ABSTRACT
The concept of framing has grown into a thriving approach to analyzing media content and its effects, but it has also been described as a fractured or fragmented paradigm. The multitude of frame definitions and the vagueness of the concept have been widely criticized. We argue for a broad understanding of framing that is able to integrate different kinds of frame concepts. An integrative approach is more likely to “defragment” the research field than attempts to promote narrow definitions of frames. The challenge for framing theory is to clarify the benefits of different concepts and the relationship between them. This chapter takes a step in this direction by focusing on one of the major cleavages in the quest for a common approach toward researching news frames: the division between generic and issue-specific framing concepts. We argue that issue-specific and generic frames can be seen as different layers of framing on different levels of abstraction that may be combined in a comprehensive framing study.
