What’s in a frame, what’s in a name?

Abstract

This report reviews the development and organization of social movement research, the place frame analysis in the field, and its weak relationship with cognitive-linguistic approaches to frames and scripts. It considers the differences between frames and ideologies – the latter being a key social movement concept. It then presents a practical methodology to chart the content of frame schemas, with an emphasis on fealty to the original documents and their fine-grained, linguistically informed analysis. Close attention to empirical texts, sampled at different points in time or in response to hinge events, ideally provide the empirical basis for inferences made about frame content and can be useful in comparatively tracing changes in strategic framing. Strategic framing is the marketing or ‘spin’ sense of the term, capturing the adjustment of messages or their presentation to increase acceptability and/or persuasiveness. The frequency of this phenomenon and a focus on strategy has disengaged framing from its original cognitive-linguistic grounding. It will likely remain that that way for reasons less concerned with rules of evidence and analytical logic and more about the pragmatics of publication and the discursive organization of academic fields.