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332 Section 4 Contemporary Mass Communication Theory frame In frame analysis, a specific set of expectations used to make sense of a social situation at a given point in time downshift and upshift In frame analysis, to move back and forth between serious and less serious frames rely on many conventional cues to determine when a shift in scenes takes place. One of the oldest and most obvious cues involves the curtain—it rises when a scene begins and falls when a scene ends. Other cues are more subtle—shifts in lighting and music tempo often signal changes. As lights dim and music becomes ominous, we know danger threatens. Movies employ many similar conventions. Goffman believed we use the same cognitive skills to make sense of daily life as we do to make sense of plays or movies. His theory implies that we learn social cues through everyday interaction and from observing how they are used in media content. Back to the airport. What if security agents dressed in street clothes or in beachwear? What if they casually stood around and ignored scanner alarms? What if they were joking with each other instead of carefully monitoring equipment? Would we take them seriously? Would we frame the situation playfully? Social cues can make a big difference in how we decide to structure our actions. Goffman used the term frame to refer to a specific set of expectations used to make sense of a social situation at a given point in time. Frames are like Berger and Luckmann’s typification schemes, but they differ in certain important respects. According to Goffman, individual frames are like notes on a musical scale—they spread along a continuum from those structuring our most serious and socially significant actions to those structuring playful, trivial actions. Like the notes on a musical scale, each is different, even though there is underlying structural continuity. For social action, the continuity is such that we can learn how to frame serious actions by first learning frames for playful actions. We can learn from playing little league baseball and then apply it when we play a more serious game—a real game of life in which there’s more at stake. Using the musical scale analogy, we first learn to play simple tunes using a narrow range of the scale in preparation for playing complex musical scores. Likewise, many of our games and sports provide useful preparation for more serious forms of action. If we can perform well under the pressures of a big game, we may handle the demands of other life situations better. Goffman argued that we are like animal cubs that first play at stalking frogs and butterflies and then are able to transfer these skills to related but more serious situations. When we move from one set of frames to another, we downshift or upshift. We reframe situations so we experience them as more or less serious. Remember when you pretended to fight with a friend as a child, but someone got hurt and the fight turned serious? Suddenly, you no longer pulled punches but tried to make them inflict as much pain as possible; you downshifted. You used many of the fighting skills learned during play but with a different frame—now you were trying to hurt your friend. Perhaps, as you both got tired, one of you told a joke and cued the other that you wanted to upshift and go back to a more playful frame. In the airport security example, an alarm going off is likely to bring about a quick downshift in our framing. According to Goffman, daily life involves countless shifts in frames, and these shifts are negotiated using social cues. Some cues are conventional and universal, like the curtain on a stage or the security alarm; others are very subtle and used by small groups. For example, couples often develop a very complex set of cues to signal when to upshift or downshift their interaction. During the course of a conversation, many upshifts and downshifts can occur based on subtle changes in Copyright 2010 Cengage Learning. All Rights Reserved. May not be copied, scanned, or duplicated, in whole or in part. Due to electronic rights, some third party content may be suppressed from the eBook and/or eChapter(s). Editorial review has deemed that any suppressed content does not materially affect the overall learning experience. Cengage Learning reserves the right to remove additional content at any time if subsequent rights restrictions require it.
THINKING about THEORY THE FRAMING PROCESS In a different book (Davis and Baran, 1981), we developed this version of Goffman’s theory of framing. Can you explain how it allows for upshifting and Attention directed toward cues presented by self and others in everyday situations hyperritualized representations Media content constructed to highlight only the most meaningful actions Chapter 11 Media and Culture Theories: Meaning-Making in the Social World 333 Everyday encounters Decoding of everyday communication Frames developed to interpret and plan human actions downshifting? Can you speculate on how errors in framing can occur? Exposure to mass media representation of everyday communication Attention directed toward cues used by media professionals in media representation Decoding of media representations of everyday communication voice tone or body movement. Upshifting and downshifting add a dimension of complexity to everyday interaction that Goffman argued should not be ignored. In general, social institutions dominate framing of serious action in the settings they control, but much of daily life is performed in less serious settings. After you clear airport security, you are free to upshift, to be as playful as you want browsing through airport shops. So how do media come into this theory? Goffman made several heuristic explorations of the way media might influence our development and use of frames, including an essay entitled “Radio Talk” appearing in his book Forms of Talk (1981) and in another book, Gender Advertisements (1979). In the latter work he presented an insightful argument concerning the influence advertising could have on our perception of members of the opposite sex. According to Goffman, ads are hyperritualized representations of social action (Ytreberg, 2002). They are edited to highlight only the most meaningful actions. Advertising using the sex appeal of women to attract the attention of men could inadvertently teach or reinforce social cues that could have inadvertent but serious consequences. Goffman showed how women in many ads are presented as less serious and more playful than men. They smile, place their bodies in nonserious positions, wear playful clothing, and in various ways signal deference and a willingness to take direction from men. Copyright 2010 Cengage Learning. All Rights Reserved. May not be copied, scanned, or duplicated, in whole or in part. Due to electronic rights, some third party content may be suppressed from the eBook and/or eChapter(s). Editorial review has deemed that any suppressed content does not materially affect the overall learning experience. Cengage Learning reserves the right to remove additional content at any time if subsequent rights restrictions require it.
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Copyright 2010 Cengage Learning. Al
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1959 C. Wright Mills’s The Sociol
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From the Wadsworth Series in Mass C
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This is an electronic version of th
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To Sidney Kraus His words and actio
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x Contents CHAPTER 2 FOUR ERAS OF M
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xii Contents Limitations of the Exp
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xviii Preface Many if not all of th
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xx Preface THE USE OF HISTORY In th
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xxii Preface about these issues. We
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CHAPTER 2 convergence The erasure o
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SECTION 2 42 THE ERA OF MASS SOCIET
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CHAPTER 5 96 NORMATIVE THEORIES OF
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SECTION 3 132 FROM LIMITED-EFFECTS
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CHAPTER 7 OVERVIEW 174 MOVING BEYON
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SECTION 4 238 CONTEMPORARY MASS COM
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CHAPTER 10 278 MEDIA AND SOCIETY: T
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Page 390 and 391: REFERENCES Adbusters. (2002). “Th
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Page 394 and 395: 368 References Argument about New M
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Page 400 and 401: 374 References Lasswell, H. D. (192
Page 402 and 403: 376 References Miller, K. (2005). C
Page 404 and 405: 378 References Preiss, R. W. (2007)
Page 406 and 407: 380 References Smillie, D. (2009).
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382 References query Human capacity
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384 Index children, focus on functi
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386 Index I ice-age analogy, 342 Id
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388 Index media and culture theorie
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390 Index sensemaking, decoding and
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392 Index theory, understanding and
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