framing science: to frame, or not to frame?

As I will explain in this post, I have started to think that this is, in reality, a rhetorical question. First of all, I tried to read as many of the papers kindly sent to me by Matt (Nisbet). These are the papers in question:

• Price, V., Nir, L., & Capella, J.N. (2005). Framing public discussion of gay civil unions. Public Opinion Quarterly, 69, (2), 179-212.
• Gamson, WA. and Modigliani, A. (1989). Media Discourse and Public Opinion on Nuclear Power: A Constructionist Approach. American Journal of Sociology, 95, 1-37.
• Scheufele, D. A., & Tewksbury, D. (2007). Framing, agenda-setting, and priming: The evolution of three media effects models. Journal of Communication, 57(1), 9-20.
• Scheufele, D.A. (1999). Framing as a Theory of Media Effects. Journal of Communication 49 (4): 103-22

I will not be discussing all of them. However, from reading the various papers, it becomes clear that, withing the field of framing theory, there is disagreement on whether framing should be considered as part of the work on agenda setting. This is probably what worried most of the science commenters to the Mooney's and Nisbet's paper in Science: the fact that framing can be considered as a form of spin.

What could justify such a view? Is the commenting audience always aware of what the differences (as defined by the academic discussion in communication studies) between agenda setting, framing and priming (yes, let's add more confusion to this debate) are? Let's try to give some definitions.

From Scheufele and Tewksbury, Journal of Communication 57 (2007) 9–20:

• Agenda setting refers to the idea that there is a strong correlation between the emphasis that mass media place on certain issues (e.g., based on relative placement or amount of coverage) and the importance attributed to these issues by mass audiences (McCombs & Shaw, 1972).
• Priming occurs when news content suggests to news audiences that they ought to use specific issues as benchmarks for evaluating the performance of leaders and governments. It is often understood as an extension of agenda setting. There are two reasons for this: (a) Both effects are based on memory-based models of information processing [...] In other words, judgments and attitude formation are directly correlated with ‘‘the ease in which instances or associations could be brought to mind’’ (Tversky & Kahneman, 1973, p. 208); (b) [...] priming is a temporal extension of agenda setting (Iyengar & Kinder, 1987). By making some issues more salient in people’s mind (agenda setting), mass media can also shape the considerations that people take into account when making judgments about political candidates or issues (priming).
• Framing [...] is based on the assumption that how an issue is characterized in news reports can have an influence on how it is understood by audiences. [...] The sociological foundations of framing were laid by Goffman (1974) and others who assumed that individuals cannot understand the world fully and constantly struggle to interpret their life experiences and to make sense of the world around them. In order to efficiently process new information, Goffman argues, individuals therefore apply interpretive schemas or ‘‘primary frameworks’’ (Goffman, 1974, p. 24) to classify information and interpret it meaningfully. Framing therefore is both a macrolevel and a microlevel construct (Scheufele, 1999). As a macroconstruct, the term ‘‘framing’’ refers to modes of presentation that journalists and other communicators use to present information in a way that resonates with existing underlying schemas among their audience (Shoemaker &Reese, 1996). This does not mean, of course, that most journalists try to spin a story or deceive their audiences. In fact, framing, for them, is a necessary tool to reduce the complexity of an issue, given the constraints of their respective media related to news holes and airtime (Gans, 1979). Frames, in other words, become invaluable tools for presenting relatively complex issues, such as stem cell research, efficiently and in a way that makes them accessible to lay audiences because they play to existing cognitive schemas. As a microconstruct, framing describes how people use information and presentation features regarding issues as they form impressions.

Sometimes, however, the difference between agenda setting and framing can become more "diffuse" when "An explication of the relationships between agenda setting (and priming) and framing people try to explain "(a) how news messages are created, (b) how they are processed, and (c) how the effects are produced. " For instance,

Zhou and Moy’s article [...] examines frame building and setting. They explore mechanisms by which the public and news media may jointly build frames around politically charged issues. Ultimately, they find that public framing of an issue exerts substantial influence on news messages in the context they study.

This also means that framing is of utmost importance in the stage of news creation. Framing's function is to make a certain message resonate with a certain audience's cultural/educational/historical background: the main idea of framing is not to shift opinions, but to make the message more accessible and relevant to an audience. On the other hand, agenda setting is about generating the set or list of issues that either the media or the public are paying attention at any point in time (as suggested by Nisbet).Therefore, reducing framing to a sub-category of agenda setting does not make justice to its definition and use. During news processing, framing and agenda processing both have a role, but

Attention to messages may be more necessary for a framing effect to occur than an agenda setting effect. Mere exposure may be sufficient for agenda setting, but it is less likely to be so for framing effects.

Once we look at the locus of effect, we see that "The primary difference on the psychological level between agenda setting and priming, on the one hand, and framing, on the other hand, is therefore the difference between whether we think about an issue and how we think about it. " To think about it, extensive news coverage (accessibility) is paramount; but for us to build an emotional link with the issue, be encouraged to understand it and discuss it, and therefore actually spending our time on it, we need to feel that the issue is close to our heart and our life, and such issue must be explained in a way that recalls such link (applicability).

Also, the way the issue is discussed will need to recall previous, maybe fragmented, knowledge: which means, to say it with NMR spectroscopy, the message's frame needs to resonate with our own. This is a completely different idea from the one of clogging media space (agenda setting), and constantly presenting biased views to an audience to try bring it to "our side" (spinning).

That brings me to my first conclusion: even considering different points of view in the field (I will send you back to the Scheufele and Tewksbury paper in the current Journal of Communication for more) framing and agenda setting are two very different concepts.

Framing is more about making your message linger, and resonate with a certain audience's already existing frames, than to create an artificial shift in public opinion. Framing theory does not see audiences as non-identified dummies whose opinions to shift at will; on the contrary, it tells us that already existing conceptualizations of knowledge within the audience will very much affect how such audience perceives our message regardless of the facts, and that therefore if we want our audience to "really understand" such message, we must make sure that such message is framed accordingly - so in a sense, the frames already existing in the target population affect our message, more than the other way round.

Now, back to the question in the title: to frame, or not to frame? Is framing something we really only do consciously? And if so, does conscious framing make us immoral spin doctors, only looking for a political victory in the short term? Probably, not quite so.

Dietram A. Scheufele, one of the authors of the paper I was quoting, probably already gave part of the answer to this question - that does not necessarily make me biased, as such article really is the introduction to the rest of the articles in the current issue of the JoC, Journal of Communication 57 (2007), dedicated to discussions on/of framing theory. However, as I commented on his blog, let me explain why this question on whether to frame is really rhetorical.

Frames are a model used in communication studies to try and explain how people interpret information, and also to explain why sometimes the information itself seems to be irrelevant to the final opinion people have of an issue.That is because the same facts, when presented from different point of views (because that is really what cultural, political, religious etc influences create - a point of view) generate different reactions from different people. Framing theory explains how how people process information; and a better understanding of that process can help us make communication more efficient.

The process of framing information is then a tool: just like a gun, a tool is not moral/immoral on its own. A tool is also built in a way to exploit the way people already work. Let me make a (maybe over-simplistic) example: take a gun. A gun is built to fit in a human hand, and to work best when the human hand has a certain size. The tool is built for the user, not the other way round. Also, guns exist because people do die when hit by bullets in certain places (or by sharp/small objects travelling at high speed): in the same way, framing is useful and used because people already respond to framing - it is, forgive me the words, in our nature.

Also, a gun is neither "bad" nor "good": the same gun, in the hand of a police officer, will be serving different ideals than in the hands of a criminal. It is up to us to make sure the use of this tool is regulated, and that its use (no matter in whose hands) is ethical. Scientists/science communicators can use framing as a short terms tool, making sure they use framing to also make people understand the importance of spending in science education, and show them that science can be exciting, and that it effectively changes lives over time.

What we use the frame for is what we should discuss, not whether frames should be used at all. Chances are, when presenting a talk, speaking at a lab meeting, or speaking to undergrads during teaching, we are already framing whatever we say - and that does not make us liers, "spin doctors", or immoral people. If we think about it, we need to frame our statements whenever we talk to an audience that is not accustomed to our vocabulary, to the topics we usually talk about, or that simply belongs to a different academic/cultural/historical background.

The question of whether we should frame or not is rhetorical because in all those cases we frame our arguments, maybe even consciously. Not only we do it already, but that does not make us immoral: it simply makes us better communicators.