ABSTRACT
This chapter deals with the notion of journalistic news frames, an area of research that my colleagues and I at the Amsterdam School of Communications Research (ASCoR) have been engaged with since the 1990s. The starting point is that journalists and news organizations are not passive actors in the frame building process. Even as political elites, civil society actors, and other sources actively frame messages in order to achieve strategic goals, look favorable, and get news coverage, journalistic framing implies that journalists and news organizations inevitably add frames of their own; doing so, for example, by emphasizing some aspects of a topic while downplaying other aspects. With a few exceptions (e.g., Delli Carpini, 2005; Price, Tewksbury, & Powers, 1997), relatively little attention has been devoted to the ways in which journalistic routines translate into news frames, as Scheufele (1999, p. 115) has noted. But it stands to reason that these production processes are quite important. Public opinion is shaped by how the news media frame issues (e.g., Entman, 1991; Gamson & Modigliani, 1989). Also, journalistic production processes are central to understanding framing effects on the cognitive level, where they play a role in shaping individuals’ thoughts, opinions, and attitudes.
