ABSTRACT
This chapter examines media coverage, which has for the most part relied on two key frames when addressing same-sex marriage (SSM): morality and civil rights. It looks at how decisions get made in newsrooms when journalists report on SSM and what the resulting media coverage looks like. Evidence from surveys, experiments, time-series analyses, and case studies shows that under certain circumstances media frames can influence attitudes and public opinion across a wide variety of issues. The chapter discusses the "two reasonable arguments" model, in which news reporters are careful to provide equal coverage of sources on both sides of a debate. One analysis of news coverage of the state-level marriage amendments took a somewhat different approach to evaluating framing patterns. Journalists working in the early- and mid-1900s framed homosexuality in the news just as it was classified by legal, medical, and religious experts of the time: as a mental illness that led individuals to deviant behavior.
