Media in the Policy Process: Using Framing and Narratives to Understand Policy Influences

Abstract

Policy scholarship has long sought to understand the role of knowledge and information in the policy process. Of the actors, institutions, and resources involved in shaping policy processes and outcomes, media and narratives have been incorporated into empirical policy scholarship and theories with varying success. The Narrative Policy Framework (NPF) is a framework through which scholars can bring analysis of narratives into studies of policy making. The NPF moves the field forward in understanding the role of narratives, communication, and stakeholder beliefs in the policy process, while at the same time striving for theoretical rigor. We embed the discussion of frames and narratives in the NPF to provide an empirical and theoretical cohesion to our understanding of media and public policy and then provide a brief empirical example of how such an integration may prove fruitful for policy scholars.The media and public policy scholarship has long wrestled with the problem of how much influence to accord to media as an actor in the policy process. Media interact with and influence the policy process in two paramount ways: (1) by selecting issues of importance to highlight to the public and policy makers (agenda-setting), and (2) by problematizing policy in a way that attaches meaning to it in a manner that is comprehensible (framing and constructing narratives). Policy scholars from many disciplines struggle with integration of communication-related concepts within our policy theories and empirical traditions. While agenda setting has a robust theoretical core with ample empirical validation, the theories underlying framing and narrative research are often used interchangeably, even though they may be informed by vastly different ontological assumptions. This paper integrates these seminal concepts from mass communication and political communication to better understand how media use framing and narratives to influence policy making. To do so, we embed the discussion of frames and narratives in the NPF to empirically and theoretically ground our discussion of the role of media and public policy, while simultaneously contributing to the emerging discussion on the value of incorporating narrative aspects into public policy analysis. Through this paper, we attempt to more clearly articulate some of the ways in which the scholarship from mass communication can improve our own discipline's approach to communication concepts that are crucial to policy processes and outcomes, most specifically: the use of framing and narrative and the definition of media actors.Lasswell's description of the then-emerging field of the policy sciences, wherein he focused on "knowledge of the policy process; knowledge in the process" (1970,

A media framing analysis of urban flooding in Nigeria: current narratives and implications for policy

“…In this study, frame analysis was conducted as a perspective from which we examine how actors represent their perception of flooding in the news media and can give a preliminary insight in narratives of actors. Therefore, this paper adopts the principle that frames illuminate narratives (Crow and Lawlor 2016). Although full narrative analysis or applying the NPF was not possible in this study, we are able to make inferences of actors' narratives on the basis of their frames.…”

“…As pointed out by McNair (2009), the media is not value-free but what is written within it influences public perception and the policy process (Doulton and Brown 2009). Similarly, scholars have shown that policy actors can use the media to (in)directly shape policy processes and outcomes (Crow and Lawlor 2016;Robinson 2001). Therefore, examining the public content of actors' narratives as framed within media articles provides insights not only into the broad perceptions of actors but into also why some practices may dominate or be undermined in the policy arena.…”

Risk‐Based Policy Narratives

“…The Narrative Policy Framework (NPF) was developed to provide scholars with theoretical and empirical grounding for inquiries into such questions about the interplay between communication and policy processes (Jones & McBeth, ; Jones, Shanahan & McBeth, ; Shanahan, Jones & McBeth, ) and has recently been expanded to analyze issues of risk, hazards, and disasters (see Crow, Lawhon, et al, ; Shanahan Raile, French, & McEvoy, ). In our previous work, we argued for the inclusion of framing analysis and the role of media within the broader NPF structure in order to account for the ways in which problems, solutions, and characters are portrayed to citizens (Crow & Lawlor, ). Framing as a theoretical approach to understanding how complex concepts are simplified strategically and necessarily during the construction of stories by policy actors is useful for unpacking some NPF concepts such as setting and plot that have not previously been explored by scholars as thoroughly as the characters and problem variables.…”

Bounded Stories

“…Since Entman's () declaration of a “fractured paradigm” two and a half decades ago, the cracks have continued splintering out like those on a broken window. The framing literature has become ponderous as it has expanded in both breadth and depth across multiple disciplines over the last few decades (see summaries in Borah, ; Chong & Druckman, ; Crow & Lawlor, ; de Vreese, , ; Scheufele & Iyengar, ). Bluntly stated, virtually all selective presentations of information now qualify as framing activities due to the substantial variation in the disciplinary and theoretical homes that define and operationalize frames.…”