Travelling around the world as scholars like myself do, I often find it interesting to pick up a copy of a local newspaper and flick through its domestic news. Jumping into a news debate in an unfamiliar cultural and political setting imposes severe limitations on my ability to âgetâ the news. Reports discuss unfamiliar actors engaged with complex, unexplained issues against a context of cultural beliefs and normative frameworks that I can only intuit at best. Of course, I can easily discern the overall topic of the report (an offensive comment by a political official, for example) and identify the angle taken by the news story (the comment covered as a political scandal, for instance). However, I often cannot understand the exact nature of the scandalâwho provoked it and whyânor will I fully grasp why the scandal matters politically and socially. So, while the news story conveys enough information for me to comprehend the incident as being part of a wider episode, its full meaningâthe âcentral organizing ideaâ (Gamson & Modigliani, 1987, p. 143) that captures and conveys a frame of referenceâeludes me.
The point here is that news is written for readers who are aware of preceding events, relevant context, and surrounding discourse. By âfollowingâ the news, readers and viewers become embedded within a public discourse that entails background knowledge about the relevant actors, issues, and settings, and an awareness of values and collective memories (Edy, 1999; Van Gorp, 2007). Because each news item will relay only a small part of the relevant background and context (van Dijk, 2014), it is comprehensible only when this wealth of contextual information is âalready at the recipientsâ disposalâ (Nelson, Oxley, & Clawson, 1997, p. 225). The news frame that gives meaning to the covered events arises only from the interaction between a news itemâs textual features and recipientsâ discursively constructed background knowledge and context.
While many scholars have noted that specific contextual knowledge is required to process and understand news frames (e.g., Price & Tewksbury, 1997; van Dijk, 1988), little has been said about the implications of this point for news framing research. In this chapter, I will argue that since the meaning of a news story extends far beyond each individual news item, news framing researchers need to build a more contextualized understanding of how the process of news framing works. Extending Pan and Kosickiâs (1993) notion of framing devices as well as Van Gorpâs (2010) frame matrix, I will explain how the text of news items lays out intertextual leads to selected additional knowledge, marks specific repertoires as relevant for understanding, and guides audiences to reconstruct the frames needed to render the news meaningful. In this perspective, news frames are coherent contextualizations of specific issues that are instantiated by individual news items and developed across ongoing news stories. Conceptualizing frames within their discursive context, I propose a semantic network approach to news frame analysis that enables news researchers to approximate those additional contexts that are woven in from beyond a given news item. Semantic network analysis enables us to investigate information provided by the text of individual news items in combination with knowledge drawn in from related news stories and other discourses beyond the text. It is an integrative approach to news framing analysis that brings together (a) cognitivist perspectives upon audiencesâ frame construction, (b) sociological conceptions of the wider cultural repertoires in which journalists make news frames and audiences understand them, and (c) text-based study of the full set of discourses in which culturally familiar frames are encoded, invoked, and communicated. After discussing avenues for empirical implementation, I conclude by weighing the specific achievements of this semantic network approach against the main limitations and challenges of existing perspectives.
Meaning beyond the News Item
To understand how frames construct a context for events in the news and give meaning to them and the underlying issues, it is important to remember that journalism covers and makes sense of events while they are happening. Unlike an historical account, written with the rich knowledge of hindsight, news tells a story in a sequence of episodes. Journalists âfollow upâ on unfolding issues (Jones, 2009) and âbear witnessâ to current developments, producing series of continuing stories that build upon and update prior reports (Baden & Stalpouskaya, 2015a). Each news item is written and read long before we know how the story will continue, but also long after other relevant events have been reported and interpreted. Most stories narrate one episode within an ongoing sequence of reports, connecting current events to their temporal precedents and expected consequences (van Dijk, 1988). Accordingly, episodes in the news are covered within an ongoing story line that projects from past news items into the future (Tenenboim-Weinblatt, 2013). To connect present developments to the broader, underlying issues, the contextualizing frame (or frames) must span across multiple stories and render each episode meaningful within the context of the entire story line. âUltimately, frames are of greatest interest to the extent that they add up to something bigger than an individual storyâ (Reese, 2001, p. 13). Of the knowledge required by audience members to interpret any particular news item, therefore, only very little information may be manifestly included in a particular news itemâs text, including its linguistic, visual, auditory, and other modalities.
The episodic structure of news reporting has often been noted and, somewhat mistakenly, criticized as being decontextualized (Iyengar, 1991, 2010). By analogy, if we watched an episode somewhere in the middle of an ongoing television series, we would be neither surprised nor disappointed to find that many contexts remained unexplained within the span of the hour. We understand that each episode is incomplete, that the story unfolds only across entire seasons. Like the news, television episodes occasionally introduce new characters, sites, and issues. Details introduced in previous episodes are referenced when they are relevant to the unfolding narrative. Like the news, each TV episode only advances the embedded story line incrementally, while the series itself remains ânon-closedâ (Tenenboim-Weinblatt, 2008). Just as each scene may relate to multiple plotlines, any news event may relate to multiple actors, issues, and narratives. As a result, continuing coverage of events may engender different meanings in the context of different issues, spanning multiple frames.
Accordingly, the kind of frames this chapter deals with can be understood as issue-specific frames (de Vreese, 2012; Tewksbury & Scheufele, 2009), which âare pertinent only to specific topics or [kinds of] eventsâ (de Vreese, 2005, p. 54). Issue-specific frames contextualize such topics or events against some interpretive repertoire within which they assume relevant meaning, thereby transforming them into (public) issues, toward which one can assume different stances. As Entman (1993) states, frames define problems with relevant implications, which can be evaluated, explained, and treated (see also Chong & Druckman, 2007). For instance, within a repertoire of humanitarianism, the event of a chemical attack in Syria may be framed as an atrocity, that is, a pertinent issue that evokes public outrage, raises attributions of blame, and begs for some form of sanction. At the same time, each frame is not specific to one event or topic alone, but is pertinent to the constructed issue. For instance, many news stories have framed both similar and rather different events and topics as atrocities (e.g., rebel armiesâ massacres in DR Congo; sinking refugee ships in the Mediterranean). Other frames may invoke the same repertoire but define different issues (e.g., tragedy) or interpret the same event against a different repertoire, obtaining a different frame (e.g., framing the attack as reckless provocation).
Issue-specific frames may be instantiated within any given news item, but they are not confined to it. Hence, audiences follow intertextual leads provided by particular framing devices found in a news item in order to identify the previously covered events, actors, and issues that are relevant to its comprehension, reconstructing the frame(s) by weaving a meaningful connection between old and new information (Graber, 1988). Over time, the frames carried by related, sequential news stories cultivate wider repertoires that contain those contexts needed to reconstruct familiar frames (Baden, 2010; Gamson & Modigliani, 1987). When they link their repertoires to fresh information in a news story, audience membersâ available prior understandings are not merely refreshed, but also updated, and possibly amended or challenged (Baden & Stalpouskaya, 2015a; Hall, Critcher, Jefferson, Clarke, & Roberts, 1978). The information provided by new reports becomes part of the available knowledge that can be retrieved for future frame construction. As the available familiar knowledge continues to accrue and evolve, slightly different frames are constructed to interpret the events and issues in the news (Motta & Baden, 2013; Scheufele & Scheufele, 2010).
How Audiences Reconstruct Frames in News Stories
Framing Devices
The framing devices journalists use to tell their news stories constitute important guideposts that direct audiences to construct specific news frames (Pan & Kosicki, 1993; Tewksbury & Scheufele, 2009). Metaphors, catchphrases, visual icons, and other framing devices immerse audiences into different semantic contexts. Prompting them to retrieve complex sets of beliefs, values, and evaluative considerations (Zaller & Feldman, 1992), these devices are instrumental for assembling all required elements of the frame, defined by Entman (1993) as its problem definition, causal attribution, treatment recommendation, and moral evaluation (see also Van Gorp, 2010). For audiences to whom the suggested contexts are unavailable or inaccessible, as in my example in the introduction, this retrieval grips at nothing, such that no meaningful news frame can be constructed.
The range of leads that contribute to this process is rather broad (DâAngelo, 2017; Van Gorp, 2010)âin fact, much broader than the range of framing devices that are usually listed. Consider, for instance, the following snippet from an article published in the New York Times on September 2, 2013:
This snippet contains a flurry of loose ends that must be completed by the audience. For instance, is the news here that Obama seeks approval (instead of ordering strikes himself) or that he plans military strikes (rather than other policy options)? Do the cited Syrians support military strikes, such that the quote constitutes criticism of the delay in the former case or praise for the choice in the latter case? Also, what are Iran and North Korea doing in the Syrian opposition statement, and why would they be watching US decision-making procedures regarding a conflict not particularly close to their borders? Thus, when read alone, the snippet is ambiguous.
Instead, a reader will answer these questions by following contextual leads. Some of these leads are laid out by framing devices such as the lexical choices âdictatorshipsâ and âthe free world,â which could be considered catchphrases that evoke specific repertoires. In addition to these salient leads, however, considerable contextual knowledge is imported by simple âidentity chainsâ (Halliday & Hasan, 1976), which are references to objects known from earlier news. For instance, the first words of the presented snippet refer to the same dayâs front-page news, which most readers encountered just before leafing or scrolling to the cited text. This referenced report clarifies that Obama is seeking approval instead of going ahead immediately, as had been predicted in coverage from previous days. The move, accordingly, amounts to an unexpected delay. The reference to Syrians primes numerous recent articles consistently conveying the Syrian oppositionâs urgent plea for an active US military role in the conflict. The same prior coverage also included the âreports of a chemical weapons attack,â concluding a few days earlier that the chemical weapons had been used, almost certainly, by Syrian government forces. The implied Manichean evaluations of the perpetrators and victims of war crimes are reinforced by the first lexical choice (âfree worldâ in place of âWestâ or âInternational Communityâ). The Syrian opposition is identified as part of the free world, legitimizing its plea and orienting the main evaluative opposition of the frame.
Even though the full news item elaborates on some of the above points, none are fully explicated in the text. Filling in the omitted contextual information by following the textual leads and recalling knowledge from prior news remains the responsibility of the audience. Remembering salient associated facts and contexts within which an issue, event, or actor has previously been discussed, audiences collate important background information. At the same time, presented framing devices point at familiar repertoires that suggest specific perspectives for interpreting the news story. To obtain the meaning expressed by the news frame, recipients need to weave connections between presented and retrieved contextual information and reconstruct the frame that explains how both, taken together, form something coherent and meaningful (Baden & Springer, 2017; Wetherell & Potter, 1988).
Applicable Knowledge
To find such connections, readers need to identify what kind of knowledge that they already possess is âapplicableâ to the constructed frame (e.g., Price & Tewksbury, 1997), in the sense that familiar ideas relate to the presented information and enable informative inferences that support a coherent interpretation (Sperber & Wilson, 1995). However, scholarship that investigates applicability processes has rarely considered the differential nature and content of applicable knowledge involved in the construction of frames. In the example quoted ...