The Dynamics of Framing: Image, Emotion, and the European Migration Crisis

Abstract

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Frame Restructuration: The Making of an Alternative Business Incubator amid Detroit’s Crisis

“…In the civil aviation industry, the industry-wide consensus on how to address environmental crises was achieved only after the primary actors (e.g., airlines and airports) changed from a buffering frame (resisting change) to an integrating frame (embracing change) (Litrico and David, 2017). Changes in the way the media framed the migrant crisis in Europe, ignited by a shocking photograph of a young refugee who drowned in 2015, led to more compassionate action to alleviate the crisis (Klein and Amis, 2020). Reframing has also been crucial in responses to smaller-scale, fast-moving crises.…”

“…Most prior research on successful reframing has focused on transitions from an old to a new frame rather than on the process in between. Although existing research has highlighted the effective configuration of new frames (Kaplan, 2008; Lee, Ramus, and Vaccaro, 2018) and the forces facilitating the transition to a new frame (Powell and Baker, 2014; Klein and Amis, 2020), it tells us little about how actors can break out of a frame that has shaped their perception of the world. Studies on failed reframing vividly demonstrate how hard it is to displace existing frames.…”

“…Although Litrico and David’s (2017) analysis showed how actors transition from one frame to the next, the frames in their analysis are derived from the literature, and therefore little is said about how the new frames are initially built. Klein and Amis (2020) delineated how the contents of already established frames (i.e., migrant and refugee frames) change over time but not how a new frame grows out of the demise of an old one. While Kaplan’s (2008) frame contest does illuminate the processual view of how a new frame is crafted, the process relies heavily on reassembling existing meaning elements available in the frame repertoires, leaving unknown how the repertoires initially come into being.…”

“…For example, those who failed to quickly drop an old frame and update to a new one exacerbated the crisis in the Mann Gulch wildfire (Weick, 1993), the Stockton shooting (Cornelissen, Mantere, and Vaara, 2014), the Occupy London movement (Reinecke and Ansari, 2020), and the 2008 global financial crisis (Fligstein, Stuart Brundage, and Schultz, 2017). In contrast, nimbly adopting a novel frame alleviated the pain of the European migrant crisis (Klein and Amis, 2020), prevented catastrophic disasters during the 9/11 terrorist attacks (Quinn and Worline, 2008), facilitated strategic decisions amid industrial upheaval (Kaplan, 2008), and enabled entrepreneurial resilience in the face of regional decline (Powell and Baker, 2014). These findings make it clear that actors amid crisis are tasked with an urgent dual mission: to destroy an old frame and simultaneously construct a new one (Weick, 1993).…”

“…For those who experience confusion and anxiety due to the increasing malfunctions of an existing frame, it can be even less clear how to form a new frame. Prior research has offered some insight into how actors transition from an old to a new frame (Litrico and David, 2017; Klein and Amis, 2020) and how actors realign new frames by reassembling meaning elements from a frame repertoire (Kaplan, 2008; Lee, Ramus, and Vaccaro, 2018), but little is known about how a new, alternative frame emerges in the first place. For actors confronting a dynamically unfolding crisis, the vision for a new frame is unclear, and a well-defined repertoire of meaning elements is rarely accessible.…”