THE CONSTRUCTION OF
FRAMES IN NEWS
JOURNALISM
Framing theory
• Framing theory - or theories about framing - today
represent one of the most common research approaches
in the field of communication and media studies.
• The origins of the frame metaphor lie in other fields like
cognitive psychology, anthropology (Bateson) and
sociology (Goffman).
• A frame specifies the relationship between a number of
connected elements in a text, helping us to define or
interpret what is going on, making sense out of events
Why words matters
• Experimental studies by cognitive psychologists: choices
between risky projects can be powerfully altered merely
by changing the terms in which equivalent choices are
described. (“Will die” or “will be saved”)
• Preferences for tax policies can be manipulated by
framing the financial outcomes differently (benefits or
penalties?).
• Surgery as cancer treatment: use statistics in terms of
survival rather than mortality!
Media frames (Todd Gitlin, 1980)
• “What makes the world beyond direct experience look
natural is a media frame”.
• “Frames are principles of selection, emphasis, and
presentation composed of little tacit theories about what
exists, what happens and what matters”
• “Thus for organizational reasons alone, frames are
unavoidable, and journalism is organized to regulate their
production”
Gaye Tuchman: News as frame
• News is a window of the world. Through its frame,
American learn of themselves and others, of their
institutions, leaders, and life styles, and those of
other nations and their peoples…
• …The view through a window depends upon
whether the window is large or small, has many
panes or few, whether the glass is opaque or
clear, whether the window faces a street or a
backyard. (Making News, 1980)
Defining framing
• “Frames are organizing principles that are socially shared
and persistent over time, that work symbolically to
meaningfully structure the social world” (Stephen D.
Reese (2001: 11) in Reese, Gandy & Grant (eds.):
• “To frame is to select some aspects of a perceived reality
and make them more salient in a communicating text”
(Robert Entman 1993: 52)
• “The essence of framing is selection to prioritize some
facts, images or developments over others, thereby
unconsciously promoting one particular interpretation of
events (Norris, Kern & Just 2003)
How frames work
• “The frame suggests what the controversy is about, the
essence of the issue” (Gamson & Modigliani 1989, in
Vreese: 27)
• Frames are ..interpretative packages that give meaning to
an issue (Gamson & Modigliani, 1989: 3)
• Framing involves implicit information between the lines,
the frame provides a context for the interpretation of a
news message
Journalistic tools in framing the news
• Choosing the news angle
• Selecting the sources (and avoiding others)
• Formulating the headline, the lead of a news
story and selecting the visual image
• Culture bound narratives: formulating a new
episode in a longer and well known story.
Framing contests
• The frame building process takes place in a continuous
interaction between journalists and elites and social
movements. The outcomes of the frame-building process
are the frames manifest in the text (Vreese 2003: 24, 43)
• If politicians or PR-practitioners are to succeed getting
their frames wholly or partly presented in the media, they
have to adhere to certain news conventions and genre
demands from commercial news organisations giving
priority to conflicts, power struggles and drama (Allern
2001, Ihlen & Allern 2007)
Frames are part of a culture..
• “Frames are part of a culture and are institutionalized in
various ways” (Goffman 1981, p 63).
• Van Gorps (2007) six premises:
1. There exist a cultural stock of frames, alternatives are available
(like in Vladimir Propp’s Morphology of the folk tale)
2. The text and the frame is not identical; the readers connect
framing devices in a news story with familiar cultural phenomena
3. The use of frames seem normal, natural and the social
construction are often invisible. Frames as a power mechanism.
4. Frames are part of the culture, more stable than personal
schemata
5. A frame changes gradually or little over time
6. Frames are negotiated and part of a social interaction
Frames are not the same as topics
• Topic: Asylum seekers and undocumented immigrants
• Alternative frames (van Gorp 2007):
• Misgovernment frame
• Intruder/strangers frame
• Our hospitality frame
• The innocent victim frame
• The donor/support frame
• The “not in my backyard” frame
Frames as regular patterns
• “Through frames, apparently scattered and diverse events
are understood within regular patterns…
• ..the terrorist frame can be used to explain the nightclub
attack in Bali, the Chechen rebels holding hostages in the
Moscow theatre, the bombing of Israel tourists in a
Mombassa hotel, the suicide bombers in Tel Aviv, or the
capture of communist insurgents in the Philippines
(Norris, Kern & Just 2003: 11).
Bali, Moscow Theatre, Mombasa
hotel: The same Story?
Framing early student protest against the
war against Vietnam (1965)
• Todd Gitlin: The whole world is watching (1980): analyzing
the earliest framing devices in main stream media outlets.
• “15000 White House pickets denounce Vietnam War”
Framing devices in coverage of Vietnam
protests
• Trivialization (of age, dress, language, style, goals)
• Polarization (emphasizing counterdemonstrations)
• Emphasis on internal dissention
• Marginalization (deviant or unrepresentative)
• Disparagement by numbers (under-counting)
• Reliance on statements by government officials
Framing the WTO
• “A few Starbucks windows smashed by a hundred
‘anarchists’ where all the shallower news reports needed
to see to decide “what’s the story”, even if tens or
hundreds of thousands of demonstrators were marching
by playfully, in peace” (Todd Gitlin about Seattle 1999)
Contrasting guilt and innocence
• Robert Entman (in Projections of Power, 2004),
comparing the media coverage of a Soviet Air Force
Fighter who shot down Korean Air Flight 007 (1983, killing
269 people) and the coverage of a US Navy Ship
(Vincennes) who in 1988 shot down an Iranian Air Flight
655 (killing 290).
• The media framing varied dramatically. Soviet covered
with “the murder frame”, US by the “technical glitch
frame”. Contrasting magnitude, causes and the use of
humanizing or neutral terms (quantitatively)
Episodic or thematic framing?
Shanto Iyengar (1991): Is anyone responsible? How
television frames political issues.
• Predominantly episodic or thematic news stories in CBS, NBC
and ABC. Key word search of different topics (like crime and
terrorism, unemployment and poverty).
• Experimental study: how did did the groups react to different types
of framing?
• Conclusion: In the long run episodic framing contributes to the
trivialization of the public discourse
New Example: Ferguson
The police violence frame:
-Emphasizes the centrality of Michael Brown’s murder as
the key issue and focal point
-Emphasizes the impunity of the Ferguson Police
Department
-Puts this specific incident in a larger context of police
repression in Ferguson
-Puts this specific incident in a larger context of both police
violence and police militarization on a national scale
New Example: Ferguson
The peaceful protesters frame:
-Emphasizes the righteousness and necessity of peoples’
response to murder
The rioters/looters frame:
-Emphasizes the criminality of protest, despite the
circumstances or the specifics of the incident
-Links this specific incident to other acts of civil unrest and
competing philosophies of ‘direct action’
New Example: Ferguson
The black criminal ‘thug’ frame:
-Relies on racist ‘dog whistles’ utilized by public figures and politicians
since the 1950s, as well as gross news characterizations of black
criminality that extend back into the late 1800s
-Implies that police actions are/were justified, if not provoked
-Implies that all black men, especially youth, are potential criminals (the
same treatment applied to Treyvon Martin coverage).
-Re-frames the issue as one of ‘law breaking’ as opposed to racism,
regardless of context or circumstance
-Subsequently, it relies on false notion of ‘reverse racism’
Conclusion:
•Framing matters!
Literature
• Carver, R, R. Waldahl & J. Breivik(2008): ’Frame that gene’, EMBO reports.
• De Vreese, Claes (2003): Framing Europé. Television News and European Integration, Amsterdam:
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Aksant
Entman, R. (1993): ’Framing. Toward Clarification of a Fractured Paradigm’, Journal of
Communication 43 (4): 51-58
Entman, R. (2004): Projections of Power, Chigcago, University of Chigago Press
Gitlin, T. (1980): The Whole World is Watching.. (Berkely..: Universityof California Press)
Goffman, E. (1974): Frame Analysis, Cambridge: Harvard University Press
Ihlen, Ø & S. Allern (2008): ’This is the Issue: Framing Contests and Media Coverage’, in Strömbek,
Ørsten & Aalberg (eds.): Communicating Politics, Gothenburg: Nordicom.
Iyengar, S.: (1994): Is anyone responsible. How television frames political issues, Chcago:
University of Chicago Press
Norris P., M. Kern & M. Just (2003): Framing Terrorism, New York/London: Routledge
Reese, S.D., Gandy O.H. & Grant, A.E (eds.) (2001): Framing Public Life: Perspectives on Media
and Our Understanding of the Social World. Mahwaa, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum.
Tuchman, G. (1978): Making News. A Study of the Construction of Reality, New York: Free Press
Van Gorp, B (2007): ’The Constructionist Approach to framing: Bringing the Culture back’, Journal
of communication, 57 (1): 60-78