Framing

Robert Entman defines framing (although frame or framework can be used as well) as a concept that ‘[…] consistently offers a way to describe the power of a communicating text. Analysis of frames illuminates the precise way in which influence over a human consciousness is exerted by the transfer (or communication) of information from one location-such as a speech, utterance, news report, or novel to that consciousness’ (Entman 1993). Vreese defines a frame as ‘[…] an emphasis in salience of different aspects of a topic. While agenda-setting theory deals with the salience of issues, framing is concerned with the presentation of issues’ (Vreese 2005).

Entman goes on to explain how framing works in the transmission of text (a message) in the social world. ‘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), while Vreese explains that ‘[f]rames are parts of political arguments, journalistic norms, and social movements’ discourse. They are alternative ways of defining issues, endogenous to the political and social world’ (Vreese 2005). This infers that a message can have various frames.

In matters related to power in the political world, as an example, framing works to highlight some aspects while obfuscating others in order to cause a particular outcome; and examples of this can be found in the news. This aligns with Tuchman’s research on how the news is brought about by forces that see things in a certain way (Tuchman 1978).

For example, Qi, Joye and Van Leuven showed that during the Covid-19 pandemic, various frames were used to address China and its role during that time—i.e. the ‘anti-communist frame’, and the ‘authoritarian frame.’ They argue that the negative frames given to China come from a long tradition of portraying the country in a negative light (Qi, Joye and Van Leuven 2022). Yet, framing is neither static nor a ‘thing’ that we can find as part of the natural world, a process, and thus framing is constantly evolving. Stephen Reese defines frames as: ‘[…] organizing principles that are socially shared and persistent over time, that work symbolically to meaningfully structure the social world’ (Reese, 2001, p. 11). Thus, for Reese framing is not a set framework but an evolving tool for interpreting social developments. Reese states: ‘[…] framing is more of a research program than a unified paradigm and that theoretical diversity has been beneficial in developing a comprehensive understating of the process […]’ (Reese 2007). As pointed out by Reese, framing does not fit into one paradigm and thus the constructivists see it as a tool ‘more or less accessible to social actors, whereas the critical perspective has regarded frames as controlling, hegemonic, and tied to larger elite structures […]’ (Reese 2007).

Framing has also been developed from a much more critical perspective, Critical Frame Analysis (CFA), to address various failings of quantitative and qualitative discursive research (the latter analyses how language is used to transmit meaning and form understanding), and to address power dynamics linked to policy making, in particular with regard to issues concerning gender and politics (Verloo 2005, van der Haar and Verloo 2016). For Verloo CFA was born ‘[…] from the general assumption that a policy (proposal) will always contain an implicit or explicit representation of a problem (diagnosis), connected to an implicit or explicit solution (prognosis) and a call for action” (Verloo 2005, 22). ‘The “critical” in CFA stands for explicitly paying attention to the voice of actors (authors of texts and references in texts) and to their varying power in diagnosis, prognosis, and call for action. When CFA is applied from a feminist perspective, gender is central in the power dimension’ (van der Haar and Verloo 2016).

Crucial to understanding framing is that, as argued by Entman, ‘[f]raming […] 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 compete to dominate the text’ (Entman 1993).