Framing: Toward Clarification of A Fractured Paradigm

Full text

Framing: Toward Clarification
of
a
Fractured Paradigm
by Robert
M.
Entman, Northwestern University
In response
to
the proposition that communication lacks disciplinary sta-
tus because
of
deficient core knowledge,
I
propose that we turn an osten-
sible weakness into a strength. We should identify our mission as bring-
ing together insights and theories that would otherwise remain scattered
in other disciplines. Because
of
the lack
of
interchange among the disci-
plines, hypotheses thoroughly discredited in one field may receive wide
acceptance in another. Potential research paradigms remain fractured,
with pieces here and there but no comprehensive statement
to
guide re-
search. By bringing ideas together in one location, communication can
aspire
to
become a master discipline that synthesizes related theories and
concepts and exposes them to the most rigorous, comprehensive state-
ment and exploration. Reaching this goal would require a more self-con-
scious determination by communication scholars
to
plumb other fields
and feed back their studies
to
outside researchers.
At
the same time, such
an enterprise would enhance the theoretical rigor
of
communication
scholarship proper.
The idea
of
“framing” offers a case study
of
just the kind
of
scattered
conceptualization
I
have identified. 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 think-
ing. Analysis
of
this concept suggests how the discipline
of
communica-
tion might contribute something unique: synthesizing a key concept’s dis-
parate uses, showing how they invariably involve communication, and
constructing a coherent theory from them.
Whatever its specific
use,
the concept
of
framing consistently offers a
way
to
describe the power
of
a communicating text. Analysis
of
frames
il-
luminates the precise way in which influence over a human conscious-
ness is exerted by the transfer (or communication)
of
information from
Robert
M.
Entman
is
an associate professor
of
communication studies, journalism, and
po-
litical science and chair
of
the program in Communications, Media, and Public Policy at the
Center for Urban Affairs and Policy Research at Northwestern University, Evanston,
IL.
He
gratefully acknowledges the comments
of
students in his “Mass Communication and Demo-
cratic Theory” seminar, especially Andrew Rojecki.
Copyright
0
1993
Journal
of
Communication
43(4),
Autumn.
0021-9916/93/$5.00

Journal
of
Communzcatzon,
Antumn
199.3
one location-such as a speech, utterance, news report, or novel-to that
consciousness.
(A
representative list
of
classic and recent citations would
include: Edelman, 1993; Entman
&
Rojecki, 1993; Fiske
&
Taylor, 1991;
Gamson, 1992; Goffman, 1974; Graber,
1988;
Iyengar,
1991;
Kahneman
&
Tversky, 1984; Pan
&
Kosicki, 1993; Riker,
1986;
Snow
&
Benford,
1988;
Tuchman, 1978; White, 1987; Zaller,
1992.)
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, fram-
ing,
and
.framework
are common outside of formal scholarly discourse,
and their connotation there is roughly the same. The goal here is
to
iden-
tify and make explicit common tendencies among the various uses
of
the
terms and
to
suggest a more precise and universal understanding
of
them.
Of
Frames
and
Framing
Framing essentially involves
selection
and
salience.
To frame is
to
select
some aspects
of
aperceived reality and make them more salient in a com-
municating text, in such a way as to promote aparticularproblem defini-
tion, causal interpretation, moral evaluation, and/or treatment recom-
mendation
for the item described. Typically frames diagnose, evaluate,
and prescribe, a point explored most thoroughly by Gamson (1992). An
example is the “cold war” frame that dominated
U.S.
news
of
foreign af-
fairs until recently. The cold war frame highlighted certain foreign
events-say, civil wars-as problems, identified their source (communist
rebels), offered moral judgments (atheistic aggression), and commended
particular solutions
(U.S.
support
for
the other side).
Frames, then,
dejineproblems-determine
what a causal agent is doing
with what costs and benefits, usually measured in terms
of
common cul-
tural values;
diagnose
causes-identify the forces creating the problem;
make moraljudgments-evaluate
causal agents and their effects; and
suggest remedies-offer
and justify treatments
for
the problems and pre-
dict their likely effects.
A
single sentence may perform more than one
of
these four framing functions, although many sentences in a text may per-
form none
of
them. And a frame in any particular text may not necessarily
include all four functions.
The cold war example also suggests that frames have at least four loca-
tions in the communication process: the communicator, the text, the re-
ceiver, and the culture.
Communicators
make conscious or unconscious
framing judgments in deciding what to say, guided by frames (often
called schemata) that organize their belief systems. The
text
contains
frames, which are manifested
by
the presence
or
absence
of
certain key-
words, stock phrases, stereotyped images, sources
of
information, and
sentences that provide thematically reinforcing clusters
of
facts
or
judg-
ments. The frames that guide the
receiver’s
thinking and conclusion may
or may not reflect the frames in the text and the framing intention
of
the
52

communicator. The
culture
is the stock
of
commonly invoked frames; in
fact, culture might be defined as the empirically demonstrable set
of
com-
mon frames exhibited in the discourse and thinking
of
most people in a
social grouping. Framing in a11 four locations includes similar functions:
selection and highlighting, and use
of
the highlighted elements
to
con-
struct an argument about problems and their causation, evaluation,
and/or solution.
How
Frames
Work
Frames highlight some bits
of
information about an item that is the sub-
ject
of
a communication, thereby elevating them in salience. The word
salience
itself needs
to
be defined:
It
means making
:i
piece
of
informa-
tion more noticeable, meaningful, or memorable
to
audiences. An in-
crease in salience enhances the probability that receivers will perceive
the information, discern meaning and thus process it, and store
it
in meni-
ory (see Fiske
&
Taylor,
1991).
Texts can make bits
of
information more salient by placement
or
repeti-
tion, or by associating them with culturally familiar symbols. However,
even a single nnillustrated appearance
of
a notion in an obscure part
of
the text can
be
highly salient,
if
it
comports with the existing schemata in
a receiver’s
belief
systems.
By
the same token, an idea emphasized in a
text can be difficult for receivers
to
notice, interpret,
or
remember
be-
cause
of
their existing schemata. For our purposes, schemata and closely
related concepts such as categories, scripts, or stereotypes connote men-
tally stored clusters
of
ideas that guide individuals’ processing
of
informa-
tion (see, e.g., Graber, 19881. Because salience is a product
of
the interac-
tion
of
texts and receivers, the presence
of
frames in the text, as detected
by researchers, does not guarantee their influence in audience thinking
(Entman, 1989; Graber, 1988).
Kahneman and Tversky
(1984)
offer perhaps the most widely cited re-
cent example
of
the power
of
framing and the way
it
operates by select-
ing and highlighting some features
of
reality while omitting others. The
authors asked experimental subjects the following:
Imagine thal the
1J.S.
is
preparing
for
the outbreak
of
an unusual Asian
disease, which is expected to kill
600people.
Two alternative programs
to combat the disease have beenproposed. Assume that the exact scien-
tz$c
estimates
of
the consequences qftheprograms are as,follows:
If
Pro-
gram
A
is adopted, 200people will
be
saved. Ifprogram
B
is adopted,
there is a one-thirdprobability that
GOOpeople
will be saved and a two-
thirdsprohahility that no people
will
he
saved. Which
of
the twopro-
grams wouldyou favor?(1984,
p.
243)
In this experiment,
72
percent
of
subjects chose Program
A;
28
percent
53
Toward
ClarzJicatzon
ofa
Fractured
Paradigm

,/ournal
of
Communication,
Autumn
199.3
chose Program B. In the next experiment,
identical options
to
treating the
same described situation were offered, but framed in terms
of
likely
deaths rather than likely lives saved:
“If
Program
C
is adopted,
400
people
will die.
If
Program
D
is adopted, there is a one-third probability that no-
body will die and a two-thirds probability that
600
people will die”
(Kahneman
&
Tversky,
1984,
p. 343). The percentages choosing the op-
tions were reversed by the framing. Program
C
was chosen by
22
percent,
though its twin Program
A
was selected by
72
percent; and Program
D
garnered
78
percent, while the identical Program B received only
28
per-
cent.
As
this example vividly illustrates, the frame determines whether most
people notice and how they understand and remember a problem, as
well as how they evaluate and choose
to
act upon
it.
The notion
of
fram-
ing thus implies that the frame has a common effect on large portions
of
the receiving audience, though
it
is not likely
to
have a universal effect
on
all.
Kahneman and Tversky’s experiments demonstrate that frames select
and call attention
to
particular aspects
of
the reality described, which log-
ically means that frames simultaneously direct attention away from other
aspects. Most frames are defined by what they omit as well as include,
and the omissions
of
potential problem definitions, explanations, evalua-
tions, and recommendations may be as critical as the inclusions in guid-
ing the audience.
tive description and omission
of
the features
of
a situation:
Edelman highlights the way frames exert their power through the selec-
The character, causes, and consequences of any phenomenon become
radically different as changes are made in what is prominently dis-
played, what is repressed and especially in how observations are classi-
jied.
.
.
.
(Uhe social world is
.
. .
a kaleidoscope ofpotential realities,
any
of
which can be readily evoked by altering the ways in which obser-
vations are framed and categorized.
(1993,
p.
232)
Receivers’ responses are clearly affected
if
they perceive and process in-
formation about one interpretation and possess little or incommensurable
data about alternatives. This
is
why exclusion
of
interpretations by frames
is as significant
to
outcomes as inclusion.
Sniderman, Brody, and Tetlock (1991) provide
a
clear instance
of
the
power
of
presence and absence in framing:
The effect of framing is toprime values differentially, establishing the
salience of the one
or
the other. (Thus].
. .
a majority of thepublic sup-
ports the rights ofpersons with
AIDS
when the issue is framed (in
a
sur-
vey question] to accentuate civil liberties considerations-and supports
. . .
mandatory testing when the issue is framed to accentuatepublic
health considerations.
(p.
52)
54

Toumrd
Clanlfication
of
u
Fractured
Puradigm
The text
of
the survey question supplies most people with the considera-
tions they use when they respond
to
the issue
of
AIDS testing (Zaller,
1992).
Often a potential counterframing
of
the subject is mostly or wholly
absent from a text, although,
to
use this instance, an audience member
with a strong civil liberties philosophy might reject mandatory testing
even
if
the poll framed
AIDS
strictly in public health terms.
Frames in Political News
This portrait
of
framing has important implications
for
political communi-
cation. Frames call attention
to
some aspects
of
reality while obscuring
other elements, which might lead audiences to have different reactions.
Politicians seeking support are thus compelled
to
compete with each
other and with journalists over news frames (Entman,
1989;
Riker,
1986).
Framing in this light plays a major role in the exertion
of
political power,
and the frame in a news text is really the imprint
of
power-it registers
the identity
of
actors or interests that competed
to
dominate the text.
many news texts exhibit homogeneous framing at one level
of
analysis,
yet competing frames at another. Thus, in the pre-war debate over
U.S.
policy toward Iraq, there was a tacit consensus among
U.S.
elites not to
argue for such options as negotiation between Iraq and Kuwait. The news
frame included only two remedies, war now or sanctions now with war
(likely) later, while problem definitions, causal analyses, and moral evalu-
ations were homogeneous. Between the selected remedies, however,
framing was contested by elites, and news coverage offered different sets
of
facts and evaluations. The Iraq example reveals that the power
of
news
frames can be self-reinforcing. During the pre-war debate, any critique
transcending the remedies inside the frame (war
soon
versus more time
for sanctions) breached the bounds
of
acceptable discourse, hence was
unlikely
to
influence policy. By conventional journalistic standards, such
views were not newsworthy (Entman
&
Page, in press). Unpublicized, the
views could gain few adherents and generate little perceived or actual ef-
fect on public opinion, which meant elites
felt
no pressure
to
expand the
frame
so
it
included other treatments for Iraqi aggression, such as negoti-
ation. Relatedly, Gamson
(1992)
observes that a frame can exert great
so-
cial power when encoded in a term like
ajfirmatiue action.
Once a term
is widely accepted,
to
use another is
to
risk that target audiences will per-
ceive the communicator as lacking credibility-or
will
even fail
to
under-
stand what the communicator is talking about. Thus the power
of
a frame
can be as great as that
of
language itself.
Reflecting the play
of
power and boundaries
of
discourse over an issue,
Benefits
of
a
Consistent Concept
of
Framing
An understanding
of
frames helps illuminate many empirical and norma-
tive controversies, most importantly because the concept
of
framing di-
55

Journal
of
Communication,
Autumn
1993
rects our attention
to
the details
of
just how a communicated text exerts
its power. The example
of
mass communication explored here suggests
how a common understanding might help constitute framing as a
re-
search paradigm.
A
research paradigm is defined here as a general theory
that informs most scholarship on the operation and outcomes
of
any par-
ticular system
of
thought and action. The framing paradigm could be ap-
plied with similar benefits
to
the study
of
public opinion and voting be-
havior in political science;
to
cognitive studies in social psychology; or
to
class, gender, and race research in cultural studies and sociology,
to
name
a few. Here are some illustrations
of
theoretical debates in the study
of
mass communication that would benefit from an explicit and common
understanding
of
the concept
of
frames.
definition for the notion
of
dominant meaning
that is
so
central
to
de-
bates about polysemy and audience independence in decoding media
texts (Fiske, 1987). From a framing perspective, dominant meaning con-
sists
of
the problem, causal, evaluative, and treatment interpretations with
the highest probability
of
being noticed, processed, and accepted by the
most people.
To
identify a meaning as dominant or preferred is
to
suggest
a
particular framing
of
the situation that is most heavily supported by the
text and is congruent with the most common audience schemata.
A
framing paradigm cautions researchers not
to
take fugitive compo-
nents
of
the message and show how they
might
be interpreted in ways
that oppose the dominant meaning.
If
the text frame emphasizes in a vari-
ety
of
mutually reinforcing ways that the glass is half full, the evidence
of
social science suggests that relatively few in the audience will conclude
it
is half empty.
To
argue that the polysemic properties
of
the message con-
duce
to
such counterframing, researchers must show that real-world audi-
ences reframe the message, and that this reframing is not a by-product
of
the research conditions-for example, a focus group discussion in which
one participant can lead the rest, or a highly suggestive interview proto-
col (Budd, Entman,
&
Steinman, 1990).
plicitly in the text, or retrieve from memory a causal explanation or cure
that is completely absent from the text. In essence, this is just what pro-
fessors encourage their students
to
do habitually. But Zaller (19921, Kah-
neman and Tversky (19841, and Iyengar (19911, among others, suggest
that on most matters
of
social or political interest, people are not general-
ly
so
well-informed and cognitively active, and that framing therefore
heavily influences their responses
to
communications, although Gamson
(1992) describes conditions that can mitigate this influence.
2.
Journalistic objectivity.
Journalists may follow the rules for “objec-
tive” reporting and yet convey a dominant framing
of
the news text that
prevents most audience members from making a balanced assessment
of
a
situation. Now, because they lack
a
common understanding of framing,
journalists frequently allow the most skillful media manipulators
to
im-
1.
Audience autonomy.
The concept
of
framing provides an operational
Certainly people can recall their own facts, forge linkages not made ex-
56

Toward ClariJication
of
a Fractured Paradigm
pose their dominant frames on the news (Entman,
1989;
Entman
&
Page,
in press; Entman
&
Rojecki, 1993).
If
educated
to
understand the differ-
ence between including scattered oppositional facts and challenging a
dominant frame, journalists might be better equipped
to
construct news
that makes equally salient-equally accessible to the average, inattentive,
and marginally informed audience-two or more interpretations
of
prob-
lems. This task would require a far more active and sophisticated role for
reporters than they now take, resulting in more balanced reporting than
what the formulaic norm
of
objectivity produces (Tuchman, 1978).
3.
Content analysis.
The major task
of
determining textual meaning
should be
to
identify and describe frames; content analysis informed by a
theory
of
framing would avoid treating all negative or positive terms or
utterances as equally salient and influential. Often, coders simply
tote
up
all messages they judge as positive and negative and draw conclusions
about the dominant meanings. They neglect
to
measure the salience
of
el-
ements in the text, and fail to gauge the relationships
of
the most salient
clusters
of
messages-the frames-to the audience’s schemata. Unguided
by a framing paradigm, content analysis may often yield data that misrep-
resent the media messages that most audience members are actually pick-
ing up.
4.
Public opinion and normative democratic theory.
In Zaller’s (1992)
account, framing appears
to
be a central power in the democratic
process, for political elites control the framing
of
issues. These frames can
determine just what “public opinion” is-a different frame, according
to
Zaller, and survey evidence and even voting can indicate a different pub-
lic opinion. His theory, along with that
of
Kahneman and Tversky, seems
to
raise radical doubts about democracy itself.
If
by shaping frames elites
can determine the major manifestations
of
“true” public opinion that are
available
to
government (via polls or voting), what can true public opin-
ion be? How can even sincere democratic representatives respond cor-
rectly to public opinion when empirical evidence
of
it
appears
to
be
so
malleable,
so
vulnerable
to
framing effects?
Say there are three ways
to
frame an issue and one generates 40 per-
cent approval, the others
50
percent and
60
percent, respectively.
Ap-
proving the option
with
60 percent support is
not
axiomatically the
most
democratic response because
of
the cyclical majority problem (Riker,
19861, which makes majority rule among several complex options mathe-
matically impossible. Just as important, attempting
to
determine which
of
the differently framed opinions is the closest
to
the public’s “real” senti-
ments appears futile, because
it
would require agreement among con-
tending elites and citizens on which frame was most accurate, fair, com-
plete, and
so
forth.
A
framing paradigm can illuminate,
if
not solve, such
central puzzles in normative democratic theory.
Indeed, the concept
of
framing is important enough in the many fields
of
inquiry that use
it
to
merit a book-length essay. The present effort, con-
strained by space limitations, offers not the definitive word on frames but
57

Journal
of
Communication, Autumn
1993
a preliminary contribution. Equally important, this article exemplifies
how the field
of
communication might develop from its wide ambit and
eclectic approaches a core
of
knowledge that could translate into re-
search paradigms contributing
to
social theory in the largest sense.
References
Budd,
M.,
Entman,
R.
M.,
&
Steinman, C. (1990). The affirmative character
of
U.S. cultural
studies.
Critical Studies in Mass Communication,
7,
169-184.
Edelman,
M.
J.
(1993). Contestable categories and public opinion.
Political Communica-
Entman,
R.
M.
(1989).
Democracy without citizens: Media and the decay ofAmericanpoli-
Entman,
R.
M.,
&
Page,
B.
I.
(in press). The news before the storm: The Iraq war debate
tion,
10(3), 231-242.
tics.
New York: Oxford University Press.
and the limits to media independence. In
W.
L.
Bennett
&
D.
L.
Paletz (Eds.),
Just deserts;
7'be
news
media,
U.S.
foreignpolicy, and the Gulf War.
Chicago: University
of
Chicago
Press.
Entman,
R.
M.,
&
Rojecki, A. (1993). Freezing out the public: Elite and media framing
of
the
Fiske,
J.
(1987).
Television culture.
New York: Routledge.
Fiske,
S.
T.,
&
Taylor,
S.
E.
(1991).
Social cognition.
New York: McGraw-Hill.
Gamson,
W.
(1992).
Talkingpolitics.
New York: Cambridge University Press.
Goffman,
E.
(1974).
Frame analysis.
New York: Free Press
Graber, D.A.
(1988).
Processing the news: Howpeople
tame
the information tide
(2nd ed.).
Iyengar,
S.
(1991).
Is
anyone responsible?
Chicago: University
of
Chicago Press
Kahneman,
D.,
&
Tversky, A. (1984). Choice, values, and frames.
American Psychologist.
Pan,
Z.,
&
Kosicki,
G.
M.
(1993).
Framing analysis: An approach to news discourse.
Poliii-
Riker,
W.
H.
(1986).
The
art
ofpolitical manzpulation.
New Haven: Yale University Press
Sniderrnan, P.
M.,
Brody,
R.
A,,
&
Tetlock, P.
E.
(1991).
Reasoning and choice: Explorations
Snow, D. A,,
&
Benford,
R.
D.
(1988).
Ideology, frame resonance, and participation mobi-
U.S. anti-nuclear movement.
Political Communication,
10(2),
151-167.
New York: Longman.
39,
341-350.
cal Communication,
I0
(11,
55-76,
inpoliticalpsychology.
Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press.
lization.
International Social Movement Research,
1,
197-217.
Tuchman,
G.
(1978).
Making
news.
New York: Free Press.
White,
H.
(1987).
The content
of
the form.
Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press.
Zaller, J.
R.
(1992).
7'be
nature and origins
of
mass opinion.
New York: Cambridge Univer-
sity Press.
58