Stephen D. Reese

Prologue—Framing Public Life: A Bridging Model for Media Research

quality. The frame is not the same as its symbolic manifestation, which means we must get behind surface features to the generating principle that produced one way of framing a story, but is at work in many others as well. This suggests that we must often infer the organizing principle from media discourse, which is a conglomeration of inter-locking and competing organizing ideas. Or we must ask what principles are held by journalists or frame sponsors that give rise to certain ways of expressing them. Ultimately, frames may best be viewed as an abstract principle, tool, or “schemata” of interpretation that works through media texts to structure social meaning. Gamson and Modigliani (1989), for example, refer to a frame as an “organizing idea.” These interpretive principles are made manifest in discourse; symbolic devices making up media texts constitute the epiphenomena of the underlying principle. Entman (1993) suggests that frames can be located in the communicator, the text, the receiver and the culture. More accurately perhaps we should say that frames are principles of organizing information, clues to which may be found in the media discourse, within individuals, and within social and cultural practices. While we may consider whether information is in or out of a text, we need to also consider the principles that naturally lead to it being excluded or included, such that one may not even notice the exclusion. In Gitlin’s (1980) view, for example, frames are inevitably part of a much larger set of structures, or societal ideology, that finds its manifestation in the text. To ignore the principle that gives rise to the frame is to take media texts at face value, and to be misled by manifest content. A focus on the organizing principle should caution us that what is seen in media texts is often the result of many inter-related, competing principles from contending sources and media professionals themselves. The framing principle may generate a coverage blackout, yielding little discourse to analyze. This is the case, for example, with stories identified by Project Censored in both the U.S. and Canada (1996), watchdog groups that look for issues not getting the coverage their importance deserved. Thus, we may ask whose principle was dominant in producing the observed coverage? How did the principles brought to bear by journalists interact with those promoted by their sources? These questions require looking behind the scenes and making inferences from the symbolic patterns in news texts.

Mapping the blogosphere Professional and citizen-based media in the global news arena

Globalization and the internet have created a space for news and political discourse that overrides geography and increases opportunities for non-mainstream, citizen-based news sources. Drawing a distinction between emerging citizen and professional media, this study examines one rapidly expanding and increasingly influential citizen news source — weblogs. We analyzed the linking patterns, the online network led to by six of the most popular news and political weblogs to study their relationship to other weblogs and the traditional professional news media in the USA and internationally. Findings suggest a more complementary relationship between weblogs and traditional journalism and less echo-chamber political insularity than typically assumed. The blogosphere relies heavily on professional news reports and half of its linked-to sites can be considered non-partisan.

The news paradigm and the ideology of objectivity: A socialist at the wall street journal

This study examines the news paradigm as an occupational ideology whose major feature is the principle of objectivity, and the larger hegemonic function of that paradigm. An anomalous case is analyzed to illustrate paradigmatic repair: A. Kent MacDougall caused a controversy in the journalistic community and threatened the paradigmatic norm of objectivity when he revealed that he had been a radical socialist during his ten years as a reporter for The Wall Street Journal. Three types of repair are examined: (a) disengaging and distancing the threatening values from the reporters work, (b) reasserting the ability of journalistic routines to prevent threatening values from “distorting” the news, and (c) marginalizing the man and his message, making both appear ineffective.

The Roots of a Sociology of News: Remembering Mr. Gates and Social Control in the Newsroom

We examine two “classic” research studies from the 1950s: David Manning Whites analysis of the “gatekeeper” news editor and Warren Breeds explanation of social control in the newsroom. Although posing a potentially radical question—“What makes news?”—these efforts were largely absorbed into and reinforced the limited media effects paradigm of the time. Drawing from interviews with the authors, we trace the origin, impact, and intellectual context of these forerunners of media sociology.

MEDIA DEPENDENCY AS INTERACTION Effects of Exposure and Reliance on Political Activity and Efficacy

Recent research on the differential effects of newspapers and television news has offered a wide variety of operationalizations of media exposure, reliance, and dependency. While these operationalizations have been drawn from the same general theoretic domain, they have led to contradictory findings and conceptual difficulties. This article examines media dependency as a complex construct involving the interactions of exposure to television news, exposure to nespapers, and expressions of reliance on one medium or the other. Data are from the 1976 University of Michigan CPS national election study. As hypothesized, reliance on a medium enhances positive associations between exposure to that medium and political efficacy and activity.

The militarism of local television: The routine framing of the Persian Gulf war

This study examines how the practices of television newswork add up to coherent “frames of reference”; toward the Persian Gulf War, supporting administration policy and creating an “illusion of triumph.”; We consider it especially important to look for these patterns in local television with its community ties and need for audience appeal. Using interviews with newsworkers and close analysis of coverage, we examine the way one local television station covered the war, with a special focus on how dissent was portrayed in January of 1991. We link coverage to the media routines of television newswork, showing how they act as coherent frames supportive of Gulf policy. The conflict frame placed anti‐war protest in opposition to patriotism. The control frame relied on law enforcement and dealt with protest as a threat to social order. The consensual frame ultimately supported a legitimately controversial policy by connecting it to patriotism and “the troops.”;

Visual‐verbal redundancy effects on television news learning

Learning from news stories was greater when visuals and script were redundant than when they were not redundant. Adding continuous redundant captions, however, appeared to impede learning.

Setting the Media’s Agenda: A Power Balance Perspective

This chapter reviews the burgeoning number of studies seeking to explain what sets the media’s agenda, and integrates them within a power balance framework. The concept of power is used in a critical evaluation of the agenda-setting metaphor and its limitations when expanded to include influences on media content. The organizational perspective, taken by much “media sociology” research, has examined power relations within organizations. This approach restricts the power of journalists, who are viewed as constrained by bureaucratic structures. Alternatively, journalists may be viewed as agents of the organization’s power in their dealings with other institutions. These power relations between the media and sources can be examined at individual, organizational, and institutional levels and are discussed in terms of interdependency and symbiosis. A media organization may manifest its power through its ability to define a reality through reporting and structuring of information, in spite of efforts by involve...

Framing the War on Terror The internalization of policy in the US press

The War on Terror was the label assigned by the Bush administration to its national security policy, launched in response to the attacks of 9/11. The cultural construction and political rationale supporting this slogan represent a powerful organizing principle that has become a widely accepted framing, laying the groundwork for the invasion of Iraq. We examine this framing where its sponsors intersect with US journalism, as illustrated by news texts. Broadly, we examine trends in how news reports refer to the War on Terror and provide an interpretive analysis of stories in USA Today. From the period of September 2001 to early 2006, these news texts suggest that the frame was internalized by the US press. News and editorial reports went beyond ‘transmitting’ the label as shorthand for administration policy, to ‘reify’ the policy as uncontested, and ‘naturalize’ it as a taken-for-granted common-sense notion.

Educating for Journalism: the professionalism of scholarship

Journalism education?s historical origins, intellectual tradition and media constituency have directed the field away from what could be a more lively engagement with the liberal arts, which are accepted in principle at least by academy and industry as a valuable foundation for professional journalism education. Yet students are increasingly disengaged from the democratic process, signaling a crucial need for promoting greater civic engagement. We urge a broader educational commitment to the professionalism of scholarship, as opposed to the more conventional view of media ?professionalism? in the academy increasingly promoted by the media industry. Meanwhile, the academic communication field ? the prevailing disciplinary identity of journalism ? has emphasized media effects and audience studies. As universities seek greater external financial support, this research is easily directed toward applied, or ?administrative,? research, leaving broader questions of journalism and democracy up for grabs. Our view of academic professionalism is based on a broader social responsibility, and we are concerned that the educational mission should not be dictated by external agendas. While journalism in some ways occupies an academic ?no man?s land?, accepted by neither industry nor more traditional liberal arts disciplines, it can be viewed alternatively as a potentially fruitful academic intersection, providing leadership in educational reform.