Essay On Framing In The Media

In the study of mass communication, Framing is defined as “selecting and highlighting some facets of events or issues and making connections among them so as to promote a particular interpretation, evaluation, and/or solution” (Entman, 2004, p. 5). According to the University of Twente, its core assumption is that the media has the capacity to select and give salience to aspects of an event or issue. Framing, therefore, is a cognitive bias in which the same issue is assessed differently depending on how the information about it is presented. By this, the public develop a certain perspectives, concepts, orientation, or even stereotypes, of the issue. In general, framing emphasizes particular interests that shape public opinion.

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Agenda- setting states that the menu of news and other information made available to the public by media decision-makers ultimately defines what is considered significant (McCombs, Shaw’s, 1972). In various studies, framing and agenda-setting are in many ways related. Both concepts are often associated since they both focus on how media draws the public’s eye to specific topics – in this way, they both set the agenda. But framing takes this a step further in the way in which the news is presented creates a frame for that information. While agenda-setting is primarily concerned with the media telling people which stories to think about, framing not only tells people what to think about but also how to think about those issues. Some studies see framing as part of agenda-setting; others argue it is a very different thing (Shah, McLeod, Gotlieb, & Lee, 2009, p. 83). In other studies, framing is construed as a form of second level agenda-setting – they not only tell the audience what to think about (agenda-setting theory), but also how to think about that issue (second level agenda setting, framing theory). In another study, it is stated that they both involve similar psychological processes but different cognitive processes (Shah, McLeod, Gotlieb, & Lee, 2009, p.

In news production, framing is more concerned with the news production process than agenda building. In other words, how forces and groups in society try to shape public discourse about an issue by establishing predominant labels is of far greater interest from a framing perspective than from a traditional agenda-setting one. In news processing, framing is more concerned with audience attention to news messages, while agenda setting is more concerned with repeated exposure to messages. And in the locus of effect, agenda-setting effects are determined by the ease with which people can retrieve from their memory issues recently covered by mass media, while framing is the extent to which media messages fit ideas or knowledge people have in their knowledge