The Importance Of Framing And Agenda Setting

Mass media is an ever-growing field where millions of people are connected at a constant basis. With that being said opinions and viewpoints are established on a daily basis through the media society reads. Many of these news media sources can be persuasive and have an influence on individual’s opinions. This concept is called framing. While it is related to the concept of agenda setting, framing focuses more on the issue at hand rather than on a particular topic. Framing is an important topic because of its major influence over the choices people make and how they process information. “Goffman stated that there are two distinctions within primary frameworks which are natural and social. Both play the role of helping individuals interpret

Framing as defined by Robert Entman is “to frame a communicating text or message is to promote certain facets of a ‘perceived reality’ and make them more salient in such a way that endorses a specific problem definition, casual interpretation, moral evaluation, and/or a treatment recommendation (Cissel 68).” Framing is an extension of agenda-setting, which is when the media tells us what to think about (Sparks 228).

The “roots” of bias in the media date back to the nineteenth century, and criticism about bias partly reflects a controversial idea about what exactly is the media’s role and purpose. Newspapers and television alike are suppose to exist to relay objective, factual information gathered and communicated by journalists and reporters.

THESIS: Political framing, as used by presidential candidates in the 2016 election, may determine the outcome of an election rather than the actual qualifications or stance on issues of the candidates themselves.

Graber argues, “media coverage is the very lifeblood of politics because it shapes the perceptions that form the reality on which political action is based” (p. 229). The media does more than just depict the political environment, since they are practically the political environments. It is said that the relationship between the media and the chief executive goes through three phases. First, is the honeymoon period, which is a time of cooperation when the media send the president’s messages about organization of the new administration and their agenda. Once the honeymoon is over, the White House may retaliate by withholding news, restricting presidential contacts with the press, and increasing public relations activities. There may be a third phase in which both sides retreat from their mutually hostile behavior to take a more moderate stance. After reading the Elite Framing article, Nisbet (2011) stated, “frames explain why an issue matters, who or what might be responsible for a problem, and what should be done.” Frames are used to inform efforts to hold those in power accountable. Nisbet argues “but this understanding can also inform effort at countering elite frames that might reinforce gridlock or political

For example, agenda setting is when media coverage of an issue influences the importance of that issue in the public’s mind. Agenda setting may not directly tell the public what is importance but can press for the public to think about certain issues. For example, new sources are constantly reporting stories of violence in local areas which concerns the public. However, crime rates have dropped drastically since the early 1990’s. Violence in the media causes the public to believe crime rate is an issue, despite what the statistics state. This helped push the salience of the issue of crime rates and violence. Framing is when the media provides context for the stories they report. Priming is when the media provides images that influence the criteria by which political leaders or parties are judged. Priming is constantly used in the media during political campaigns. This is used to skew the judgement of political candidates. When consumers are constantly watching the news, crime is more likely a concern since it is always reported on television as well. Crime will be perceived as an important problem since news sources are reporting this to get rating and views. This causes consumers to feel a sense of unease and threat when crime is always appearing especially if it’s in their local area. Framing is filtered and shaped to fit how news sources what to report the story. The details or context of the story leaves the audience to interpret what they see fit. Framing is most obvious when two or multiple new sources are compared and the story description is different. It tends to be more obvious when there is a difference between ethnicities. Majority of the time, minorities are viewed as criminals and are broadcasted more often in violence. The media can influence how the public views certain ethnicities or genders. Several ethnicities are stereotype based off of the

Agenda Setting is a theory that has the ability to influence the salience of topics on the public agenda. It is a very dangerous, but helpful tactic that many mainstream media use in order to powerfully influence the public. Media has the ability to shape and mold the most “important” news of the time, and this is highly evident in the OJ Simpson Case and the famous Movie Rocky IV.

Framing falls under the umbrella of Agenda Setting; a theory that argues that mass media does not instruct us what to think, but rather gives us something to think about (Baran, 330). Episodic framing is a type of framing, which selectively zooms in on a certain aspect of an issue, rather than its entirety. The media influences how we see certain issues, as well as how important they are in our lives. This often leads to misjudgments because of the lack of information given, as it does not portray things from a broader

The driving force of framing media texts is the process of culling a few elements of a perceived reality and assembling a story that highlights associations among them, to generate a particular interpretation. In this case, frames usually play four roles: problem definition, causal analysis, judgment stimulation, and remedy promotion. Framing is also driven by saliences of frames. In this case, to frame is to select aspects of a perceived reality to make them more salient in a media

According to Erving Goffman, it is a “schemata of interpretation”. (Goffman, 1974) On the other hand, Todd Gitlin interprets framing as “persistent patterns of cognition, interpretation, and presentation, of selection, emphasis, and exclusion”. (Gitlin, 1980) On the contrary, scholars Joseph Cappella and Kathleen Jamieson believe that media framing “activates knowledge and stimulate cultural values and morals” within an audience. (Capella and Jamieson, 1997) All these various theories offers support as to how and why the framing of a news article matters.

In addition, much of this research has been concerned with two key and interlinked aspects of news media. The first one pertains to framing. Frames, defined as media depictions dependent on what information or feature is “salient” in the environment (Heider, 1958). They are regarded as powerful mechanisms that can cause effects in both generating and harnessing public

Agenda-setting is one of the most important factors in shaping public opinion. Agenda-setting can be defined as the ability of the media to direct public attentions toward the issues they believe are important to the public. But whose choice is it that determines which issues are more important over others? The news media can set an agenda-setting by focus attention on selected issues on which the public will form opinions from (McCombs). The media can paint a memory in your head by repeatedly repeating the issues on different media sources as Internet, network televisions, newspapers, etc. Since these sources are the cheapest and easiest to access, the information can be view by vast number of audiences. As quoted in a 1922 classic called “Public Opinion” by Walter Lippmann,

Another way media frames political issues is inserting media’s own position on the issue. The media’s position tends to be more liberal and promotes more democratic policies and issues. This bias coverage stems from a long growing relationship between the media and liberal forces (Ginsberg, Lowi & Weir, 1999). However, any bias can distort new coverage and influence audiences in that direction.

The concepts of agenda setting and framing are widespread and prevalent within mass media and in everyday forms of life. McCombs and Shaw define agenda setting as “the idea that there is a strong correlation between the emphasis that mass media places on certain issues… and the importance attributed to these issues by mass audiences.” (Scheufele 11) A related concept to agenda setting is framing, the idea that media can “select some aspects of a perceived reality and make them more salient in a communicating text.” (Entman 52) Agenda setting and framing play important roles in defining and controlling all forms of media that we see on a daily basis. Every article that we read online and in newspapers and every billboard that we see on the

The research for this article was conducted within a framework of Framing theory. The theory was first put forward by a Canadian-American sociologist Erving Goffman. Media framing, to put it bluntly, is a term that points to a presence of a certain bias in any media outlets’ output. All choices made in a newsroom collectively form the frame through which media decides to show the world to the audiences. Everything matters: Covering one event and ignoring another, covering one event more than the other, deciding what words to use to cover an event, what photographs or video clips to include, whom to give a voice, etc. At the same time, framing theory goes far beyond newsroom policies. Framing is not necessarily a delibirate choice. Journalists themselves look at the world through frames: their education, upbringing, gender, ethnical background, knowledge of the issue, and so on. Audience members apply their own frames as well, not just to media content, but to everything they hear and see.