Strategic framing

We’ve seen how journalists might frame a topic, person, or issue. Let’s now consider meaning-making – and its social consequences – in other professional contexts.

In public relations, framing is a strategic practice. Public relations practitioners participate in the social construction of meaning to achieve a planned outcome (Anderson 2018: 112) – for example, to create, refresh, or repair the identity of a corporate brand, or to shape public responses to an issue.

Social media influencers also engage in framing practices. This is how influencers influence – they combine verbal and visual elements of a social media post in a strategic way so that certain parts of their message are made more prominent than others. They may deliberately leave out certain details in order to enhance their capacity to influence others, whether their goal is to promote a product, gain traction for social change, or gain more followers.

Influencers also frame themselves, and/or their own lifestyle, by making certain elements more salient (and leaving other things out). Such practices are increasingly drawing the attention of media and communication researchers. For example, in a 2022 study published in the journal Media and Communication, Devos and co-authors found that female influencers often engage in framing practices to depict themselves as “superwomen”, complying with societal expectations that women should have, and be able to do, everything.

Image by Gerd Altmann from Pixabay

Influencers and reframing

Framing practices can also be used by influencers and thought leaders to reframe dominant thinking about social issues. For example, body positivity advocate Taryn Brumfitt was named 2023 Australian of the Year after more than a decade of campaigning to change social norms about beauty and wellbeing. She used social media, documentary filmmaking, and public appearances to challenge the cultural narratives that frame certain body types as “desirable” and “perfect”.

Brumfitt was catapulted into the spotlight when she shared a simple yet powerful “before and after” image on Facebook. The image showed Brumfitt with a sculpted and traditionally “perfect” body during her years as a bodybuilder together with a later photograph of her naturally curvy post-pregnancy body. The viral image is best described as a “reverse before and after”, because Brumfitt labelled her curvy body as the ideal – representing her self-acceptance and inner happiness while also subverting the conventions of a genre of social media communication where body “problems” are seemingly “fixed” and bodies are transformed to meet pre-defined beauty standards. You can see the image and read more about her story in this piece by the ABC.

Reframing – another example

In 2023 another former Australian of the year, Paralympian Dylan Alcott, launched Shift 20, an initiative that lobbies for greater representation of people with disabilities in screen advertising. Addressing the lack of disability representation in Australian advertising, Alcott’s initiative pushes for people living with disabilities to feature as talent in screen-based advertisements for major brands.

Shift 20 Initiative – Mini Doc | The Dylan Alcott Foundation

It’s pointed out on the Shift 20 website that nearly 20% of Australians live with disability, but only 1% of ads feature those living with disability – a major disparity between representation and reality. Media representations aren’t a reflection of “the real world”; but those who work to change representational patterns affect real-world change. In the case of Shift 20, the intention was to create a more inclusive society by “shift[ing] the perception of what disability is and what it can be”. This, too, is an example of reframing.

What do these examples show us? They show us that communicators do not just share meaning – they shape it, often in a way that has real-world impacts. The decisions we make as communicators can result in the transformation of meaning, and in the confirmation or disruption of long-held norms and ideologies.

Communication research often goes in search of meaning. Whether we are interested in framing, or in discourse (how language shapes meaning) or in storytelling or semiotics (see Chapter 4), or in political economy (how economic imperatives shape the enactment of meaning and power), we dismantle communication processes to expose representations at work. This can make us better communicators, and it can also further knowledge and critical thought about topics that matter. Analysis is our tool for determining how meanings are made (and who those meanings serve). In the following three case studies, students use communication concepts – including semiotics and framing – to lever open and analyse media representations of topics that matter to them.