The effects of frames in political television news on issue interpretation and frame salience

Journalism and Mass Communication Quarterly

Volumn 81, Issue 1, 2004, Pages 36-52

  de Vreese, Claes H ^a  

^a UNIVERSITY OF AMSTERDAM   (Netherlands)

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EID: 2942701923     PISSN: 10776990     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1177/107769900408100104     Document Type: Article

References (118)

1. Vincent Price, David Tewksbury, and Elisabeth Powers, "Switching Trains of Thought: The Impact of News Frames on Readers' Cognitive Responses," Communication Research 24 (1997): 481-506.
2. Joseph Cappella and Kathleen Hall Jamieson, Spiral of Cynicism (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1997);
3. Tom E. Patterson, Out of Order (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1993);
4. Vincent Price, "Social Identification and Public Opinion: Effects of Communicating Group Conflict," Public Opinion Quarterly 53 (1989): 197-224.
5. W. Russel Neuman, Marion R. Just, and Ann N. Crigler, Common Knowledge. News and the Construction of Political Meaning (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1992).
6. Doris A. Graber, Processing the News: How People Tame the Information Tide (New York: Longman Publishers, 1988);
7. John H. McManus, Market-driven Journalism. Let the Citizen Beware (Thousand Oaks: Sage, 1994);
8. Neuman, Just, and Crigler, Common Knowledge.
9. See Neuman, Just, and Crigler, Common Knowledge;
10. Price,Tewksbury, and Powers, "Switching Trains";
11. James W. Tankard, "The Empirical Approach to the Study of Media Framing," in Framing Public Life, ed. Stephen D. Reese, Oscar H. Gandy, and August E. Grant (Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum, 2001), 95-106. This idea concurs with other research, e.g., Zhongdon Pan and Gerald M. Kosicki, "Framing Analysis: An Approach to News Discourse," Political Communication 10 (1993): 59-79;
12. David Tewksbury, Jennifer Jones, Matthew Peske, Ashlea Raymond, and William Vig, "The Interaction of News and Advocate Frames: Manipulating Audience Perceptions of a Local Policy Issue," Journalism & Mass Communication Quarterly 77 (winter 2000): 804-830.
13. Robert Entman, "Framing: Toward Clarification of a Fractured Paradigm," Journal of Communication 43 (1993): 51-58.
14. Spiro Kiousis, Philemon Bantimaroudis, and Hyon Ban, "Candidate Image Attributes. Experiments on the Substantive Dimension of Second Level Agenda Setting," Communication Research 26 (autumn 1999): 414-28;
15. Max McCombs, Esteban Lopez-Escobar, and Juan P. Llamas, "Setting the Agenda of Attributes in the 1996 Spanish General Election," Journal of Communication 50 (summer 2000): 77-92.
16. McCombs, Lopez-Escobar, and Llamas, "Setting the Agenda of Attributes."
17. Kiousis, Bantimaroudis, and Ban, "Candidate Image Attributes."
18. Tom E. Nelson, Rosalee A. Clawson, and Zoe M. Oxley, "Media Framing of a Civil Liberties Conflict and its Effect on Tolerance," American Political Science Review 91 (1997): 567-83;
19. James N. Druckman, "The Implication of Framing Effects for Citizen Competence," Political Behavior 23 (2001): 225-56.
20. Tewksbury et al., "The Interaction of News and Advocate Frames."
21. Cappella and Jamieson, Spiral of Cynicism.
22. Douglas M. McLeod and Benjamin H. Detenber, "Framing Effects of Television News Coverage of Social Protest," Journal of Communication 49 (autumn 1999): 3-23.
23. McLeod and Detenber, "Framing Effects";
24. Tewksbury et al., "The Interaction of News and Advocate Frames."
25. Dietram A. Scheufele, "Framing as a Theory of Media Effects," Journal of Communication 49 (spring 1999):103-122;
26. Dietram A. Scheufele, "Agenda-setting, Priming, and Framing Revisited: Another Look at Cognitive Effects of Political Communication," Mass Communication & Society 3 (autumn 2000): 297-316.
27. David Domke, Kelley McCoy, and Marcos Torres, "News Media, Racial Perceptions, and Political Cognition," Communication Research 26 (winter 1999): 570-607.
28. E.g., McLeod and Detenber, "Framing Effects."
29. Cappella and Jamieson, Spiral of Cynicism;
30. Shanto Iyengar, Is Anyone Responsible? (Chicago: Chicago University Press, 1991).
31. Cappella and Jamieson, Spiral of Cynicism.
32. William A. Gamson and Andre Modigliani, "Media Discourse and Public Opinion on Nuclear Power: A Constructionist Approach," American Journal of Sociology 95 (1989): 1-37.
33. E.g., Cappella and Jamieson, Spiral of Cynicism;
34. Druckman, "The Implication of Framing";
35. Entman, "Framing";
36. Iyengar, Is Anyone Responsible;
37. Donald R. Kinder and Lynn M. Sanders, Divided by Color. Racial Politics and Democratic Ideals (Chicago: Chicago University Press, 1996);
38. John R. Zaller, The Nature and Origins of Mass Opinion (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1992).
39. Daniel Kahneman, Amos Tversky, and Petra Slovic, Judgment under Uncertainty (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1984).
40. E.g., Cappella and Jamieson, Spiral of Cynicism;
41. Patterson, Out of Order;
42. Holli A. Semetko and Patti M. Valkenburg, "Framing European Politics: A Content Analysis of Press and Television News," Journal of Communication 50 (summer 2000): 93-109.
43. E.g., Paul D'Angelo, "News Framing as a Multi-paradigmatic Research Program: A Response to Entman," Journal of Communication 52 (winter 2002): 870-89;
44. Entman, "Framing";
45. Scheufele, "Framing as a Theory."
46. Adam Simon and Michael Xenos, "Media Framing and Effective Public Deliberation," Political Communication 17 (winter 2000): 363-76.
47. William L. Bennett, News: The Politics of Illusion (New York: Longman, 1995);
48. Patterson, Out of Order;
49. Semetko and Valkenburg, "Framing European Politics";
50. Claes H. de Vreese, Jochen Peter, and Holli A. Semetko, "Framing Politics at the Launch of the Euro: A Cross-National Comparative Study of Frames in the News," Political Communication 18 (spring 2001): 107-122.
51. Price, "Social Identification."
52. McManus, Market-driven Journalism.
53. Doris A. Graber, Media Power in Politics (Washington DC: CQ Press, 1997);
54. McManus, Market-driven Journalism.
55. E.g., Price, Tewksbury, and Powers, "Switching Trains" dealt with university funding using a student sample.
56. Iyengar, Is Anyone Responsible?
57. Pippa Norris, A Virtuous Circle (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000).
58. Steve Chaffee and Sandra Kanihan, "Learning about Politics from the Mass Media," Political Communication 17 (autumn 1997): 421-30; Eurobarometer/European Commission, "Eurobarometer: Public opinion in the European union" (2001, Rep. No. 55) (Brussels, Belgium: Directorate-General X).
59. See, e.g., Price, Tewksbury, and Powers, "Switching Trains";
60. Dhavan Shah, David Domke, and Daniel B. Wackman, "To Thin Own Self Be True": Values, Framing, and Voter Decision-making Strategies," Communication Research 23 (1996): 509-560;
61. Tewksbury et al., "The Interaction of News and Advocate Frames";
62. Nicholas A.Valentino, Matthew Beckmann, and Thomas Buhr, "A Spiral of Cynicism for Some: The Contingent Effects of Campaign News Frames on Participation and Confidence in Government," Political Communication 18 (2001): 347-67;
63. Patti M. Valkenburg, Holli A. Semetko, and Claes H. de Vreese, "The Effects of News Frames on Readers' Thoughts and Recall," Communication Research 26 (1990): 550-69.
64. Cappella and Jamieson, Spiral of Cynicism;
65. Iyengar, Is Anyone Responsible?
66. E.g., Nelson, Clawson, and Oxley, "Media Framing";
67. June W. Rhee, "Strategy and Issue Frames in Election Campaign Coverage: A Social Cognitive Account of Framing Effects," Journal of Communication 47 (autumn 1997): 26-48.
68. Rhee, "Strategy and Issue Frames";
69. Valentino, Beckmann, and Buhr, "A Spiral of Cynicism for Some"
70. E.g., Price, Tewksbury, and Powers, "Switching Trains."
71. McLeod and Detenber, "Framing Effects";
72. Tewksbury et al., "The Interaction of News and Advocate Frames."
73. Tom E. Nelson and Zoe M. Oxley, "Issue Framing Effects and Belief Importance and Opinion," Journal of Politics 58 (1999): 1055-1078.
74. Tewksbury et al., "The Interaction of News and Advocate Frames."
75. David R. Kinder and Thomas Palfrey, eds., Experimental Foundations of Political Science (Arm Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1993).
76. Byron Reeves and Seth Geiger, "Designing Experiments that Assess Psychological Responses to Media Messages," in Measuring Psychological Responses to Media, ed. Annie Lang (Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum, 1994), 165-80;
77. Michael D. Slater, "Use of Message Stimuli in Mass Communication Experiments: A Methodological Assessment and Discussion," Journalism Quarterly 68 (autumn 1991): 412-21.
78. Previous studies have addressed these challenges differently. Iyengar used news stories that were "actual news reports that had been previously broadcast by one of the thee major networks" (Iyengar, Is Anyone Responsible, 20) which is similar to McLeod and Detenber ("Framing Effects") and Nelson, Clawson, and Oxley ("Media Framing"). Cappella and Jamieson (Spiral of Cynicism, 90) re-edited segments already broadcast, but when these "were clearly of one type or the other, they were left unchanged." These approaches have inherent disadvantages given the lack of control over the stimulus material. Producing new material, such as in this study, alleviates these problems, but requires caution, lest inquiries focus only on "researcher-defined" frames.
79. Utilizing an entire broadcast increases the external validity of the design. News is typically consumed in segments and not as individual stories. The study includes one experimental story to create the condition. Future research may consider multiple experimental stories to avoid the possibility that the effects are due to the idiosyncratic nature of a specific story.
80. Matthew Gabel, "Public Support for European Integration: An Empirical Test of Five Theories," Journal of Politics 60 (1998): 333-54.
81. Hans-Bernd Brosius, Wolfgang Donsbach, and Matthias Birk, "How Do Text-picture Relations Affect the Informational Effectiveness of Television Newscasts?" Journal of Broadcasting & Electronic Media 40 (spring 1986): 180-95.
82. An overview of the stories in the experimental bulletin can be obtained from the author. A post-test item asked participants to evaluate the trustworthiness of the experimental and other stories. The evaluation of the experimental story did not deviate from other stories.
83. See e.g., Iyengar, Is Anyone Responsible?;
84. Price, Tewksbury, and Powers, "Switching Trains."
85. The experiment used a 2 × 2 factorial design. For both the conflict and the economic consequences story, two versions were made. One contained a traditional field report with visuals and an accompanying voice over, the other a live cross-talk between the anchor in the studio and the Brussels-based EU-correspondent. The differences in format pertained to the visual side of the news stories only while the audio side (the text), either in the form of accompanying visuals and short quotes, or in the form of a scripted live interview with the Brussels correspondent, was kept identical. The two versions were produced to investigate the impact of format differences on news learning and appreciation, which is not the goal of the present study and is reported in detail elsewhere (Roland Snoeijer, Claes H. de Vreese, and Holli A. Semetko, "The Effects of Live TV Reporting on Recall and Appreciation of Political News," European Journal of Communication 17 [2002]: 85-101). Because there were no interaction effects between frame and format and for reasons of clarity, the data will be presented as a single factorial design.
86. Analyses of variance for a number of individual characteristics such as gender, age, education level, political interest, and political knowledge (an 8-item index, α = .79) revealed no significant differences between participants in the experimental conditions on any of the measures, suggesting a successful randomization.
87. A control group would have to be treated to a "frameless" television news story which would violate the conventions for the nature of television news. To omit a control group in the design is in line with the other experimental framing research by, for example, Iyengar (Is Anyone Responsible?);
88. McLeod and Detenber ("Framing Effects");
89. and Nelson, Clawson, and Oxley ("Media Framing").
90. This procedure was chosen because the final questionnaire provided information that could cue participants to alter answers to previous questions. Given the small viewing group size, the experimental leader easily monitored the participants' compliance with this guideline.
91. E.g., Iyengar, Is Anyone Responsible?;
92. Valkenburg, Semetko, and de Vreese, "The Effects of News Frames."
93. Michael A. Shapiro, "Think-aloud and thought-list procedures in investigating mental processes," in Measuring psychological responses to media, ed. Lang, 1-15.
94. Valkenburg, Semetko, and de Vreese, "The Effects of News Frames."
95. The other items were, for the conflict frame: "Does the answer refer to one or more parties reproaching each other?";" does the answer refer to two or more sides of the issue/problem?"; "does the answer refer to political disputes over the issue?" For the economic consequences frame the items were: "Does the answer refer to financial consequences of pursuing or not pursuing an action?";"does the answer mention financial losses/gains, nor or in the future?";"does the answer mention the impact on Dutch economy/tax payers?"
96. 2 = 22.08 [19], p = .28) indicating a satisfactory fit.
97. The question read: "We are also interested in what you can remember from the story about the enlargement of the European Union. Please write below how you would tell this story to a friend that has not seen the story. You can think of, for example, persons and countries mentioned, what happened, why it happened, and what the consequences are. Please write down everything you can remember."
98. Doris A. Graber, "Seeing is Remembering: How Visuals Contribute to Learning from Television News," Journal of Communication 40 (spring 1990): 134-55.
99. The three items were "The European Union should be enlarged with central and eastern European countries such as the Check republic, Hungary, and Rumania," "It is a good thing that the Netherlands participates in the euro," "Turkey should become a member of the EU."
100. Price, Tewksbury, and Powers, "Switching Trains";
101. Rhee, "Strategy and Issue Frames."
102. 2 = .37, p <.001).
103. 2 = .08, p <.001).
104. 2 = .41, p < .001).
105. 2 = .03, p < .05).
106. Price, Tewksbury, and Powers, "Switching Trains";
107. Valkenburg, Semetko, and de Vreese, "The Effects of News Frames."
108. Price, Tewksbury, and Powers, "Switching Trains."
109. Maria Hsu and Vincent Price, "Political Expertise and Affect: Effects on News Processing," Communication Research 20 (autumn 1993): 671-95;
110. June W. Rhee and Joseph N. Cappella, "The Role of Political Sophistication in Learning from News: Measuring Schema Development," Communication Research 24 (spring 1997): 197-233.
111. Scheufele, "Agenda-setting, Priming and Framing," 309.
112. Entman, "Framing."
113. Nelson, Clawson, and Oxley, "Media Framing."
114. McLeod and Detenber, "Framing Effects"; Nelson, Clawson, and Oxley, "Media Framing."
115. Nelson, Clawson, and Oxley, "Media Framing";
116. Tewksbury et al., "The Interaction of News and Advocate Frames."
117. Robert Vallone, Lee Ross, and Mark R. Lepper, "The Hostile Media Phenomenon: Biased Perception and Perceptions of Media Bias in Coverage of the Beirut Massacre," Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 49 (winter 1985): 577-85.
118. William E. Saris, "The Public Opinion about the EU Can Easily be Swayed in Different Directions," Acta Politica: International Journal of Political Science 32 (winter 1997): 406-435.