ABSTRACT
In covering policy issues, the mass media provide more than “just the facts.” They also provide frames that tell audience members how to understand particular policy controversies. As defi ned by Gamson and Modigliani (1987, p. 143), a frame is “a central organizing idea or story line that provides meaning to an unfolding strip of events, weaving a connection among them. The frame suggests what the controversy is about, the essence of the issue.”1 The frames for a given policy controversy exist within the public discourse surrounding that controversy-a discourse that is typically communicated to ordinary citizens through the mass media (e.g., Kinder & Sanders, 1996). Framing, in turn, involves the presentation of such organizing ideas or storylines. As Entman (1993, p. 52) writes, “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 defi nition, causal interpretation, moral evaluation, and/or treatment recommendation.”
