Frames and framing

When communicators communicate, they make a range of choices about what to include and what to leave out. Depending on the type of communication in question, choices will also be made about language, mode of address, or sources of information. A photographer will think about image composition, colour, lighting, focus, and camera angles. A podcaster will think about audio levels, background noise, music, and tone of voice. A video editor will think about pacing, transitions, and colour correction. An online content creator may think about all of these, and more.

Let’s consider a simpler example. Imagine you’re crafting an email to a work colleague. It’s likely that you’ll make careful choices about wording and tone, as well as what details to include and what to leave out. You might even think carefully about the length of your email and what time of day it should be sent.

These choices matter because they have consequences – they contribute to the meaning of your message. Variations in the way you write and send emails can communicate that you are friendly, angry, rushed, formal, eager, cautious, well-informed – the list goes on. If you were to write your entire email in hot pink text, or send it from your personal rather than your work account, you will create subtle (or not-so-subtle) differences in the possible ways your colleague will interpret the message.

And the key takeaway here is this: your choices will have consequences, regardless of whether you think them through carefully or not. Every choice will shape meaning in your message.

The communication concept that best helps us understand this situation is framing. Framing is a way of analysing – or actively controlling – how a particular event, issue, person or place is packaged for interpretation through communication processes.

Photo by Khaled Reese from Pexels. What’s in the frame?

“Frames” are ways of seeing and understanding something. They are a bit like thought habits – patterned ways of thinking that we call upon to make sense of an issue, event, or person. In the Public Interest Research Centre’s Framing Equality Toolkit, frames are described as “structures of meaning… mental structures through which we view the world and communication tools we use to engage with other people” (Blackmore and Sanderson 2017: 15).

Framing, in turn, is about “creating meaning” (Blackmore and Sanderson 2017: 15), particularly by making certain pieces of information more noticeable or memorable for audiences. We call this sense of noticeability salience. Certain aspects of a message jump out at audiences while others are obscured.

Let’s take another simple example. If someone asks you, “what did you do on the weekend?”, you’re unlikely to tell them everything that happened and everything you did over those 48 hours. You will probably select certain details or qualities to emphasise. You might say you were busy and caught up on your studies, or that you were active and went for a run, or that you spent time with friends.

When you choose which details to emphasise in your communication, you are framing your weekend for your listener. You might even be doing this consciously and strategically – perhaps you want your listener to think of you as a busy, active, or social person.

Now consider how this process works in the context of a busy newsroom. Imagine a journalist reporting on homelessness in her local town. Newsmaking processes demand that the journalist will first conduct research, which may include interviewing particular sources as well as conducting desktop research in order to find relevant statistics and other information. The journalist will then write her story, making various choices along the way – what words to use, what quotes to include, which details to foreground, and what angle to take. The journalist is likely to be working to a deadline, and these time pressures may have an effect on the finished product. She may also be influenced by the news agenda or newsroom culture of her organisation.

The choices made by the journalist result in the story being told in a particular way, with certain details emphasised and others marginalised or silenced. Perhaps the journalist interviewed an academic expert or an authority figure like a local police spokesperson, but failed to interview a person experiencing homelessness – in which case, the story will perpetuate an idea that people experiencing homelessness are other, voiceless, or not worthy of attention; it may also contribute to the framing of homelessness as a “police matter” or a type of deviant social behaviour. The issue will be framed in a different way depending on whether the journalist has used or avoided words with negative connotations, such as “beggar” or “vagrant”. Perhaps the journalist takes an investigative approach and explores how homelessness intersects with other social issues like mental health, family violence, the justice system, or ineffective social policy. Such an approach would shine a very different light on the issue and illuminate more of its complexities.

It may well be that the journalist is not actively trying to frame the issue of homelessness in any particular way, but is making choices informed by other factors relevant to professional practice: an impending deadline and the need to file the story quickly; the advice of an editor; the availability of images; her own instinctual sense of the newsworthiness of the story; or a combination of all these factors. Regardless of why the journalist made her choices, these choices shape how homelessness as a social issue is defined – they can also shape the attribution of responsibility (that is, they tell us who might be to blame for homelessness as a social problem).

So, whether we are in professional or everyday communication contexts, framing is the result of choices made about what to include, what to leave out, and how to express a message. The result of these choices is the shaping of meaning.

Meaning matters

In this chapter, we’ll explore the relationship between communication and meaning, using a series of case studies.

Does meaning still matter?

Some would argue that it does not. Some, indeed, would say that the most exciting and arresting aspects of communication today are unrelated to meaning-making – they would argue that mediated communication is interesting because it extends our senses, recalibrates our identities, and reforms our political landscapes. What does it matter what (or whose) meanings are made along the way?

Like all assumptions, this one deserves a second, critical, look.

In this book, we’re interested in meaning because meaning underpins, infuses, and entangles with identity, politics, and even sensory experience.

The position we’re taking in this book is informed by social constructionism, a branch of theory that explores the social constructs through which we collectively understand the world. Communication concepts are themselves social constructs – agreed upon ways of organising information that prioritise some ways of seeing over others.

From a social constructionist point of view, what we call “media” are systems of representation through which social norms are established or challenged. In arguing for a theory of media and communication that tilts towards rather than away from social theory, Nick Couldry reminds us that “the meanings circulated through media have social consequences” (2012: 8). And as communication contexts and practices become more complicated, meanings and their social consequences become ever more fascinating to investigate.