ABSTRACT
The FrameWorks Institute has been applying framing theory to conduct applied empirical communications research for nearly two decades. During this time, we have worked with scientists, advocates, and practitioners to reframe public discourse on a range of social issues, including race and racism, climate change, criminal justice, addiction, immigration, early childhood development, education, and environmental health. In this chapter, we show how a growing body of scholarship on the relationship between news media frames and cognitive processes of interpretation can be used to create a framing theory of practice. Specifically, the FrameWorks research process employs multiple methods drawn from anthropology, communications studies, economics, political science, linguistics, psychology, and sociology. The process begins by mapping public perceptions and interpretations of a given issue and by examining extant frames in the news media and other sources of public discourse. The process continues by using this analysis of culture in mind and media to identify hypotheses and candidate reframing tools that can be used to shift and expand public conversation and thinking. Finally, we conduct a series of multi-method tests of hypotheses and candidate reframes in order to rigorously identify those tools that have the potential to reframe public thinking and discourse around an issue. In this chapter, we discuss this research process from the conceptualization of a project through to the learning and dissemination of findings and recommendations. We illustrate each step of the empirical process with examples from a range of projects, from early childhood development to climate change, and discuss the social science theory and methods that underpin each part of the work. In so doing, the chapter sketches the broader theory that drives our applied work on reframing social and scientific issues and provides one way to understand the relationship between media frames, public thinking, and social change.
