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ABSTRACT
ABSTRACT
News framing choices remain critical components in the formation of political attitudes and public opinion. Early findings, which indicated that episodic framing of national issues like poverty and unemployment informed public opinion about minority group members, asserted that these framing choices often resulted in the attribution of societal ills to individuals rather than society at-large. Moving this analytical framework into the twenty-first century, I engage with literature on racial messaging to show that shifting social norms surrounding implicit versus explicit racism have transformed the ways that news frames function in mass media. As such, this essay examines the canonical theory of news frames as falling along a thematic-episodic continuum. Fundamentally, I argue that implicit and explicit racial messaging in news media coverage of crime could change the way viewers form opinions of Black Americans and criminality. Thus, it is critical to revisit longstanding theories of news frames to accommodate the present political moment.
Introduction
Television news stories remain critical vehicles for the transmission of political messages. In his seminal work Is Anyone Responsible? Shanto Iyengar examined the effects of television news frames on public opinion formation in the late-twentieth century – a period that he called the “age of the television” (1991). Since his work was published, television news consumption has decreased from roughly 52 million viewers in 1980 to 26 million viewers in 2014 (Pew Research Center 2014).1 Increasing media choice – in the form of cable and Internet news – has diversified the news environment while preserving the general messages, angles, and types of stories that are covered. According to the Pew Research Center, the consumption gap between traditional television news and digital sources is narrowing, dropping from a 19-percentage point difference in August 2016 to only a 7-percentage point difference in August 2017, with television news narrowly remaining the leading source of viewership (Bialik and Matsa 2017). In response to this new demand, most mass media companies and local newspapers have created “cross-media sources” which give traditional news outlets a path into the 24-hour news cycle (Iyengar 2011, 60). Thus, traditional news sources are adapting to the changing media landscape rather than becoming obsolete. As consumers’ choices have changed, news messaging and framing choices have remained relatively constant.
While investigating the influence of television news on public opinion formation between 1981 and 1986,2 Iyengar found that framing of newsworthy topics as episodic – focusing on “specific events or particular cases” – versus thematic – placing “political issues and events in some general context” – greatly affects how viewers attribute responsibility for social issues (Iyengar 1991, 2). Media framing choices have a critical impact on the ways that stories about racial minorities shape public opinion on issues of immigration, race, and healthcare in the U.S., among other issues (Brader, Valentino, and Suhay 2008; Spence 2010; Abrajano and Hajnal 2015). These contemporary changes are of primary salience as highly publicized instances of police brutality against Black Americans have become mostly virtual phenomena (Freelon, McIlwain, and Clark 2018). As such, this essay seeks not only to chronologically update Iyengar’s work but also to place it in a context of increasingly dynamic racial attitudes and public opinion formation.
In this essay, I review the extant literature on news frames, racial messaging, and crime narratives. I argue that the canonical thematic-episodic framing theory is insufficient in fully capturing the contemporary impacts of news frames on political attitudes concerning racial minorities, specifically Black Americans. Fundamentally, what remains unanswered by this framework is the tension between the episodic frame and the pervasiveness of implicit and explicit racial messaging in news production.3 Building upon existing framing literature (e.g., Gross 2008; Spence 2010; Aarøe 2011), I provide a typology of implicit-explicit media framing which provides greater depth and contextualization for assessing the impacts of framing choices in influencing political attitudes toward marginalized groups. As a starting point, I locate this work within a broader review of existing literature concerning the effects of framing on public opinion of violent crime and Black Americans. My objective is to provide a framework for future scholarly work on the role of frames in today’s racially and technologically diverse environment.
A brief discussion of news frames and political context
The term “frame” is still in its nascence in the social sciences. Only since the 1980s and 90s have scholars used the term to describe the ways that issues are selected, articulated, relayed, and packaged for mass consumption (Gamson and Modigliani 1987; Gamson and Modigliani 1989; Iyengar 1991; Gamson 1992; Druckman 2001; Gross 2008). This literature theorizes that it is not just the content of news messages that matters but also the way these messages are transmitted to consumers. Thus, there is no doubt that Shanto Iyengar’s work on racial attitudes and responsibility attribution remains a key contribution to the public opinion and political communication literature. He noted, “television’s unswerving focus on specific episodes, individual perpetrators, victims, or other actors at the expense of more general, thematic information inhibits the attribution of political responsibility to societal factors and to the actions of politicians such as the president” (Iyengar 1991, 5). Further, Iyengar describes the episodic frame as taking
[t]he form of a case study or event-oriented report and depicts public issues in terms of concrete instances (for example, the plight of a homeless person or a teenage drug user, the bombing of an airliner, or an attempted murder). The thematic frame, by contrast, places public issues in some more general or abstract context and takes the form of a “takeout,” or “backgrounder,” report directed at general outcomes or conditions. (Iyengar 1991, 14)
A question which emerges from the literature is, simply: What is the role of news frames in today’s multifaceted media environment? To this end, recent scholarship on the role of news frames in shaping political beliefs and attitudes has made valuable theoretical interventions concerning the increasingly competitive media environment. In particular, Dennis Chong and James N. Druckman provide a compelling analysis of framing effects4 which finds that, in a competitive framing environment where multiple frames exist, the structure and persuasiveness of news frames predict whether or not they will be effective in shaping ideas about the issues and topics framed (2007). Rather than the perceived strength of the frame, Chong and Druckman instead focus on the effects. This theoretical intervention is critical in understanding the relationship between emotion and framing choices given changes in the forms of news coverage and technological access that enable news consumers to receive and share stories in real-time. Specifically, in recent years, police and citizen involved shootings of Black Americans like Rekia Boyd, Eric Garner, Aiyana Stanley-Jones, Trayvon Martin, and Tamir Rice, present highly publicized instances where the “crime narrative,” news frames, and individual viewers’ assessments of responsibility collide. Questions regarding the legitimacy of police force trigger racially coded primers already existing in the minds of news consumers. Moreover, these violent cases – which often involve police authorities, are the types of news stories for which framing choices may affect how viewers form opinions of individual responsibility, racial resentment, and social policy concerning Black Americans. This has been increasingly apparent with the growing media interest in the Black Lives Matter Movement, which gained national attention after Michael Brown was killed by then-Officer Darren Wilson on August 9 2014 (Taylor 2014). These news stories and framing choices occur within an increasingly racially tense environment where media consumers often rely on mobile and digital sources to interpret events (Freelon, McIlwain, and Clark 2018). Simultaneously, this political moment is marked by growing political distance between racial groups and evidence of the pervasive influence of race on voting and political participation (Tesler 2016). Given this political context, existing theories on the role of news frames in shaping public opinion, specifically concerning Black Americans, require another look.
Placing the episodic frame in dialogue with racial messaging theory
A great deal of literature has examined the shifts in the types of racial messaging and social norms surrounding race since the 1990s (Bonilla-Silva and Forman 2000; Mendelberg 2001; Valentino, Hutchings, and White 2002; Prior 2007; Banks 2014; Woodly 2015; Tesler 2016). These works situate changes in the formation of political beliefs within a dynamic societal setting with many competing factors, namely race. Of particular interest is Tali Mendelberg’s findings which suggest that overtly racist sentiments, norms, and messages expressed in the public sphere were supplanted by racially coded language in accordance with new social norms of equality between white and Black Americans (2001). However, this turn away from explicitly racist sentiments in public did not signify the eradication of racist beliefs writ large. Rather, the changing expectations of public decorum necessitated ancillary changes in the ways that racial messages were conveyed. Mendelberg claims that shifts in public social customs around race have created two distinct norms: (1) the norm of racial inequality and (2) the norm of equality (2001). The former, existing through the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, was characterized by “explicitly racial appeals” (Mendelberg 2001, 63). The latter emerged when,
[f]irst, public commitment to basic racial equality reached immense proportions starting in the late 1960s. Second, notwithstanding this commitment, racial resentment continues to thrive among a significant portion of the white public. Third, in response to the first two factors, implicit appeals to racial stereotypes, fears, and resentments have been, since 1968, an important tool for mobilizing support from white voters. (Mendelberg 2001, 111)
Mendelberg refers to the post-civil rights moment as the “norm of equality” – a period underscored by a social norm of rebuking explicit racial appeals. However, the episodic frame cannot properly account for explicit or implicit racial priming. This is mainly because of its binary relationship as the antithesis to the more objective news coverage of the thematic frame. Further, the episodic frame alone does not account for measuring how implicit messages shape public opinions primarily because implicit messages are coded to invoke responses only from individuals who are primed to receive and act upon them (Albertson 2015). Likewise, Deva R. Woodly found that political messages and social actions were more likely to gain acceptance and traction if they utilized framing language to which target groups were already primed (2015). Thus, the implicit-explicit categorization, or the “IE model,” suggests that existing racial cues temper public dialogue and corral interracial interactions so as to avoid the consequences of seeming expressly racist (Mendelberg 2001). While thematic-episodic news framing and implicit-explicit racial messaging are not typically in direct conversation with one another, a key objective of this essay is to re-situate these paradigms given the contemporary social world.
Updates to the IE model suggest that the “norm of equality” and its dampening effect on the expression of overtly racial opinions has changed in recent years. For example, Gregory A. Huber and John S. Lapinski found that the use of implicit racial messaging was effective for more educated social groups. They say, “Among less-educated individuals, either implicit or explicit appeals appear somewhat effective in activating racial predispositions in opinion formation on non-race-related policy … Moreover, more-educated individuals do react more negatively to explicit appeals than implicit ones” (2006, 438). These findings are imperative since digital media consumers are increasingly older, non-white, and less educated (Bialik and Matsa 2017). Thus, while political candidates may not be incentivized to use implicit messages over explicit messages to appeal to mass publics, there is still much to be learned regarding how framing choices by news organizations inevitably shape public opinion, especially where race is concerned.
To this end, Valentino, Neuner, and Vandenbroek find that the increasing racial tensions of this political moment have reduced the impact of explicit racial appeals. They note, “Many whites now view themselves as an embattled and even disadvantaged group, and this has led to both strong in-group identity and a greater tolerance for expressions of hostility toward out-groups” (2017, 768). The increased tolerance for explicitly racial messages, as outlined by Valentino, Neuner, and Vandenbroek, suggests that news outlets may be incentivized to produce more episodic news coverage using overtly racialized messages to align with consumer media tastes. James N. Druckman and Michael Parkin refer to this process as media “slant,” a framing choice which can work to subconsciously influence voters’ preferences (2005). This suggests that the IE model, while it may be less effective in understanding racial resentment and political attitudes in the aggregate, can be particularly helpful in assessing the increasing distance between deracialized, objective news frames (thematic), covertly racialized, subjective news frames (implicit episodic), and overtly racialized, subjective news frames (explicit episodic). Thus, I suggest a move beyond the thematic-episodic continuum, towards an analysis of news framing that captures implicit and explicit racial cues as well.5
A typology of the episodic frame
While each possible combination of the thematic-episodic and IE Model is shown in the cross-tabular relationship chart illustrated in Figure 1, this project is primarily concerned with the attitudinal effects associated with the episodic frame. This theoretical emphasis stems from key findings that the episodic frame more consistently and effectively triggers intense emotional reactions (Gross 2008; Aarøe 2011), and personal responsibility attribution (Iyengar 1991; Spence 2010). The episodic frame is also most likely to be used immediately following a highly publicized social event when viewers are first gathering information about the newsworthy phenomenon (Dimitrova 2006).
Published online:
03 December 2018![]({"type":"image","src":"/na101/home/literatum/publisher/tandf/journals/content/rpgi20/2019/rpgi20.v007.i01/21565503.2018.1553198/20190121/images/medium/rpgi_a_1553198_f0001_ob.jpg"})
Figure 1. Typology of implicit-explicit media framing.
Thus, the fundamental structure of the thematic frame (e.g., focusing on structural and societal explanations for political phenomena) does not lend itself to the bifurcation of IE Model. Thematic framing focuses on structural explanations of phenomena even when those stories center the experiences of racial minorities. Moreover, a potential thematic-explicit frame would employ overtly racial messaging, which focuses on individuals and communities, making it identical to the episodic frame. For example, thematically framed news stories may mention the racial demographics of actors involved but do not contextualize their racial characteristics as correlative with the social interactions at the heart of the news story (Jackson, n.d.). Thus, the mere mention of race in a thematically framed news story does not preclude a story from remaining objective and non-episodic.
Crime narratives and public opinion formation
While there are a great many ways to measure racial predispositions and their resulting impacts on political attitudes, the intersections of race and criminality present an especially salient site for this investigation. When compared to non-blacks, scholars have found that Black Americans have been mischaracterized as particularly violent in both mass media and public opinion (Stark 1993; Gilens 1996; Peffley, Hurwitz, and Sniderman 1997; Entman and Rojecki 2000; Dixon and Maddox 2005). As such, this essay engages directly with the “myth of black violence” and its influence on news coverage of black assailants and victims of violent crime (Davis 1981; Stark 1993; Hill Collins 2000; Hutchings 2015; Shelby 2016). In Iyengar’s research, the black crime narrative reliably triggered individualistic attributions of responsibility whereas the white crime narrative triggered societal attribution (1991). He says that even “modest amounts of exposure” to news about crime “proved sufficient to induce significant shifts in viewers’ attributions” (1991, 45). These contradictions in attribution of responsibility are a result of the pre-dispositional effects of racial social norms. Importantly, they have a disproportionately negative association of criminal behaviors with the category of “blackness” (Mendelberg 2001; Shelby 2005). Thus, the effects of implicit and explicit episodic framing contribute to an ongoing narrative of black violence at the individual level and shape public opinion towards Black Americans in general.
This point is buttressed by public opinion literature linking news coverage to attitudes toward Black Americans and social policy. On the issues of poverty and welfare, Martin Gilens found that news media (both television and print) portrayed poor Americans as more black than real figures suggested (1999). These choices, he found, also shaped Americans’ views about welfare policy because, when race is introduced, Americans are more likely to make negative associations with black welfare recipients than their white counterparts (1996). In this way, racial animus operates as a latent variable triggering personal opposition to social policy. News frames are central to this process. Some scholars have argued that these influences happen without prior knowledge or personal intervention by those who consume racial-primed messages. For example, Mark Peffley, Jon Hurwitz and Paul Sniderman speculate that these negative associations, which they also refer to as “stereotypes,” might actually be the result of unconscious bias. They say, “under most circumstances, such individuals are likely to avoid prejudice and even actively reject stigmatizing responses” (1997, 54). Essentially, they find that political actors who are predisposed to negative racial attitudes can be interrupted if exposed to discordant messaging, thus nullifying the predisposition effects. Conversely, Bethany Albertson suggests that, while predispositions are important, racially coded messages work on their receivers (e.g., viewers) precisely because they target those individuals who are primed to respond positively to the message (2015).6 Understood in this way, the same message might seem explicit to some individuals and implicit to others.
Historical narratives of Black criminality as news media cues
Underlying this analysis is the primacy of perceptions of black criminality in shaping public opinion. In 1965, Daniel Moynihan suggested that black families were inherently dysfunctional and out of alignment with acceptable familial social norms. He termed this process the “culture of poverty.” Nearly a half century later, William Julius Wilson (2012) suggested that poorer blacks deviate from centrally accepted racial and gender norms in American society, creating a “ghetto underclass.” However, these efforts to identify Black Americans as inherently deviant do not comport with U.S. crimes statistics. Murder, homicide, rape, robbery, and aggravated assault are each considered violent crimes.7 According to the FBI, the homicide rates between whites and blacks were not materially different when race was known, at 44% for the former and 54% for the latter in 2013 (Stark 1993; Federal Bureau of Investigation 2014a). Despite these statistics, a narrative of inherent black criminality continues to be reproduced in mass media, thereby influencing attribution of violence to individual black actors rather than societal conditions (Stark 1993; Entman and Rojecki 2000; Oliver 2003; Shelby 2005). These scholars echo Iyengar’s findings that “[m]ore than 60 percent of all causal attributions were directed at individuals when the news reported on black violent crime” (1991, 43). Therefore, a key component of this research is unearthing the ways that crime messaging involving Black Americans works to reproduce and reinforce personal attribution assessments and negative racial attitudes.
Many scholars have made connections between news coverage of crime and public opinion on race in America. Gilliam and Iyengar found that “exposure to local news coverage of crime conditions attitudes toward crime and race … the racial element of the crime script (as opposed to the violence element) has the most demonstrable impact” (2000, 571) in increasing support for punitive crime policies. Consequently, it is not the news coverage of crime alone but the qualifying component of racial affiliation that influences public opinion. Similarly, Entman and Rojecki have argued that news
presents a face of black disruption, of criminal victimizing and victimization that compares unfavorably with whites. Such depictions may increase Whites’ fear of entering Black neighborhoods, as it reduces their sympathy for Blacks – who are in fact far more afflicted by violence and crime than most Whites. (2000, 209)
Discussion: an agenda for future research
Scholars who are committed to studying the intersections of news media, race, and crime will find this essay heartening. It provides a new perspective of news frames that accounts for the complex socio-political processes that order daily life. Simultaneously, it posits the present research on racial messaging as existing in conversation with the canonical thematic-episodic news framework. Yet, while this essay provides theoretical depth in field of political communication, there remains a great deal of future scholarship that can and should build upon this analysis.
There are many research questions which emerge from this combined approach. First, if news media coverage of the crime narrative frames Black Americans as inherently violent, how does this framing influence public opinion towards Black Americans in general? Second, if news outlets’ framing of Black Americans involved in violent crime affects whites’ propensity to understand the complexities of violent crime in the U.S., how do white Americans who consume this media view government intervention programs focused on social welfare issues, gun control, and drug mediation? And, third, to what degree can the effects of news media framing be parsed out from the feedback effects of other racial messaging? These questions are imperative in developing future research on the role of news frames in public opinion about Black Americans and crime.
Figure 2 outlines several possible research agendas stemming from this theoretical intervention. The theoretical focus outlined seeks to examine how implicit or explicit episodic frames may have varying impacts on support for race-related issues. By analyzing frequency-based groupings of episodic stories, we can better understand how to clearly delineate stories using implicit and explicit racial messaging from one another. A final mode of research might take up the experimental approach. Using this method, researchers could test message receptivity based on the types of outlets delivering the stories.
Published online:
03 December 2018![]({"type":"image","src":"/na101/home/literatum/publisher/tandf/journals/content/rpgi20/2019/rpgi20.v007.i01/21565503.2018.1553198/20190121/images/medium/rpgi_a_1553198_f0002_ob.jpg"})
Figure 2. Potential future research questions.
Although there remain a great many questions regarding the role of news media frames in the shaping of public opinions on racial matters, it is clear that racial predispositions, news media, and societal realities like criminality remain prescient concerns for social scientists of all disciplines. By adapting the canonical thematic-episodic framing theory to accommodate today’s media landscape, this work provides a new pathway for researchers interested in the intersections of race, political communications, and public opinion.
Acknowledgements
I would like to thank Cathy J. Cohen, Michael C. Dawson, John Brehm, Linda Zerilli, Justin Grimmer, Alysia Mann Carey, Marcus Board, and the editors and anonymous reviewers of Politics, Groups, and Identities for their vital insights and feedback on various iterations of this article. I would also like to thank the Center for the Study of Race, Politics, and Culture, the Center for the Study of Gender and Sexuality, and the Department of Political Science at the University of Chicago for their continued support of this research.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.
ORCID
Jenn M. Jackson http://orcid.org/0000-0002-0049-515X
Notes
1 However, the decrease in television news consumption does not mean that viewers no longer consume news or are less influenced by political messages the news provides (Prior 2007).
2 This was the content analysis portion of Shanto Iyengar’s work. The field experiments were performed between June 1985 and September 1987.
3 See Shanto Iyengar (1991, Appendix A, 145). Coding of the news content is described in percentages but there is no investigation of how the varying percentages change the outcomes of the episodic news frame on viewer opinions and attitudes.
4 See James N. Druckman’s discussion of the role of “frames of communication” in influencing “frames in thought,” the former being a discursive process of selection and focus and the latter being a process of cognition. The intersection of these processes is what Druckman refers to as “framing effects” (2001, 227–228).
5 My primary intervention is on the episodic frame because Iyengar notes that the episodic frame is the most prevalent news frame leveraged by news sources. To add, it carries the greatest consequences for “blaming the victim” (1991, 46).
6 See also Tali Mendelberg’s experiment (The Race Card, Chapter 8). She specifically calls out “highly resentful people” who face issues when relying on their racial predispositions to make political decisions. The context of implicit and explicit messages then carries great meaning when recipients of the messages have varying levels of resentment.
7 These terms were utilized by the Federal Bureau of Investigation. Retrieved from http://www.fbi.gov/about-us/cjis/ucr/crime-in-the-u.s/2013/crime-in-the-u.s.-2013/violent-crime/violent-crime-topic-page/violentcrimemain_final on March 8 2015.
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