Framing: Towards Clarification of a Fractured

Paradigm

Robert M. Entman

In: Journal of Communication 43 (4), 1993, 51-58.

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Framing: Toward Clarification of a
Fractured Paradigm

by Robert M. Entman, Northwestern University

In response to the proposition that communication lacks disciplinary sta-

tus because of deficient core knowledge, I propose that we turn an osten-
sible weakness into a strength. We should identify our mission as bring-
ing together insights and theories that would otherwise remain scattered
in other disciplines. Because of the lack of interchange among the disci-
plines, 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 re-
search. 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 state-
ment and exploration. Reaching this goal would require a more self-con-
scious 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 think-
ing. Analysis o f this concept suggests how the discipline of communica-
tion might contribute something unique: synthesizing a key concept’s dis-
parate 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 il-
luminates the precise way in which influence over a human conscious-
ness is exerted by the transfer (or communication) of information from

Robert M. Entman is a n associate professor of communication studies, journalism, and po-

litical science and chair of the program in Communications, Media, a n d Public Policy at the
Center for Urban Affairs and Policy Research at Northwestern University, Evanston, IL. He
gratefully acknowledges the comments of students in his “Mass Communication and Demo-
cratic Theory” seminar, especially Andrew Rojecki.
Copyright 0 1993Journal of Communication 43(4), Autumn. 0021-9916/93/$5.00
Journal of Communzcatzon,Antumn 199.3

one location-such as a speech, utterance, news report, or novel-to that

consciousness. (A representative list of classic and recent citations would
include: Edelman, 1993; Entman & Rojecki, 1993; Fiske & Taylor, 1991;
Gamson, 1992; Goffman, 1974; Graber, 1988; Iyengar, 1991; Kahneman &
Tversky, 1984; Pan & Kosicki, 1993; Riker, 1986; Snow & Benford, 1988;
Tuchman, 1978; White, 1987; Zaller, 1992.) A literature review suggests
that framing is often defined casually, with much left to an assumed tacit
understanding of reader and researcher. After all, the words frame, f r a m -
ing, and .framework are common outside of formal scholarly discourse,
and their connotation there is roughly the same. The goal here is to iden-
tify and make explicit common tendencies among the various uses of the
terms and to suggest a more precise and universal understanding of them.

Of Frames and Framing

Framing essentially involves selection and salience. To frame is to select

some aspects of aperceived reality and make them more salient i n a com-
municating text, i n such a way as to promote aparticularproblem defini-
tion, causal interpretation, moral evaluation, and/or treatment recom-
mendation for the item described. Typically frames diagnose, evaluate,
and prescribe, a point explored most thoroughly by Gamson (1992). An
example is the “cold war” frame that dominated U.S. news of foreign af-
fairs until recently. The cold war frame highlighted certain foreign
events-say, civil wars-as problems, identified their source (communist
rebels), offered moral judgments (atheistic aggression), and commended
particular solutions (U.S. support for the other side).
Frames, then, dejineproblems-determine what a causal agent is doing
with what costs and benefits, usually measured in terms of common cul-
tural values; diagnose causes-identify the forces creating the problem;
make moraljudgments-evaluate causal agents and their effects; and
suggest remedies-offer and justify treatments for the problems and pre-
dict their likely effects. A single sentence may perform more than one of
these four framing functions, although many sentences in a text may per-
form none of them. And a frame in any particular text may not necessarily
include all four functions.
The cold war example also suggests that frames have at least four loca-
tions in the communication process: the communicator, the text, the re-
ceiver, and the culture. Communicators make conscious or unconscious
framing judgments in deciding what to say, guided by frames (often
called schemata) that organize their belief systems. The text contains
frames, which are manifested by the presence o r absence of certain key-
words, stock phrases, stereotyped images, sources of information, and
sentences that provide thematically reinforcing clusters of facts o r judg-
ments. The frames that guide the receiver’s thinking and conclusion may
or may not reflect the frames in the text and the framing intention of the

52
Toward ClarzJicatzono f a Fractured Paradigm

communicator. The culture is the stock of commonly invoked frames; in

fact, culture might be defined as the empirically demonstrable set of com-
mon frames exhibited in the discourse and thinking of most people in a
social grouping. Framing in a11 four locations includes similar functions:
selection and highlighting, and use of the highlighted elements to con-
struct an argument about problems and their causation, evaluation,
and/or solution.

How Frames Work

Frames highlight some bits of information about an item that is the sub-
ject of a communication, thereby elevating them in salience. The word
salience itself needs to be defined: It means making :i piece of informa-
tion more noticeable, meaningful, or memorable to audiences. An in-
crease in salience enhances the probability that receivers will perceive
the information, discern meaning and thus process it, and store it in meni-
ory (see Fiske & Taylor, 1991).
Texts can make bits of information more salient by placement o r repeti-
tion, or by associating them with culturally familiar symbols. However,
even a single nnillustrated appearance of a notion in an obscure part of
the text can be highly salient, if it comports with the existing schemata in
a receiver’s belief systems. By the same token, an idea emphasized in a
text can be difficult for receivers to notice, interpret, o r remember be-
cause of their existing schemata. For our purposes, schemata and closely
related concepts such as categories, scripts, or stereotypes connote men-
tally stored clusters of ideas that guide individuals’ processing of informa-
tion (see, e.g., Graber, 19881. Because salience is a product of the interac-
tion of texts and receivers, the presence of frames in the text, as detected
by researchers, does not guarantee their influence in audience thinking
(Entman, 1989; Graber, 1988).
Kahneman and Tversky (1984) offer perhaps the most widely cited re-
cent example o f the power of framing and the way it operates by select-
ing and highlighting some features of reality while omitting others. The
authors asked experimental subjects the following:

Imagine thal the 1J.S. is preparing f o r the outbreak of a n unusual Asian

disease, which is expected to kill 600people. Two alternative programs
to combat the disease have beenproposed. Assume that the exact scien-
tz$c estimates of the consequences qftheprograms are as,follows: I f Pro-
gram A is adopted, 200people will be saved. Ifprogram B is adopted,
there is a one-thirdprobability that GOOpeople will be saved and a two-
thirdsprohahility that no people will he saved. Which of the twopro-
grams wouldyou favor?(1984, p. 243)

In this experiment, 72 percent of subjects chose Program A; 28 percent

53
,/ournal of Communication, Autumn 199.3

chose Program B. In the next experiment, identical options to treating the

same described situation were offered, but framed in terms of likely
deaths rather than likely lives saved: “If Program C is adopted, 400 people
will die. If Program D is adopted, there is a one-third probability that no-
body will die and a two-thirds probability that 600 people will die”
(Kahneman & Tversky, 1984, p. 343). The percentages choosing the op-
tions were reversed by the framing. Program C was chosen by 22 percent,
though its twin Program A was selected by 72 percent; and Program D
garnered 7 8 percent, while the identical Program B received only 28 per-
cent.
As this example vividly illustrates, the frame determines whether most
people notice and how they understand and remember a problem, as
well as how they evaluate and choose to act upon it. The notion of fram-
ing thus implies that the frame has a common effect on large portions of
the receiving audience, though it is not likely to have a universal effect on
all.
Kahneman and Tversky’s experiments demonstrate that frames select
and call attention to particular aspects of the reality described, which log-
ically means that frames simultaneously direct attention away from other
aspects. Most frames are defined by what they omit as well as include,
and the omissions of potential problem definitions, explanations, evalua-
tions, and recommendations may be as critical as the inclusions in guid-
ing the audience.
Edelman highlights the way frames exert their power through the selec-
tive description and omission of the features of a situation:

The character, causes, and consequences of a n y phenomenon become

radically different as changes are made i n what is prominently dis-
played, what is repressed and especially i n how observations are classi-
jied. . . . (Uhe social world is . . . a kaleidoscope ofpotential realities,
any of which can be readily evoked by altering the ways i n which obser-
vations are framed and categorized. (1993, p. 232)

Receivers’ responses are clearly affected if they perceive and process in-
formation about one interpretation and possess little or incommensurable
data about alternatives. This is why exclusion of interpretations by frames
is as significant to outcomes as inclusion.
Sniderman, Brody, and Tetlock (1991) provide a clear instance of the
power of presence and absence in framing:

The effect of framing is toprime values differentially, establishing the

salience of the one or the other. (Thus]. . . a majority of thepublic sup-
ports the rights ofpersons with AIDS when the issue isframed (in a sur-
vey question] to accentuate civil liberties considerations-and supports
. . . mandatory testing when the issue isframed to accentuatepublic
health considerations. (p. 5 2 )

54
Toumrd Clanlfication of u Fractured Puradigm

The text of the survey question supplies most people with the considera-
tions they use when they respond to the issue of AIDS testing (Zaller,
1992). Often a potential counterframing of the subject is mostly or wholly
absent from a text, although, to use this instance, an audience member
with a strong civil liberties philosophy might reject mandatory testing
even if the poll framed AIDS strictly in public health terms.

Frames i n Political News

This portrait o f framing has important implications for political communi-
cation. Frames call attention to some aspects of reality while obscuring
other elements, which might lead audiences to have different reactions.
Politicians seeking support are thus compelled to compete with each
other and with journalists over news frames (Entman, 1989; Riker, 1986).
Framing in this light plays a major role in the exertion of political power,
and the frame in a news text is really the imprint of power-it registers
the identity of actors or interests that competed to dominate the text.
Reflecting the play of power and boundaries of discourse over an issue,
many news texts exhibit homogeneous framing at one level of analysis,
yet competing frames at another. Thus, in the pre-war debate over U.S.
policy toward Iraq, there was a tacit consensus among U.S. elites not to
argue for such options as negotiation between Iraq and Kuwait. The news
frame included only two remedies, war now or sanctions now with war
(likely) later, while problem definitions, causal analyses, and moral evalu-
ations were homogeneous. Between the selected remedies, however,
framing was contested by elites, and news coverage offered different sets
of facts and evaluations. The Iraq example reveals that the power of news
frames can be self-reinforcing. During the pre-war debate, any critique
transcending the remedies inside the frame (war soon versus more time
for sanctions) breached the bounds of acceptable discourse, hence was
unlikely to influence policy. By conventional journalistic standards, such
views were not newsworthy (Entman & Page, in press). Unpublicized, the
views could gain few adherents and generate little perceived or actual ef-
fect o n public opinion, which meant elites felt no pressure to expand the
frame so it included other treatments for Iraqi aggression, such as negoti-
ation. Relatedly, Gamson (1992) observes that a frame can exert great so-
cial power when encoded in a term like ajfirmatiue action. Once a term
is widely accepted, to use another is to risk that target audiences will per-
ceive the communicator as lacking credibility-or will even fail to under-
stand what the communicator is talking about. Thus the power of a frame
can be as great as that of language itself.

Benefits of a Consistent Concept of Framing

An understanding of frames helps illuminate many empirical and norma-

tive controversies, most importantly because the concept of framing di-

55
Journal of Communication, Autumn 1993

rects our attention to the details of just how a communicated text exerts
its power. The example o f mass communication explored here suggests
how a common understanding might help constitute framing as a re-
search paradigm. A research paradigm is defined here as a general theory
that informs most scholarship on the operation and outcomes of any par-
ticular system of thought and action. The framing paradigm could be ap-
plied with similar benefits to the study of public opinion and voting be-
havior in political science; to cognitive studies in social psychology; or to
class, gender, and race research in cultural studies and sociology, to name
a few. Here are some illustrations of theoretical debates in the study of
mass communication that would benefit from an explicit and common
understanding of the concept of frames.
1. Audience autonomy. The concept of framing provides an operational
definition for the notion of dominant meaning that is so central to de-
bates about polysemy and audience independence in decoding media
texts (Fiske, 1987). From a framing perspective, dominant meaning con-
sists of the problem, causal, evaluative, and treatment interpretations with
the highest probability of being noticed, processed, and accepted by the
most people. To identify a meaning as dominant or preferred is to suggest
a particular framing of the situation that is most heavily supported by the
text and is congruent with the most common audience schemata.
A framing paradigm cautions researchers not to take fugitive compo-
nents of the message and show how they might be interpreted in ways
that oppose the dominant meaning. If the text frame emphasizes in a vari-
ety of mutually reinforcing ways that the glass is half full, the evidence of
social science suggests that relatively few in the audience will conclude it
is half empty. To argue that the polysemic properties of the message con-
duce to such counterframing, researchers must show that real-world audi-
ences reframe the message, and that this reframing is not a by-product of
the research conditions-for example, a focus group discussion in which
one participant can lead the rest, or a highly suggestive interview proto-
col (Budd, Entman, & Steinman, 1990).
Certainly people can recall their own facts, forge linkages not made ex-
plicitly in the text, or retrieve from memory a causal explanation or cure
that is completely absent from the text. In essence, this is just what pro-
fessors encourage their students to do habitually. But Zaller (19921, Kah-
neman and Tversky (19841, and Iyengar (19911, among others, suggest
that on most matters of social or political interest, people are not general-
ly so well-informed and cognitively active, and that framing therefore
heavily influences their responses to communications, although Gamson
(1992) describes conditions that can mitigate this influence.
2 . Journalistic objectivity. Journalists may follow the rules for “objec-
tive” reporting and yet convey a dominant framing of the news text that
prevents most audience members from making a balanced assessment of
a situation. Now, because they lack a common understanding of framing,
journalists frequently allow the most skillful media manipulators to im-

56
Toward ClariJicationof a Fractured Paradigm

pose their dominant frames o n the news (Entman, 1989; Entman & Page,
in press; Entman & Rojecki, 1993). If educated to understand the differ-
ence between including scattered oppositional facts and challenging a
dominant frame, journalists might be better equipped to construct news
that makes equally salient-equally accessible to the average, inattentive,
and marginally informed audience-two or more interpretations of prob-
lems. This task would require a far more active and sophisticated role for
reporters than they now take, resulting in more balanced reporting than
what the formulaic norm of objectivity produces (Tuchman, 1978).
3. Content analysis. The major task o f determining textual meaning
should be to identify and describe frames; content analysis informed by a
theory of framing would avoid treating all negative or positive terms or
utterances as equally salient and influential. Often, coders simply tote u p
all messages they judge as positive and negative and draw conclusions
about the dominant meanings. They neglect to measure the salience of el-
ements in the text, and fail to gauge the relationships of the most salient
clusters of messages-the frames-to the audience’s schemata. Unguided
by a framing paradigm, content analysis may often yield data that misrep-
resent the media messages that most audience members are actually pick-
ing up.
4. Public opinion and normative democratic theory. In Zaller’s (1992)
account, framing appears to be a central power in the democratic
process, for political elites control the framing of issues. These frames can
determine just what “public opinion” is-a different frame, according to
Zaller, and survey evidence and even voting can indicate a different pub-
lic opinion. His theory, along with that of Kahneman and Tversky, seems
to raise radical doubts about democracy itself. If by shaping frames elites
can determine the major manifestations of “true”public opinion that are
available to government (via polls or voting), what can true public opin-
ion be? How can even sincere democratic representatives respond cor-
rectly to public opinion when empirical evidence of it appears to be so
malleable, so vulnerable to framing effects?
Say there are three ways to frame an issue and one generates 40 per-
cent approval, the others 50 percent and 60 percent, respectively. Ap-
proving the option with 60 percent support is not axiomatically the most
democratic response because of the cyclical majority problem (Riker,
19861, which makes majority rule among several complex options mathe-
matically impossible. Just as important, attempting to determine which of
the differently framed opinions is the closest to the public’s “real”senti-
ments appears futile, because it would require agreement among con-
tending elites and citizens on which frame was most accurate, fair, com-
plete, and so forth. A framing paradigm can illuminate, if not solve, such
central puzzles in normative democratic theory.
Indeed, the concept of framing is important enough in the many fields
of inquiry that use it to merit a book-length essay. The present effort, con-
strained by space limitations, offers not the definitive word on frames but

57
Journal of Communication, Autumn 1993

a preliminary contribution. Equally important, this article exemplifies

how the field of communication might develop from its wide ambit and
eclectic approaches a core of knowledge that could translate into re-
search paradigms contributing to social theory in the largest sense.

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