Entman’s model

One of the first scholars to highlight the importance of culture in the notion of framing and to fully incorporate this into his model is Robert Entman. This study apply Entman’s (1991, 1992, 1993, 2003, 2010) model of frame analysis in discussing my research questions. This model emphasises the intention within the selection process of news coverage, which rejects the idea that frames are adopted in the course of communicative processes without consciousness. His early work developed a model for framing that became highly influential in the field of media and his detailed explanation of how he interpreted this concept has become one of the most frequently quoted definitions of framing:

“Framing essentially involves selection and salience. To frame is to select some aspects of a perceived reality and make them more salient in a communicating text, in such a way as to promote a particular problem definition, causal interpretation, moral evaluation and/or treatment recommendation for the item described. Typically frames diagnose, evaluate and prescribe” (Entman, 1993: 53).

Entman (1993) here describes the process by which the journalist puts together a news story. There is an infinite amount of information which could be written about any event or issue so the journalist must choose which details will be included and which omitted. Entman (1993) pays attention to the role of what he calls “the communicator” within the representation, because this role is central to this process since journalists are responsible for organising the information that is conveyed to an

audience: Communicators make framing judgments by deciding what details of a story to tell others; the details communicators choose are guided by the already existing frames that organize their own belief systems (Entman, 1993: 52). In this process, thus, the journalist decides how the issue will be approached, offering an assessment of the problem, identifying causes, allocating blame and proposing solutions. As we shall see in the section on the culture of journalism, this process itself is framed within a number of routines, conventions, regulations, principles and norms. Entman (1991; 1993) states that in building news, journalists employ framing, and reiterates the importance of understanding how framing is sponsored by political actors and how it serves to guide the audience’s interpretation of news items and more generally political, social and economic issues. In the case of newspaper coverage, the building of a frame occurs in the newsroom, highlighting the role of journalists in news production and hence the focus on them within framing research.

Entman argues that frames can be encountered in at least four different locations within the communication process, and these involve the communicator, the text, the receiver, and the culture:

“Communicators make conscious or unconscious framing judgments in deciding what to say, guided by frames (often called schemata) that organize their belief systems. The text contains frames, which are manifested by the presence or absence of certain keywords, stock phrases, stereotyped images, sources of information, and sentences that provide thematically reinforcing clusters of facts or judgments. The frames that guide the receiver’s thinking and conclusion may or may not reflect the frames in the text and the framing intention of the communicator. The culture is the stock of commonly invoked frames; in fact, culture might be defined as the empirically demonstrable set of common frames exhibited in the discourse and thinking of most people in a social grouping” (Entman, 1993: 52-53).

Here the communicator is a more general term used to refer to journalists and Entman emphasises that some of these decisions made by the journalist regarding the content of the article and the language in which it is couched will be deliberate; many others will be the result of either learnt journalistic working practices or personal opinions.

The second location where framing comes into play is within the text itself and Entman stresses that analysis needs to look at not only at what the journalist includes but also what is excluded and how salience is achieved. This also illustrates the need for close, detailed reading of the text and of its rhetorical devices when conducting frame analysis.

Entman’s comments regarding the receiver, a general term which can relate to the audience for any type of journalistic text, underline that although the two previous frames may serve to guide the audience’s thinking, receivers also bring their own distinct frames to the text, which may or may not correspond with those of the journalist, and subsequently, readers may or may not reach the same conclusions about an issue as the communicator originally intended. For this reason, many researchers use focus groups and interviews to explore audience reaction to news coverage, as a means of eliciting other frames which may be in operation in guiding audience response to issues.

Finally, Entman includes culture as another important frame and one which is relevant to both communicators and receivers. This framing of local, regional and national cultures may often give a particular slant to news stories and can be reflected in the discourse at the level of words such as “us” and “them” which delineate particular groupings based on the assumed audience. However, the advent of news coverage such as that offered by Al-Jazeera “with transnational reach and global influence” (McNair 2006: 111) poses challenges both to journalists and analysts in terms of identifying common frames.

Entman (1993) concludes that all four of these processes of framing make use of a similar set of processes. Initially, this involves selection of content and making certain elements appear more salient than others using the techniques previously suggested. These elements which have been highlighted are then used in three principle ways: (1) to help construct an argument about the problems to be discussed and how they have been caused; (2) to provide an evaluation of the nature of these problems, and/or (3) to propose solutions to these perceived problems (Entman, 1993: 52-53).

Entman’s definition of what frame analysis consist of makes it sound deceptively simple: “Analysis of frames illuminates the precise way in which influence over a human consciousness is exerted by the transfer (or communication) of information

from one location - such as a speech, utterance, news report, or novel - to that consciousness” (p. 51-52). However, as Kitzinger (2007) explains, frame analysis requires sensitive and detailed reading of the media discourse and a reflective engagement with the data produced. In order to aspire to the precision which Entman states is required, any assumptions which are made in an initial analysis must be thoroughly tested and evidence sought to support these suppositions, employing quantitative techniques such as statistical analysis if necessary to supplement close textual reading.