Doing News Framing Analysis: Empirical and Theoretical Perspectives. Paul D’Angelo and Jim A. Kuypers, eds. New York, NY: Routledge, 2010. 376 pp.
I admit I found it a bit strange to be reviewing this book, especially in light of several references to the 2003 volume I co-edited as “the bible of news framing analysis.” I wondered whether extending the metaphor would make any sense. Clearly, this volume is far more than an update or an extension of those original contributions. Indeed, only two authors, Stephen Reese and Dhavan Shaw, have chapters in both volumes. I finally decided that Paul D’Angelo and Jim Kuypers have provided something of a user’s guide, something akin to a “Joy of Framing” as seen from the perspective of some of the most active and engaged practitioners of the craft of news framing analysis.
D’Angelo is an associate professor of communication studies at the College of New Jersey, and Kuypers is an associate professor in the communication department at Virginia Tech. The editors emphasize the importance of thinking about framing as a multilevel process involving journalists as both authors and audiences at different stages or phases in the development of news, public understanding, and political and social change. Each of the authors of the fifteen chapters provides some justification for choices made about where they place their emphasis on understanding how this process moves forward in time.
It would be hard to imagine a user’s guide that would attempt to clarify the role that journalistic norms and institutional constraints play in determining which frames tend to dominate the array of familiar themes, stories, or conflicts that we encounter as news. We get these important efforts and much, much more. Because of the structural transformations taking place within the markets for news and information, it also seemed right for such a collection to include Stephen Cooper’s assessment of the blogosphere. Although his analysis concentrates on bloggers whose energies were focused on the criticism of mainstream journalism, his approach to the analysis of oppositional frames more generally establishes an important take-off point for future work in this area.
Among the chapters that examine the analysis of framing effects there are several that focus on the insights derived from cognitive science. Several explore how associative networks, cognitive complexity, and even moral and ethical values help to determine what people understand, believe, and feel about social problems that have been framed in particular ways.
Although the pursuit of theoretical clarity is quite well represented in this volume, such as in the masterful synthesis offered by Bertram and Dietram Scheufele, there are also well-crafted chapters that emphasize the contributions that methodological improvements and extensions can make to the enterprise. Paul Brewer and Kimberly Gross, for example, demonstrate how the expansion of the experimental model beyond the laboratory offers additional possibilities for clarifying the nature of framing effects. They go further to suggest how a multi-method approach might be applied to the task of clarifying the impact of framing on public opinion. Kuypers takes a markedly different approach and defends his claim that despite the fact that rhetorical criticism is an art, rather than a science, it is still a source of knowledge about communication that has a role within framing research.
Because the editors have chosen widely from within a community of active framing researchers, this book includes a number of topics that have not enjoyed all the scholarly attention that I believe they deserve. Matthew Nisbet includes both climate change and poverty as examples of public policy debates in which advocates for change could use a little advice about how to move the policy agenda forward by mobilizing collective action through strategic message targeting. Nisbet’s activist orientation is also to be found in Marie Harden and Erin Whiteside’s examination of the potential that exists for the pursuit of feminist ideals through framing analysis. They offer a constructionist approach to framing research as well as an invitation for feminists to introduce alternative frames and “storylines” that are designed to help promote social justice.
Despite the impressive breadth of perspectives reflected in this collection, some blind spots or gaps remain. Even though Robert Entman’s comprehensive definition of framing is dutifully repeated throughout the volume, many of the consequences of framing that really matter—such as the formation, passage, and implementation of the public policies implicated in media frames—are largely ignored.
It should be noted, however, that Entman continues to argue within his own contributed chapter that framing analysis can and should be directed toward understanding the role that media play in the exercise of power within the public sphere. That is, he suggests that framing analyses should be designed with the goal of determining how particular frames reinforce or otherwise shape the ability of organized interests to influence government decisions. Unfortunately, even Entman was led to focus his analytical lens on electoral decisions by the public, rather than on the provision of support for or opposition to particular policies by legislators, bureaucrats, judges, or executive level government officials.
My comments about this apparent blind spot are not primarily a criticism of these authors, or even of communications scholars in general who have stopped way too soon along the path toward understanding the societal role that framing actually plays. Political scientists, including those who study political communication, have also made incredibly slow and halting progress toward addressing this gap in our knowledge. Still, I remain confident that the next generation of scholars, who will be trained with the help of this very special volume, will take a giant leap toward that goal of understanding.
OSCAR H. GANDY JR.
University of Pennsylvania