mass-communication-theory

INSTANT ACCESS
Frame Analysis
Chapter 11 Media and Culture Theories: Meaning-Making in the Social World 335
Strengths Weaknesses
1. Focuses attention on individuals in the mass 1. Is highly flexible and open-ended (lacks
communication process
specificity)
2. Micro-level theory but is easily applicable to 2. Is not able to address presence or absence
macro-level effects issues
of effects
3. Is highly flexible and open-ended 3. Precludes causal explanations because of
4. Is consistent with recent findings in cognitive qualitative research methods
psychology 4. Assumes individuals make frequent framing
errors; questions individuals’ abilities
Goffman argued that we work so hard maintaining our sense of continuity in
our experience that we inevitably make many framing mistakes. We literally see
and hear things that aren’t—but should—be there according to the rules we have
internalized. For example, most college campuses in America today face the problem
of date rape. And ultimately, what is the basic issue in most of these occurrences?
Goffman might answer that the issue involves upshifting and downshifting
problems between men and women as they attempt to frame the situations (dating)
they find themselves in. Alcohol consumption is often associated with date rape, increasing
the likelihood that social cues will be misread or ignored. Or consider the
even more common problem on campuses of binge drinking. Most students have a
hard time taking drinking seriously. They’ve learned to frame drinking as an essentially
playful activity. Advertising continually reinforces this frame along with its
related social cues. The unwanted consequences of drinking too much don’t appear
in advertising. When these consequences are portrayed in the anti–binge-drinking
advertising, students have a hard time taking these ads seriously.
From Goffman’s viewpoint, primary reality is the touchstone of our existence—
the real world in every sense of that term. We do permit ourselves constant and socially
acceptable escapes into clearly demarcated alternative realities we experience
as recreational or fantasy worlds. These are worlds where we can escape the pressures
of being center stage in an unfolding drama we know can have long-term
consequences. Not many students would expect to earn a high grade on an important
essay exam by writing jokes about the instructor, but as the date rape example
suggests, when we make framing mistakes in a playful reality, the results can be
devastating to our real world.
RECENT THEORIES OF FRAMES AND FRAMING
Frame analysis theory as developed by Goffman is a micro-level theory focusing on
how individuals learn to routinely make sense of their social world. After Goffman’s
work in the 1960s and 1970s, framing theory continued to gain interest
and acceptance. Other scholars took Goffman’s ideas and extended them to create
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