time periods) based upon Graber's (1980)

definition of the stages of crisis coverage. How this study broke down the stages can be seen in

table 4.

Framing Framing 51

Table 4.

Chronological stages used in Stages of a Crisis and Media Frames and Functions: U.S.

Television Coverage of the 9/11 Incident During the First 24 Hours

Stage Time

Stage 1 8:48 a.m. to 11 a.m. when the disaster struck

Stage 2 11 a.m. to 3 p.m. media tried to make sense out of the

situation

Stage 3 3 p.m. to 7 p.m. the media started to observe the event from

a long-term perspective

7 p.m. to 12 a.m.

12 a.m. to 6 a.m.

6 a.m. to 9 a.m.

To further facilitate his analysis, the author of this study used the concept of coverage

frame, which is defined as “the aspects of a perceived reality identified through a story that

makes these aspects more salient in the news coverage” to sort out the content. However the

author does not provide an explanation on how coverage frames are derived. The nine coverage

frames that were used in this study are:

1. Political: national security, government policy, or international relations;

2. Economic: economic impact brought by 9/11;

3. Criminal: criminal acts and investigation;

4. Environment: environmental hazard, threat to public health;

5. Safety: public and personal safety, and the ways to survive;

Framing Framing 52

6. Human interest: human well-being, human feeling, family, and love;

7. Religion: religious faith and act, Islam, Muslim, and other religions;

8. Disaster: damage and casualty; and

9. Other: all other framing aspects that do not fit into above categories.

The author has also coded these frames as per its frame nature. This is defined as “the

degree to which a frame probed into issues concerned when certain facts and issues were

presented to form the frame.” For this factor the author created three categories:

1. Descriptive; news media's function of informing and relieving uncertainty during the

first stage of a crisis;

2. Attributive;news media's function of making sense out of the situation;

3. Affective: news media's function of understanding the event from a long-term; view

and the impact of the incident during the third stage of crisis.

The author of this article goes on to describe frame sophistication, which is the “level of

complexity when certain facts and issues were selected and presented to form a frame.” They go

on to describe that frames can have three frame sophistication levels:

1. Low level: does not require much work in perceiving the facts involved and selecting

certain facts and issues;

2. Medium level:involve more investigations and fact-filtering processes;

3. High level:go beyond the observable facts and issues and entail more thought-

provoking processes.

The authors through his description of frame nature and frame sophistication mention

examples of categories of frames that would fit in these categories. Whether or not this is

provided as a hypothetical example to help the reader understand this material better or is the

Framing Framing 53

author’s belief about the typical characteristics of a certain type of frame is unclear. Table 5

presents this summary. Blank spaces indicate that the author provided no comment on that

characteristic.

Table 5.

How Frame Nature And Frame Sophistication Relate To The Nine Coverage Frames

Coverage Frames Frame Nature Frame Sophistication

Political: attributive medium-level

Economic affective high-level

Criminal; attributive medium-level

Environment: affective high-level

Safety: affective

Human interest: affective high-level

frames

Religion attributive

Disaster: descriptive; low-level

Other

Also the author codes a news story depending on its content orientation: This study had

four categories for this:

1. fact;

2. analysis;

3. consolation; and

4. guidance.

Framing Framing 54

Also the authors coded for source, which they defined as: “a name of a person or an

organization associated with direct or indirect quotes in a story.”

For this study only one hour of coding of the coverage between ABC and CNN was

checked for coding reliability instead of a random sampling check. The author gave the

following reasons for this:

1. A preliminary check showed the nature of 9/11 produced homogeneity of coverage

across all outlets;

2. Coding categories were constructed by extensive review of the news content of all

five outlets;

3. Coder training used news stories from all five outlets.

This study proposed to examine six hypotheses. In the following list, the non-underlined

sections are the hypothesis and the underlined portions are the author’s conclusions.

• Televisionmediaframeschangefromdescriptivetoattributivetoaffective

duringdifferentstagesofacrisis.This theory was supported.

• Televisionmediaframesophisticationrisesascoveragemovesthroughthe

stagesofacrisis.This theory was supported.

• Televisioncoverageemphasizeshumaninterestmorethanpoliticaland

economicfactorsinacrisissituationinvolvingtragedy.This theory was not

supported.

• Televisionmedia'suseofawiderrangeofsourcesinacrisisleadstoa

diminishedroleofgovernmentsourcesunderrapidlychangingsituations.This

theory was supported.

Framing Framing 55

• Televisionmediainacrisissituationserveasasourceofconsolationand

guidanceinadditiontoaninformationsource..This theory was not supported.

• Televisionmediavary,butnotextensively,incoverageframesandmedia

functionsperformedinanationalcrisis.This theory was supported.

When examining what is a frame, the author here is more articulate than others by giving

a definition for frame analysis, which is the “assumption that journalists filter information in

ways that affect an audience's understanding or interpretation of issues, stories, or events”

(Lowery & DeFleur, 1995, p. 327 as cited in Li, 2007) and also reiterates Entman’s (1993)

salience definition of framing. However the author does not provide any description of how

frames are created and with the framing categories there is no mention on how they were

derived. While the frame categories that are used in this study make logical sense and appear to

be valid, the nagging question is to what degree are these categories a creation of the framework

that is used to examine the material versus the innate characteristics of the material itself? For

instance the category criminal is used. Yet could it not be said that what occurred was terroristic

which has a different connotation from criminal? Should a category of terroristic replace

criminal or should it be added to the list? Is this not an issue about frames?

One of the goals of content analysis is to ensure that categories do not overlap each other.

One of the overarching assumptions presented in this study is that each new story is a discrete

thing from each other and only contains one frame category. This is probably not the case.

Media operates on many levels, for instance the verbal content of a new story may be about

human interest but then the images are focused on a burning building, which falls within the

category of disaster. Which category should this news story be in? The truth is that it belongs to

both.

Framing Framing 56

There are also some other issues regarding this study. The first is the glaring admission

that this study only checked reliability based upon one hour of coding from news broadcasts

from ABC and CNN. This gives the appearance of a haphazard examination of the content. The

second was a lack of clear description on how the categorization of frame nature and frame

sophistication was operationalized. Each of these categories appears to have a high degree of

interpretation to them and to have a framework imbedded in them. With framed nature you have

an option of it being descriptive, attributive or affective or rephrased more colloquially: what

happened, why it happened and what does it mean. There is an implied linearity to this

sequence, that frames occur in that sequence but can that be assumed to be the case? Even to this

day their are people presenting a narrative that is in conflict with the objective reality of what

happened on 9/11 and reinterpret evidence based upon what they want to believe happened.

Take for instance the conspiracy theories or the widely held belief that Iraq was involved with

the attacks.

Thirdly, can the concept of frame sophistication be used? This term implies that

television news allows for complex examination of issues in the first place. This term implies

critical in-depth versus trite and shallow examination. There are media critics who could argue

that the level of sophistication within television news stories (Postman & Powers, 2008) is only

trite and shallow. Would not a better and more neutral term be labeled frame complexity?

The events of 9/11 undoubtedly had an impact on those who experienced the events

through the media and this media is available for critical examination. Examining this media has

immense value and this study is a good first examination of it, but more work is needed. What is

required is not just an understanding of the framing used by the media but also frames that we

are using to explore it.

Framing Framing 57

Article Four Question Set


Yes. The article does explore various contemplation of framing.



frames it is using. Though the author does give a definition of frame analysis.


This article falls with the category of Media Effect.


This article could be considered falling within Media Framing Literature.


This article does operationalize the concept of framing through the content analysis of

media from 9/11.










participants?

Framing Framing 58

Possibly. This article examined news stories from the top 5 news broadcasters. Some

may consider this the elite of broadcasting.


Unclear.


Possibly. The nine coverage frames could be, in part, a function of the author’s frame.

Framing Framing 59

Conclusion

Summary

This study was an attempt to examine how current framing literature is dealing with

concerns about framing literature and to see if these concerns have been overcome. This was

examined by asking a series of questions that were derived from criticism of the framing

literature.

This project examined four pieces of literature from peer reviewed communication

journals on the subject of framing between 2007 and 2008. The articles selected for the review

were selected due to their diversity on how they approached the subject matter of framing after

their abstracts were reviewed, and what should be remembered is that this is a small sampling of

the available literature dealing with framing.

Some of these concerns about framing literature that these four articles would be

examined for is:

o How does the article define the term “framing.” Does the article just review how

others have defined it or does it explicitly claim and use a specific definition of

framing.

o How does the article hold up to the concerns brought up by Benford (1997)

regarding his concerns about framing literature (neglect of systematic empirical

studies, descriptive bias, etc)

o Which category of framing literature does the study belong to as defined by

Fisher (1997) and Scheufele (1999), if at all.

o Which meta categories does the study belong to.

Framing Framing 60

o Is their evidence of these articles being affected by the framing analysis

conundrum?

The project operationalized these concerns by having the following questions asked about

each article:






6. Does the article focus or concentrate on providing or describing a set of specific

frames?





participants?



A summary of how these four articles compare in light of each of these questions can be

seen in Table 6.

Framing Framing 61

Analysis Of The Questions Set And Responses To The Question Set

The twelve questions that this study used were derived from mainly the criticism of

Benford (1997) about the framing literature along with other sources. However some of these

questions were more interpretive than others, and if used in the future, should be further refined

by developing operational definitions for some of the subjective terms that were used. At present,

the answers to some of the more subjective questions are more likely to be subjectively

answered.



What question number one and two demonstrate is that there is a trend to talk about

framing and what others have defined as framing but there is a lack, at least with these four

articles, to unambiguously define what a frame is. Is quoting another paper’s definition the same

as declaring your acceptance of that definition? Without the authors clearly declaring their

operational definition of framing, ambiguity is generated regarding what is being examined. As

noted in the literature review of this project, there are many points of view on what a frame is

and without clear definitions, the field of frame analysis continues to be mired in ambiguity.

This leads to more time and energy being dedicated to figuring out whether or not two articles

are talking about the same thing then using those two articles as a foundation to build further

research.

Framing Framing 62



These two questions were designed to place these articles into some kind of comparative

context. During the creation of this project I did not discover a work that comprehensively

categorized the framing literature. This of course doesn’t mean it does not exist. With this

project Fisher (1997) and Scheufele (1999) work was used. Yet Fisher’s article mainly examines

framing within the sociological field and it takes Scheufele’s work to balance out the

communicative aspect of the framing literature.

What this project leads me to believe is that there is a need for a tool to map out, across

disciplines, the various permutations and evolution of the concept of framing. If such a tool

existed, this project could be repeated with a more representative sampling of the literature

because there would be knowledge of where specific pieces of literature fall within the framing

landscape.


All the articles, except for the first one, which was a theory paper, operationalized

framing. However none of the articles clearly and unambiguously defined what a frame is. So

while there is a method, does this increase the validity of the articles as an examination of

frames? For three of the articles they observed and recorded in a methodological and systematic

way a particular phenomenon and the analysis of those phenomenon has added valuable insight

and understanding to our collective knowledgebase. However the question remains, is the

phenomenon that these articles are studying framing or is it something else? Further expanding

Framing Framing 63

this idea, using operationalization therefore seems a good tool to categorize the literature but not

as a measure of quality.


This question was derived from Benford‘s (1997) observation that the earlier pieces of

framing literature just gave specific lists of frames. While none of the articles can be accused of

focusing or concentrating on creating a list of frames, two of the articles have framing devices

that appear without too much explanation of how they were created. This probably can be tied

back to the issue of not having a concrete definition of what a frame is. A fair generalization

about these four articles could be this: these four articles did not focus or concentrate on

providing or describing a set of specific frames.


As framing is part of the human condition and the human condition is definitely dynamic

how then cannot framing be dynamic? The tricky part about treating framing as dynamic is that

there is a struggle to even measure it at a single point in time let alone across many points in

time. A couple of articles in this project understand that framing is dynamic but the tools they

use are only examining one specific point in time. So when we speak of treating frames as

dynamic does this mean recognition of its dynamic nature or a method to examine that dynamic

nature. As for this project, this question was interpreted as asking whether the study was able to

examine framing as dynamic. A generalization then about these four articles could be this: these

four articles treat frames as a static concept even though some understand that it is dynamic.

Framing Framing 64


Reification means treating concepts or constructs as real world objects. This was not

observed in three of the articles and in the one article where it possibly occurred was in a theory

paper. In that paper the authors propose that frames are in competition. The ambiguity here is

whether giving the trait of being in a competition is evidence of reification or a concept or

construct in itself. A generalization then about these four articles could be this: three of the

articles had no occurrence of the fallacy of reification, while one, depending upon the criteria

used, may have.


This is one of the interpretive questions. At what point does the sociological become the

psychological and can it not be argued that the sociological is made up in part of the

psychological? Each of the articles in the study examined an aspect of framing from a specific

tradition, with one coming from a psychological tradition but this does not necessarily imply a

reduction from a sociological process. This question than was interpreted to be asking whether

a particular article inappropriately reduced framing to a psychological construct. This however is

a subjective criterion and therefore the answer to this question should be treated as an opinion. A

generalization then about these four articles could be this: these four articles did not reduce

sociological processes to merely the psychological.

Framing Framing 65


participants?

If one looks closely at this question there is an implied bias. In any study decisions need

to be made on what exactly to examine. This question implies a willful ignoring of the rank-and-

file. This is a question that is more appropriate to ask about a body of literature than a piece of

that literature. Examining elites, in itself, is never an unworthy endeavor and should never be a

measure of a studies’ validity. With these four articles some of them looked at elites but it would

be unfair to describe them as neglecting the rank and file. However this question was answered

as asking if whether and article focused on elites. The answer in this context was there was one

and possibly were an additional two articles that focused on the population of the elites,

depending upon the definition of elite used.


This is the most interpretive question of this question set. Oversimplified compared to

what? Things are simple and complex but these terms refer to a trait. To make a judgment on

whether it is detrimental that something is too simple or too complex requires a standard and this

project has not articulated one.

This project doesn’t have the scope to examine the minutia of all the logic and

propositions put forth by the articles it reviewed. However, at the level of detail that this project

did review these articles, all of them appeared to present its material at the right level of

complexity. While there may be issues with specific parts of a particular article, no article

appeared to have grossly oversimplified its material. However, without a standard in place, this

Framing Framing 66

is entirely an opinion. A generalization then about these four articles could be this: these four

articles did not oversimplify the framing process.


The frame analysis conundrum is this: A frame is only understood through another

frame. Has it occurred in these four articles? There is evidence for this in all four articles but as

a concept, the frame analysis conundrum is presented here in this project as an initial observation

of the framing literature. Further work is required to fully articulate this concept, to ensure its

validity and to embed it with in the existing literature.

For instance has the concept of the framework conundrum been articulated in a different

context under a different name? Further research is required to tie the frame analysis conundrum

to the ideas that has come before it. Further thinking about the frame analysis conundrum leads

to this reflection: the pursuit of science and the understanding of our knowledge require us to

create models of our world. These models by their nature are only representations based upon

selected aspects of our real world. There is always a requirement when modeling to include some

aspect but not to include others. Economic models are made with assumptions on how human

people trade. Physicists make their models by reducing the world to particles. Asking

economists to look at particles or physicists at markets is asking them to step out of their

framework. In a certain respect, saying that these four studies did their analysis of frame through

their own frame is stating the obvious. Yet because it is so obvious it may get ignored and this

may be an oversight.

Framing Framing 67

Generalized Observations About Framing Literature

While this is only an examination of four pieces of literature this study has brought to

light some issues regarding frame analysis. These issues are:

• Thereneedstobeaworkthatmapsoutthevariouspermutationsoftheconceptof

framingthatoccursacrossdisciplines.Asitcurrentlystands,theredoesnotappear

tobeaworkthatfullysummarizesthevariousthreadsanddirectionstheframing

literaturehasdeveloped.

• Duetotheambiguousnatureofframing,anystudythatusesframingshouldclearly

articulatetheframingdefinitionitisusing.Justhavingaliteraturereviewisnot

sufficienttoremovetheinherentambiguitythatframing,asaconcept,has.

• Therecontinuestobemuchdiversitywithintheframingliterature.Thisisnot

necessarilyharmfulbutwhatisrequiredisclearermoredefineddemarcationof

thesediversethreadsofframinginquirytobetterallowthisfieldofstudytogrow.

Final Thoughts

If we returned back to the analogy of the blind men and the elephant, these four articles

are four more set of hands exploring the elephant. Framing knowledge has increased through

these articles but there is still not yet a comprehensive vision about framing. Each of these

studies in one way speaks to framing, but there yet seems to be a coherent whole or overriding

thematic unity to this field. How does one proceed then with the concept of framing?

What not to do is suggest by the moral of the poem of the blind man and the elephant:

So oft in theologic wars,

The disputants, I ween,

Rail on in utter ignorance

Framing Framing 68

Of what each other mean,

And prate about an Elephant

Not one of them has seen!

However this moral was designed to speak about claiming full knowledge when one only

has knowledge about one aspect of the whole. However understanding the whole is always

about looking at the parts. What matters is how you put all the parts together, or more aptly,

maybe, by how you frame them.

Framing Framing 69

Table 6.

Article Comparison

Article 1 Article 2 Article 3 Article 4

A Theory of Framing and Opinion

Formation in Competitive Elite

Environments.

Frame Intensity Effects of

Television News Stories About a

High-visibility Protest Issue.

Making Sense of Intractable

Multiparty Conflict: a Study of

Framing in Four Environmental

Disputes.

Stages of a Crisis and Media Frames

and Functions: U.S. Television

Coverage of the 9/11 Incidents

During the First 24 Hours.

1. Does the article review various

definitions of frames?

Provided several definitions. Provided several definitions Provided several definitions Provided several definitions

2. Does the article clearly declare

or own a definition of framing?

No Possibly No No

3. What specific category of

framing literature does this article

belong to?

Psychology of Social Representation Frames and the Study of Social

Movements and Psychology of

Social Representation

Media Effect Media Effect

4. What meta category does the

article belong to?

Psychological Framing Literature Sociologically Framing Literature Media Framing Literature Media Framing Literature

5. Does the article operationalize

the concept of framing?

No. Yes Yes Yes

Framing Framing 70

Table 6. (Continued)




Environments.







Disputes.





6. Does the article focus or

concentrate on providing or

describing a set of specific

frames?

Not observed. Not observed Not observed Not observed

7. Does the article treat frames as

a static concept instead of

something that is dynamic?

Occurs Occurs Occurs Occurs

8. Does the article have within in it

the fallacy of reification?

Possibly Not observed Not observed Not observed

9. Does the article reduce

sociological process to merely the

psychological?

Unclear Not observed Not observed Not observed

Framing Framing 71

Table 6. (Continued)




Environments.







Disputes.





10. Does the article focus on the

population of the elites to the

neglect of rank-and-file

participants?

Not observed Yes Possibly Possibly

11. Does the article oversimplify

the framing process?

Unclear Unclear Not observed Unclear

12. Is there evidence that the

frame analysis conundrum is

occurring?

Possibly Possibly Possibly Possibly

Framing Framing 72

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