In response to the proposition that communication lacks disciplinary status because of deficient core knowledge, I propose that we turn an ostensible weakness into a strength. We should identify our mission as bringing together insights and theories that would otherwise remain scattered in other disciplines. Because of the lack of interchange among the disciplines, hypotheses thoroughly discredited in one field may receive wide acceptance in another. Potential research paradigms remain fractured, with pieces here and there but no comprehensive statement to guide research. By bringing ideas together in one location, communication can aspire to become a master discipline that synthesizes related theories and concepts and exposes them to the most rigorous, comprehensive statement and exploration. Reaching this goal would require a more self-conscious determination by communication scholars to plumb other fields and feed back their studies to outside researchers. At the same time, such an enterprise would enhance the theoretical rigor of communication scholarship proper.The idea of "framing" offers a case study of just the kind of scattered conceptualization I have identified. Despite its omnipresence across the social sciences and humanities, nowhere is there a general statement of framing theory that shows exactly how frames become embedded within and make themselves manifest in a text, or how framing influences thinking. Analysis of this concept suggests how the discipline of communication might contribute something unique: synthesizing a key concept's disparate uses, showing how they invariably involve communication, and constructing a coherent theory from them.Whatever its specific use, the concept of framing 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 Robert M. Entman is an associate professor of communication studies,
This article proposes integrating the insights generated by framing, priming, and agenda-setting research through a systematic effort to conceptualize and understand their larger implications for political power and democracy. The organizing concept is bias, that curiously undertheorized staple of public discourse about the media. After showing how agenda setting, framing and priming fit together as tools of power, the article connects them to explicit definitions of news slant and the related but distinct phenomenon of bias. The article suggests improved measures of slant and bias. Properly defined and measured, slant and bias provide insight into how the media influence the distribution of power: who gets what, when, and how. Content analysis should be informed by explicit theory linking patterns of framing in the media text to predictable priming and agenda-setting effects on audiences. When unmoored by such underlying theory, measures and conclusions of media bias are suspect.
Bydeenpba&%gtbeagencyandtbevictimsand by tbe U.S. clowntng of am Iradunplane called zt a kdndcal proMem wbue tbe Soviet duwning o f a €&m?am jet was portrqpd as a mmal outrage.On September 1, 1983, a Soviet fighter plane shot down Korean Air Lines Flight 007, killing its 269 passengers and crew. On July 3, 1988, a U.S. Navy ship, the Vincennes, shot down Iran Air Flight 655, killing its 290 passengers and crew. In both cases, military officials identified a passenger plane as a possibly hostile target; in both cases, the perpetrating nation's officials claimed the shooting was justifiable under the circumstances. This article examines the conm t i n g news frames employed by several important U.S. media outlets in covering these two tragic misapplications of military force. For the first, the frame emphasized the moral bankruptcy and guilt of the perpetrating nation; for the second, the frame de-emphasized guilt and focused on the complex problems of operating military high technology. Comparing media narratives of events that could have been reported similarly helps to reveal the critical textual choices that framed the story but would otherwise remain submerged in an undifferentiated text. Unless narratives are compared, frames are difficult to detect fully and reliably, because many of the framing devices can appear as "natural," unremarkable choices of words or images. Comparison reveals that such choices are not inevitable or unproblematic but rather are central to the way the news frame helps establish the literally "common sense" (i.e., widespread) interpretation of events.By demonstrating that different words and images were consistently chosen in the two stories to depict similar phenomena, this article suggests exactly cbdce of g r a p k s and d j e d v e s , tbe news stories about tbe Robert M.
President Bush's initial frame for the attacks of September 11, 2001, overwhelmingly
Local news may be one vehicle through which television helps, inadvertently, both to preserve and to transform cultural values. Content analysis on the evening news on four Chicago television stations over a lengthy period suggests local television responds to viewing tastes of black audiences. However, data on these Chicago television news programs suggest racism still may be indirectly encouraged by normal crime and political coverage that depict blacks, in crime, as more physically threatening and, in politics, as more demanding than comparable white activists or leaders. Ironically, widespread employment of black television journalists suggests to viewers that racial discrimination is no longer a significant social problem. The mix of these two views of blacks encourages modern white racism—hostility, rejection and denial toward black aspirations—the study argues.
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