Research on framing is characterized by theoretical and empirical vagueness. This is due, in part, to the lack of a commonly shared theoretical model underlying framing research. Conceptual problems translate into operational problems, limiting the comparability of instruments and results. In this paper I systematize the fragmented approaches to framing in political communication and integrate them into a comprehensive model. I classify previous approaches to framing research along two dimensions: the type of frame examined (media frames vs. audience frames) and the way frames are operationalized (independent variable or dependent variable). I develop a process model of framing, identifying four key processes that should be addressed in future research: frame building, frame setting, individual-level processes of framing, and a feedback loop from audiences to journalists.

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Framing as a theory of media effects

Voters in mass elections are notorious for their apparent lack of information about relevant political matters. While some scholars argue that an electorate of well-informed voters is necessary for the production of responsive electoral outcomes, others argue that apparently ignorant voters will suffice because they can adapt their behavior to the complexity of electoral choice. To evaluate the validity of these arguments, I develop and analyze a survey of California voters who faced five complicated insurance reform ballot initiatives. I find that access to a particular class of widely available information shortcuts allowed badly informed voters to emulate the behavior of relatively well informed voters. This finding is suggestive of the conditions under which voters who lack encyclopedic information about the content of electoral debates can nevertheless use information shortcuts to vote as though they were well informed.

https://www.cambridge.org/core/services/aop-cambridge-core/content/view/S0003055400092121

Shortcuts versus encyclopedias: information and voting behavior in california insurance reform elections

The great thinkers who influenced the contemporary field of political communication were preoccupied with understanding the political, social, psychological, and economic transformations in modern industrial society. But societies have changed so dramatically since the time of these landmark contributions that one must question the continuing relevance of paradigms drawn from them. To cite but a few examples, people have become increasingly detached from overarching institutions such as public schools, political parties, and civic groups, which at one time provided a shared context for receiving and interpreting messages. What are the implications of this detachment on how people respond to media messages? Information channels have proliferated and simultaneously become more individualized. Is it still relevant to conceive of ‘‘mass media’’ or has that concept been made obsolete by audience fragmentation and isolation from the public sphere? Does this new environment foreshadow a return to a time of minimal effects? If we are looking at a new minimal effects era, how can we distinguish it from the last such period? Retracing some of the intellectual origins of the field may help us identify the fundamental changes in society and communication technologies that are affecting the composition of audiences, the delivery of information, and the experience of politics itself. In particular, we are concerned with the growing disjuncture between the prevailing research strategies and the sociotechnological context of political communication, which may give rise to unproductive battles over findings (Donsbach, 2006). To the extent that research paradigms fail to reflect prevailing social and technological patterns, the validity of results will be in serious question. Consider just one case in point: the famous earlier era of ‘‘minimal effects’’ that emerged from studies done in the 1940s and early 1950s (Klapper, 1960). The underlying context for this scholarship consisted of a premass communication media system and relatively dense memberships in a group-based society networked through political parties, churches, unions, and service organizations (Putnam, 2000). At this time, scholars concluded that media messages were filtered through social reference processes as described in the two-step flow model proposed by Katz and Lazarsfeld (1955; Bennett & Manheim, 2006). Although the classic study by Lang

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A New Era of Minimal Effects? The Changing Foundations of Political Communication

Social scientists have documented framing effects in a wide range of contexts, including surveys, experiments, and actual political campaigns. Many view work on framing effects as evidence of citizen incompetence—that is, evidence that citizens base their preferences on arbitrary information and/or are subject to extensive elite manipulation. Yet, we continue to lack a consensus on what a framing effect is as well as an understanding of how and when framing effects occur. In this article, I examine (1) the different ways that scholars have employed the concepts of framing and framing effects, (2) how framing effects may violate some basic criteria of citizen competence, and (3) what we know about how and when framing effects work. I conclude that while the evidence to date suggests some isolated cases of incompetence, the more general message is that citizens use frames in a competent and well-reasoned manner.

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The implications of framing effects for citizen competence

Low voter turnout is a serious democratic problem for five reasons: (1) It means unequal turnout that is systematically biased against less well-to-do citizens. (2) Unequal turnout spells unequal political influence. (3) U.S. voter turnout is especially low, but, measured as percent of voting-age population, it is also relatively low in most other countries. (4) Turnout in midterm, regional, local, and supranational elections -- less salient but by no means unimportant elections -- tends to be especially poor. (5) Turnout appears to be declining everywhere. The inequality problem can be solved by institutional mechanisms that maximize turnout. One option is the combination of voter-friendly registration rules, proportional representation, infrequent elections, weekend voting, and holding less salient elections concurrently with the most important national elections. The other option, which can maximize turnout by itself, is compulsory voting. Its advantages far outweigh the normative and practical objections to it. This article has been removed from the eRepository website since it is now published: American Political Science Review vol. 91 (March 1997): 1-14.

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Unequal Participation: Democracy's Unresolved Dilemma

\"The Reasoning Voter\" is an insider's look at campaigns, candidates, media, and voters that convincingly argues that voters make informed logical choices. Samuel L. Popkin analyzes three primary campaigns Carter in 1976; Bush and Reagan in 1980; and Hart, Mondale, and Jackson in 1984 to arrive at a new model of the way voters sort through commercials and sound bites to choose a candidate. Drawing on insights from economics and cognitive psychology, he convincingly demonstrates that, as trivial as campaigns often appear, they provide voters with a surprising amount of information on a candidate's views and skills. For all their shortcomings, campaigns \"do\" matter. \"If you're preparing to run a presidential campaign, and only have time to read one book, make sure to read Sam Popkin's \"The Reasoning Voter.\" If you have time to read two books, read \"The Reasoning Voter\" twice.\" James Carville, Senior Stategist, Clinton/Gore '92 \"A fresh and subtle analysis of voter behavior.\" Thomas Byrne Edsall, \"New York Review of Books\"\"Professor Popkin has brought V.O. Key's contention that voters are rational into the media age. This book is a useful rebuttal to the cynical view that politics is a wholly contrived business, in which unscrupulous operatives manipulate the emotions of distrustful but gullible citizens. The reality, he shows, is both more complex and more hopeful than that.\" David S. Broder, \"The Washington Post\"\

The Reasoning Voter: Communication and Persuasion in Presidential Campaigns

The national interest in formal links between university classroom education and community service raises two important issues for college and university teaching.The first is definitional. What is service learning--learning that combines public service with related academic work--and what distinguishes it from academic internships, semesters abroad, and classroom laboratories?The second issue is pedagogical. Is there reason to believe that the learning aspects of service learning justify the entry of colleges and universities into the public-service sector?An undergraduate mass communication and society lecture course at a residential research university provided the laboratory to experiment with a dozen independent service-learning projects. Although the class was large and included several teaching assistants, the unit of analysis was service project. Each project was viewed as an individual endeavor suitable for a small class with no graduate student assistance.(1) Some service projects involved experiential learning in which students worked directly with off-campus community groups. Nonexperiential service-learning service projects provided the opportunity to aid community groups, but without direct student/community contact.The projects enabled us to reach anecdotal, but systematic conclusions about the pedagogical value of service learning and to document empirically the differences in pedagogical value between service learning with and without an experiential component. We also were able to identify and then bring our observations to several normative issues.Service learningThe growth of service. Interest and participation in community service has become well entrenched on American college campuses over the last decade. More than 305 campuses, for example, belong to Campus Compact, an umbrella organization established in 1985 by a number of college and university presidents to encourage community service among undergraduates.(2) The 1993 Report of the Commission on National and Community Service estimates that 140,000 students at Campus Compact schools participated in service on a weekly basis in 1992.(3) Another 650 colleges and universities participated in the Campus Outreach Opportunity League and 150 schools ROW provide academic credit for service-learning programs offered by the Partnership for Service Learning.(4) And of course, 1993 saw bipartisan support for President Bill Clinton's March 1 proposal for a program to offset tuition through public-service participation and for the inauguration of the 1993 Summer of Service.The variety of motivations and rationales for service education are numerous and might even suggest that some see service education as a panacea. The 1980 report of the National Commission on Youth is often cited for its recommendation that community service be used to "bridge the gap" between youth and adulthood.(5) In a 1985 report for the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching, Frank Newman concluded, "If there is a crisis in education in the United States today, it is less that test scores have declined than it is that we have failed to provide the education for citizenship that is still the most important responsibility of the nation's schools and colleges."(6) Rutgers political scientist Benjamin Barber has become the leading advocate of teaching citizenship values in a democracy through service education courses.(7)In another Carnegie report, however, Ernest Boyer takes higher education to task "for the gap between values in the academy and the needs of the larger world. Service is routinely praised, but accorded little attention," Boyer notes in Scholarship Reconsidered: Priorities of the Professorate.(8) And although Boyer embraces the values of service education, he does so with the practiced critique of the classroom professor. "Colleges and universities have recently rejected service as serious scholarship, partly because its meaning is so vague and often disconnected from serious intellectual work," Boyer warns. …

'Doing Good' and Scholarship: A Service-Learning Study

This study focuses on the concepts of university identity and university reputation as they relate to a large private university in the Northeast United States. In the first part of the study, the concept of university identity was investigated. We used methodology to find the most distinctive visual identities of the university among students. In the follow-up study, the authors explored the concept of university reputation, using survey methodology. The implications of the study on the practice of branding – specifically, branding a university – are discussed.

An Integrative Approach to University Visual Identity and Reputation

The purpose of this research is to explore the link between reputation and relational quality in the context of student-university relationships, based on a perceptual analysis of the participants' subjective views (i.e., factor analysis with Q methodology). To this end, the researchers selected a private university located in the Northeast region of the United States as the research setting, with students of the university serving as research participants. The researchers proposed three research questions regarding the link between student-university relational quality and university reputation. The findings of this research indicate that the concepts of relational quality and reputation can be “variantly” intertwined on the basis of individual stakeholders' subjective views of their experience, interactions, and information, rather than intertwined in a linear way.

Dennis F. Kinsey

Papers

The Reasoning Voter: Communication and Persuasion in Presidential Campaigns

'Doing Good' and Scholarship: A Service-Learning Study

An Integrative Approach to University Visual Identity and Reputation

An Integrative Analysis of Reputation and Relational Quality: A Study of University-Student Relationships

International public relations and public diplomacy