Hello, today we're going to talk about the framing theory. This theory is often used to analyze the news media, but it can also be used for other forms of communication and media such as film, advertising, and even social media. In this video, we will talk about what is framing, how is it used by the news media, who are its main proponents, and how the study of media framing is applied in sociology, psychology, and semiotics.
Frames are abstractions that work to organize or structure message meaning. The most common use, as we had said of this theory, is the study of framing the news, whether textual or visual. But framing can also be used by other communicators to package their messages.
Framing can influence the audience perception. That is why this theory is often used together with the agenda setting theory. You can check my other video on this theory.
Maxwell McComb had said that while agenda setting influences the audience on what to think about, how a story or media post is framed can influence the audience. audience on how to think about it. News framing refers to how the media packages and presents information to the public. A media institution or social influencer can focus attention on certain events, issues, or even persons and then place them within a field of meaning or a frame. Media highlights certain events and then places them within a particular context.
to encourage or discourage certain interpretations. In this way, media exercises a selective influence over how people view reality. Sociological framing focuses on the words, images, phrases, and presentation styles that communicators use when relaying information to recipients.
Research on frames in sociologically driven Media research generally examines the influence of social norms and values, organizational pressures, constraints, pressures of interest groups, journalistic routines, and ideological or political orientations of the media on the existence of frames within the media or message context. For example, in advertising or packaging, We see here the example of yogurt. What is more appealing? A yogurt that is 20% fat or 80% fat-free? But doesn't this mean the same thing?
Biased framing can also be done by the source. There is such a thing as positive framing when you put a message in a positive light. For example, in terms of propaganda, making someone look...
better than he is, or negative framing to put the message in a negative light or to make someone appear as someone incompetent or not reliable or even if this is not true. For example, a politician can frame his message in such a way that the audience will easily accept it. In this example, we see the same report having two different story approaches.
One, which caters to the Latino audience of Fox News, and one that caters to the American audience of Fox News. See the difference? Frames are actually necessary in the news, given that there are so many things happening and not enough time or space to relay all this material. When frames are used properly, it is devised through news values, such as timeliness, The significance or importance of the event, prominence, proximity, that is how it is relevant to the immediate audience, oddity, something unusual or eye-catching, and consequence, something that the audience needs to know. It is wrongfully used when it is based on media bias, such as spin, unsubstantiated claims, Opinion acting as fact.
Slants or a one-sided story. Omissions. Stories that...
do not include pertinent facts and flawed logic when something is connected when they have no relation whatsoever. Framing can also be done via construction. In this example, we see the coverage of Newsweek for a similar event.
The only difference is in one instance, it is a Chinese missile that accidentally hits a commercial plane and we can see the headline being blown. murder in the air. When an American missile accidentally hits a commercial plane, the headline becomes why it happened.
Psychologically driven media research generally examines the effects of media frames on those who receive them. For example, Iniegar explored the impact of episodic and thematic news frames on viewers'attributions of responsibility. for political issues including crime, terrorism, poverty, unemployment, and racial inequality.
In this example on screen, we see the approach of the Russian TV saying that it's Ukraine that started the war. At the very same time that CNN and other Western media were showing the attacks in Kyiv, Russian TV was not showing live coverage from Kyiv. In fact, it was showing pre-taped reports, some of them very dramatic, showing reporters in flak jackets standing in front of tanks, but coming instead from that breakaway region in the eastern part of Ukraine, the Donbass region, where those two breakaway republics that were recognized officially this week by Russia are located. This is all part of the messaging from the Russian government on state TV.
Constantly showing the people in those locations, claiming that they are the victims of genocide, that they are being attacked by the Ukrainian government. The Ukrainian government, of course, denying that. But it is an attempt to justify the steps that the Russians are taking now to remove that government, which they argue is illegitimate.
According to Inyegar, an episodic news frame takes the form of a case study or event-oriented report and depicts public issues in terms of concrete instances. In other words, focusing on specific place in a specific time, thematic news frames places public issues in some more general abstract context directed at general outcomes or conditions. In this example, we see two different newspapers. with two different headlines on the same day. Framing stimulates the decision-making process by highlighting particular aspects by eliminating the others.
The newspaper frames the news within a particular viewpoint. This can help readers process the news or change their perception of the issue. In this particular example, we see one newspaper reporting corruption scandals that at the time was being discussed in the Senate, while the other paper completely ignores it and focuses on other issues.
The following concepts are associated with framing. First, journalists select the topics they will present and decide how they will be presented. This determines the issues audiences think about and how they think about them.
Second, Audiences interpret information through their own frames. Audiences'frames may overlap or even contradict the media frame. Third, frames are reinforced every time they are evoked, whether positively or negatively.
And fourth, frame building is a systematic process that occurs over time, such as Black Lives Matter. the war on drugs, or historical revisionism. These concepts can be applied as well in social media and in fact has been used by those disinformation architects to influence the public's frame of mind and perception of reality. Who are the main proponents of the framing theory? The first is sociologist Irving Goffman.
who published his frame analysis in 1974. Goffman argues that people make use of frames to make sense of the world. He said that human beings construct, organize, and differentiate among all the possible meanings of their experiences in any given situation. Goffman states that there are two distinctions with primary frameworks, natural and social. Both play the role of helping individuals interpret data so that their experiences can be understood in a wider social context.
context. The difference between the two is functional. Natural framing identifies events as physical occurrences, taking natural quote literally and not attributing any social forces to the causation of the events. Social frames view events as socially driven occurrences due to the whims, goals, and manipulation on the part of other social players. Social frames are built on natural frames.
They create and influence how data is interpreted, processed, and communicated. On the other hand, sociologist and journalist Professor Todd Gitlin argued that a frame is built through selection, emphasis, and exclusion. In his book, The Whole World is Watching, he discusses how a particular frame makes people People focus their attention on some messages, that is, those that are included in it, and ignore some other messages, those that are excluded from it. These include textual frames or semantics, such as labels and coined terms, illegal immigrant versus undocumented worker, pro-choice versus pro-abortion, fake news versus disinformation.
Depending on the text chosen, one can see how one wants to frame the idea, person, or event. Some theoretical models used for frame theory. This particular model proposed by Vries in 2005 looks at framing in the newsroom.
Another theoretical model put out by Pan and Gosinski in 1993. again looks at news discourse and its effects on the public. Finally, Kress and Van Leeuwen, in their book Reading Images, talk about framing in semiotics. Framing is seen as a multimodal resource for both separating and connecting represented entities, especially in art and design. A frame can thus be used to signify that certain elements either belong together or are separated. This can be applied in media design elements, such as a boxed-off story on the front page of a newspaper can indicate that the story is interesting but not as important as the other front-page stories.
It can also indicate a sponsored article. As we can see here, Framing is applied in media design, whether it's a newspaper or a magazine. For more discussions on media theory, please subscribe to this channel.