News Framing Effects
News Framing Effects is a guide to framing effects theory, one of the most prominent theories in media and communication science. Rooted in both psychology and sociology, framing effects theory describes the ability of news media to influence peoples attitudes and behaviors by subtle changes to how they report on an issue. The book gives expert commentary on this complex theoretical notion alongside practical instruction on how to apply it to research.
The books structure mirrors the steps a scholar might take to design a framing study. The first chapter establishes a working definition of news framing effects theory. The following chapters focus on how to identify the independent variable (i.e., the news frame) and the dependent variable (i.e., the framing effect). The book then considers the potential limits or enhancements of the proposed effects (i.e., the moderators) and how framing effects might emerge (i.e., the mediators). Finally, it asks how strong these effects are likely to be. The final chapter considers news framing research in the light of a rapidly and fundamentally changing news and information market, in which technologies, platforms, and changing consumption patterns are forcing assumptions at the core of framing effects theory to be re-evaluated.
Sophie Lecheler is Professor of Political Communication at the University of Vienna, Austria. Her research interests include news framing research, experimental methods, journalism, and emotions. Her research has appeared in various international journals, such as Journal of Communication, Communication Research, Political Communication, and Communication Theory.
Claes H. de Vreese is Professor and Chair of Political Communication at the Amsterdam School of Communication Research, University of Amsterdam, the Netherlands. His research interests include journalism, news effects, and public opinion. He has published more than 150 articles in international journals, and (co-)authored several books.
First published 2019
by Routledge
2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN
and by Routledge
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Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business
2019 Sophie Lecheler and Claes H. de Vreese
The right of Sophie Lecheler and Claes H. de Vreese to be identified as authors of this work has been asserted by them in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
The Open Access version of this book, available at www.taylorfrancis.com, has been made available under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivatives 4.0 license.
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British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Lecheler, Sophie, author. | Vreese, C. H. de
(Claes Holger), 1974author.
Title: News framing effects / Sophie Lecheler and
Claes H. de Vreese.
Description: Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon ; New York, NY :
Routledge, 2019. | Includes bibliographical references and index.
Identifiers: LCCN 2018015367 | ISBN 9781138632684
(hardback : alk. paper) | ISBN 9781138632707 (pbk. : alk. paper) |
ISBN 9781315208077 (ebook)
Subjects: LCSH: JournalismSocial aspects. | JournalismObjectivity.
Classification: LCC PN4749 .L43 2019 | DDC 302.23dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2018015367
ISBN: 978-1-138-63268-4 (hbk)
ISBN: 978-1-138-63270-7 (pbk)
ISBN: 978-1-315-20807-7 (ebk)
Typeset in Sabon
by Out of House Publishing
2.1 Example studies from low-high levels of journalistic agency
4.1 Individual-level moderators
4.2 Contextual moderators
5.1 The psychology of news framing effects
5.2 (Moderated) mediation of a news framing effect
6.1 Determinants of duration
2.1 Factors influencing the degree of journalistic agency in the frame- building process
For more than two decades, we have worked on various aspects of news framing and framing research. We have held numerous conference presentations, lectured extensively on the topic to undergraduate and graduate students, written journal articles on specific studies, and sketched general outlines of the concept in encyclopedia and handbook entries. And all the while, we have both felt the absence of an authoritative advanced textbook on the topic.
Having each completed a PhD dissertation (albeit in different decades) with the word framing in the title, we were both strongly inclined to think more about the topic. Our passion never wavered over the following years, and time and again, we observed the lack of a comprehensive textbook. At some point in 2015, we developed the idea and made the commitment to write a book that we ourselves would be keen to both read and use in the classroom. In 2016, our book proposal was enthusiastically accepted by Routledge, and in 2017, we completed the manuscript. The actual production time was thus relatively swift, much more so than our thinking about the concept and bemoaning the lack of this book.
Did we achieve our goal of offering an authoritative advanced textbook on the topic of news framing effects? This is inevitably up to the reader to judge. At the least, we enjoyed organizing and expanding our thinking on the topic as we attempted to present it in an accessible and comprehensive fashionone that would invite future students and scholars to reflect more on certain aspects while ensuring that they avoid some of the mistakes that we had made.
In organizing the book, it was clear from the outset that the main thrust would be on news framing and framing effects. We have studied these areas the most thus far, and we believe that they are the locus of the concept in communication science, media studies, journalism, political communication, political psychology, and public opinion research. The book draws from our previous thinking and writing on this topic. It does not present brand-new research results but rather summarizes what we do and do not know. During its creation, we were fortunate to have recourse to our dissertation work and to chapters that we wrote together, to theoretical pieces by Lecheler and Baden, to overview pieces by de Vreese, and to more recent insights from PhD students like Guus Bartholom and Alina Feinholdt, whom we co-supervised. We thank them for valuable collaboration and for helping us to think more deeply about the concept of framing. All errors in the summary and in our thoughts about the future, however, remain ours.
