This essay undertakes a detailed frame analysis of print media coverage
of the Matthew Shepard murder in three nationally influential newspapers
as well as Time magazine and The Advocate. We contend that the media's
tragic framing of the event, with an emphasis on the scapegoat
process, functioned rhetorically to alleviate the public's guilt
concerning anti-gay hate crimes and to excuse the public of any social
culpability. It also functioned ideologically to reaffirm a dominant
set of discourses that socially stigmatizes gay, lesbian, bisexual,
and transgendered persons and to hamper efforts to create and enact a
social policy that would prevent this type of violence in the future. A
concluding section considers Burke's notion of the "comic frame" as a
potential corrective for the media's coverage of public tragedies.
Affect has historically been conceptualized in one of two dominant ways. The first perspective, which has its roots in psychology and neuroscience, tends to view affect as an elemental state. This tradition is reflected in Silvan S. Tomkins’s theory of primary affects and Antonio Damasio’s theory of basic emotions. Recent extensions of this tradition include the work of Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick, Lisa Cartwright, and Teresa Brennan. The second perspective, which is typically associated with developments in philosophy and the humanities, treats affect as an intensive force. This tradition, whose most famous proponent is Gilles Deleuze, is evident in Brian Massumi’s theory of autonomous affect and Nigel Thrift’s non-representational theory. Recent extensions of this tradition tend to emphasize the importance of materiality, or what Jane Bennett has called “thing-power.” A number of scholars working in communication and cultural studies have created a third, hybrid tradition that attempts to bridge or mediate the two dominant historical accounts. This third perspective includes Lawrence Grossberg’s notion of affective investments, Christian Lundberg’s Lacanian-inspired view of affect, Sara Ahmed’s work on the sociality of emotion, and Gernot Böhme’s theory of atmospheres.
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.