ABSTRACT
The framing of news has rapidly gained attention in mass communication as a means to describe how subtle changes in press reports infl uence audience understanding. By exploring the potential power of the press to shape how people think about policy issues and public fi gures, a framing perspective counters the axiomatic view that the press is not successful in telling the public what to think, just what to think about (Cohen, 1963). News frames-the organizing devices used to thematically structure press accounts-are thought to infl uence individuals’ mental activation and issue interpretations, thereby shaping social judgments and decisions. The literature exploring framing has ballooned, with many times as many studies focused on the topic as on such central communication theories as agenda setting and priming (Weaver, 2007). Yet with this growth have come numerous critiques and correctives, with some scholars attempting to give structure to the fragmented conceptions of framing effects (Shah, McLeod, Gotlieb, & Lee, 2009), others calling for an expansion of the paradigms used to explore framing itself (D’Angelo, 2002), and yet others lamenting the apparent methodological stagnation of research on the topic (Kinder, 2007). In short, not only can scholars not agree on the meaning of a frame, they can’t even agree on what’s wrong with the scholarship on framing.
