Agenda setting, framing and representation PDF

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Notes from the lectures led by Stephen Jukes...

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Agenda setting, framing and representation

• Negative frame on refugees being = ‘invader’ frame - who’s doing it? Daily Mail, Express, etc. • Positive frame = victims of war, can help us

Thinking about theory • Agenda setting • Framing theory

Agenda setting Walter Lipmann Public opinion (19220 McCombs and Shaw - 1968 US election Power of mass media in driving what people think about: • Vietnam • Civil Rights • Freedom of expression Two main assumptions: • Media filter and shape reality • Focuses on issues determines what the public think is important • Whose agenda - public, policy, ,media

Framing • From ‘what to think about’ to ‘how to think about’ an issue • ‘Second level’ agenda setting • Goffman (1974)) & Entman (1993) • Focus on how events are depicted • A ‘schema of interpretation’ • Media generate, organise and transmit framed • Is the impact cognitive or affective?

Robert Entman - definitions • To frame is to select some aspects of a perceived reality and make them more salient in a communicating text, in such a way as to promote a particular problem definition ie refugees are the problem, causal interpretation ie fleeing from civil war, moral evaluation - don’t want these people in our country, treatment recommendation - need to let in more refugees, for the item

• Framing plays a major role in the exertion of political power, and the frame in a news text is really the imprint of power - it registers the identity of actors or interests that competed to dominate the text • Entman, R.M., 1993. Framing: Toward clarification of a fractured paradigm. Journal of communication, 43(4), pp.55-58

How framing works • Media can set frames through: • Choice of words • Choice of sources • Choice of metaphors • Choice of images • News content carries embedded social meaning • Framing can reduce complex issues to a simple theme • Framing can reflect prevailing ideologies

Gatekeeping or gatewatching? • Gatekeeping (lewin, 1943) • How information is chosen, filtered and disseminated to the public • Galtung and Ruge news values (1965) • Media are no longer the sole generators of information • Curation of PR, UGC, other outside material l • Concept of Gatewatching (Bruns, 2003) • Curating things to make a package - lost some of the influence - media still keep the power by deciding what goes out to the public

How do images create meaning? • ‘Cultural Turn’ of the 1980s • Fedinand de Saussure • Sign: • Signifier - a bottle of water • Signified - what is the significance within it? Thirst quenching, attractive • Roland Barthes • Denotive signs - it’s a plastic bottle • Cognitive signs - it’s a refreshing drink • Three sites (Rose 2012) A. Production

B. Image itself C. Audience

The affective dimension • ‘Turn to Affect’ of the 1990s • End of sole reliance on representation • Giles Deleuze • Pre-individual forces, energies, flows and sensations • Focus on perception, experiential, sensory • “an unqualified bodily response independent of, and perhaps phenomenally prior to, our understanding of the emotions they evoke or the meanings they entail.” Grusin (2010)...