This module is a sequence of the course From Mass Media to Social Media Theory
The history of media research is the history of just a few questions, of which the most salient is “what does media do to us?” There are others – who controls the media and how? does the media lead to more or less diversity of opinions? or does the media lead to lower the quality of intellectual experiences? – but none is as powerful as the “media effects” question. The origin of the “effects” question comes from the depths of the 20th century. The emergence of mass-produced, instantaneously delivered messages and content, such as those facilitated first by radio and later by television and more recently by digital media, created the feeling that the media are a one-of-a-kind leviathan, which may have swallowed us whole. We live and die by media messages, many authors worried, adding in the process that the content of these messages is trivial at best and deleterious at worst.
As we have shown in other modules on this site and in this course, these early fears and the questions that generated them were replaced by others, which focused not on what media does to us in an immediate and unfettered way but on what it does to us by indirect effects. One such indirect effect is that of framing. Framing is a very flexible media theory in that it allows the human receiver the right to process and absorb media messages. However, at the same time, framing theory proposes that we can only choose and absorb that which was cognitively formulated as a comprehending message. Formulating media messages is, according to this theory, never neutral. Human understanding depends on frames of reference shared between the communicator and the recipient. The frames are defined not only in the abstract as some sort of mutual understanding but as very specific, concrete linguistic and narrative choices. A major premise of framing theory, for whatever is right or wrong about it, is that words and storylines matter. Ideas are more likely to be absorbed, processed, and accepted if they are described in terms the communicators recognize and agree on. This mutual understanding of terms reduces cognitive friction, inspires trust, or makes the recipients think of them in morally acceptable terms. Framing is used broadly, from politics to commercial advertising, at times with great effect. Think of the “fat free” label, which at times is posted on items that by definition cannot contain fat. Or think about the powerful metaphors the “pro-life” and “pro-choice” frames propose to discuss the abortion debate.
Framing was proposed as media effect theory by Todd Gitlin in his famous book, The whole world is watching. Written in the wake of the failed 1968 revolution in the US, Gitlin proposed that the New Left movement failed to capture more political power and attention because it was framed, ideologically, not legally, by media stories that emphasized the spectacular and trivial (the colorful and contentious personalities of the movement), rather than the issues. While a lot can be said about the true reasons why the 1968 activists failed to achieve their goals, or if they did fail, one thing is for sure. Gitlin sensitized the world of media analysis to the fact that media can shape our minds in more than one way.
After Gitlin, a new intellectual generation of media scholars has approached the issue of framing with social scientific tools, aiming to determine to what extent and how framing does change public opinion. Broad overviews of the literature, such as the three papers mentioned below, conclude that framing can be used with great success to predict public acceptance of media messages, that framing is limited to proposing rather than imposing ideas, and that framing is a moving target, which should include not only what the media producers but also what the media consumers do with the messages that are proposed through framing.
One innovation was “priming.” This extension of framing theory proposes that processing or accepting a message sometimes depends not on how the ideas are formulated but on what type of prior knowledge we have available to process a message. Priming also assumes that media effects are the product of long cognitive chains, which work iteratively. Sometimes we are influenced not by what we just heard but by the fact that it echoes some prior information that we have received about the newly acquired knowledge.
Dietram A. Scheufele, David Tewksbury, Framing, Agenda Setting, and Priming: The Evolution of Three Media Effects Models, Journal of Communication, Volume 57, Issue 1, March 2007, Pages 9–20, https://doi.org/10.1111/j.0021-9916.2007.00326.x
This special issue of Journal of Communication is devoted to theoretical explanations of news framing, agenda setting, and priming effects. It examines if and how the three models are related and what potential relationships between them tell theorists and researchers about the effects of mass media. As an introduction to this effort, this essay provides a very brief review of the three effects and their roots in media-effects research. Based on this overview, we highlight a few key dimensions along which one can compare, framing, agenda setting, and priming. We conclude with a description of the contexts within which the three models operate, and the broader implications that these conceptual distinctions have for the growth of our discipline.
Borah, P. (2011). Conceptual issues in framing theory: A systematic examination of a decade’s literature. Journal of communication, 61(2), 246-263.
Although many scholars have pointed out problems in framing research, there has been very few systematic examinations of the published literature. To examine the common conceptual debates, the present study content analyzes framing literature from 93 peer-reviewed journals for a decade. Two methods were employed for the sample: First, every journal identified as a “communication journal” in the Journal Citation Report was included; second, keyword searches in electronic databases were used. The main findings showed that framing studies have concentrated more on message design and “unique” frames. Consistent with existing debates, results highlight the lack of research about production of frames and mixed frames. This examination of a decade’s published literature reveals better direction for future research.
Tewksbury, D., & Scheufele, D. A. (2019). News framing theory and research. In Media effects (pp. 51-68). Routledge.
News frames help journalists interpret and explain events, problems, and issues. They distill complex debates and policies to their essential elements, defining responsibility for problems and suggesting directions for action. This chapter describes the extant research on the development of frames (i.e., frame building) and their effects on audiences (i.e., frame setting). The authors address the audience experience of news frames, focusing on the psychological processes of construct accessibility and applicability and on differences between frame setting and other effects of exposure to news. They conclude with suggestions for further research on the effects of frames in contemporary, fragmented news environments.
Roskos-Ewoldsen, D. R., Klinger, M. R., & Roskos-Ewoldsen, B. (2007). Media priming: A meta-analysis. Mass media effects research: Advances through meta-analysis, 53-80.
Throughout most of the twentieth century, study of the mass media has focused on the consequences of the media for various aspects of people’s lives. Early research attempted to ascertain whether the media had an influence and, if so, the extent of that influence. In the last 25 years, however, the focus has shifted toward the development of theories that specify the mechanisms by which the media exert whatever influence they have on people. One such theoretical perspective, first used in the early 1980s to explain media effects, involves the potential for the media to prime people’s thoughts, beliefs, judgments, and behaviors. “Priming” refers to the effect of some preceding stimulus or event on how we react, broadly defined, to some subsequent stimulus. At this level, priming is an effect and not a theory. The effect is analogous to what happens when one primes a water well. When a person primes a well, the act of priming the well makes it possible for the well to produce water when it is pumped at a later time. As applied to the media, “priming” refers to the effects of the content of the media (e.g., extensive coverage of certain political stories, depictions of violence, the use of brief “teasers” about an upcoming story on a newscast) on people’s later behavior or judgments (e.g., evaluations of the president, aggressive behavior, attention to news stories related to the teaser). The two most prominent research areas that use priming to explain the effects of the media are media violence and the impact of political news coverage on evaluations of the president. These two areas are discussed further and are the main topics of the meta-analysis described later in the chapter.