Assignment #10 for the Departments of English & Media Studies by Prof Dr Sohail Ansari

Redefining border. Dressing.  Setting.

The news is rarely told the same way twice. How a news story is framed can play on the audience’s emotions and shape their opinions about current events and social issues. Consider the following article about a protest in Sudan:

Protests against chronic water outages in Sudan’s El Gedaref
March 29, 2018 | EL GEDAREF

El Gedaref — On Wednesday morning dozens of residents from the districts of Kirfis, Wadelkabir, and Abbasiya in Sudan’s El Gedaref went out in protest against the chronic interruption of water services.

A resident of El Gedaref told Radio Dabanga that the demonstrators, who were mostly women, marched to the water corporation chanting slogans condemning the interruption of water services and demanding the authorities to expedite the solution.

On Sunday the residents of Kirfis district closed the main road to the vehicles in protest against the total interruption of water.

They expressed concern over the worsening water crisis as summer is approaching and described the promises made by the government to resolve the water crisis as ‘a distant dream’.

This story probably evokes a reaction, but do you know why?

Communications scholars study something called “framing” to learn how the media influence public opinion. Robert Entman, an expert in American political communications, says that framing selects and emphasizes some parts of an event or issue over others and makes connections between those selected parts to provoke a certain interpretation from the audience.

In the example, think about why the reporter mentions that most of the demonstrators were women. How does this fact influence the reader’s opinion of the protest?

Like the frame of a house, a news frame gives shape to a story. Or like the frame around a painting, it displays the subject within a defined border. In other words, it gives the audience a broader context in which to consider the news. This triggers thoughts and feelings in the audience from past experience and knowledge.

It is a persuasive measure to lead readers toward a particular understanding of the information they consume. Sometimes framing is intentional, other times it is not intentional, but it always exists. Unintentional framing comes from the news producer’s own point of view.

Frames do not make a story untrue. An article about the protest written from the government’s perspective would frame the story differently. Rather than mention the “total interruption of water” that motivated the protest, the article might focus on the traffic jams the protest caused. Both stories are true, but the change in perspective shifts the reader’s sympathy.

This is why objectivity is highly valued by journalists. It is also why communications scholars will argue that pure objectivity is impossible to achieve, because no news is produced in a vacuum.

Media literacy gives audiences the tools to splice the news from its frames in order to separate emotion and opinion from fact.

                          

Exercise:  

(1)         Tell any news the same way twice.

(2)         Select any news and redefine its border.

(3)         Select any news and splice it from its frame to separate and emotion and opinion from fact.

What frames are

Framing is Dressing the Actor so you know his role.

Muslims are the villain of the post 9/11 world. Muslims are demonized by the international media, hence we have the Muslim character with a beard, and a peculiar Muslim dress to kill the peace of the world.

Exercise:

Select any article or any program for frames employed to transforms the Muslim character into a ruffian or mischief-makers of the world.

Framing is a setting

Framing is a setting that moves people to react based on the way the brain makes comparisons - a loss vs a gain : inexpensive vs expensive : better vs worse.  You tell the car sales lady you want a 'nice' used sports car.  She shows you a 4 door Hyundai because 'it is kind of sporty'.  And then a little roadster with a whopper price tag.  And then the car she wanted you to buy in the first place a nice but costly sports car.  The brain tends to disregard the Hyundai because it isn't similar - out of the frame - 4 doors and all.  And then makes the comparison which is framed between the too expensive roadster and nice but costly sports car. You are powerfully pushed to the sports car by the framing.

Exercise:

International media want its global audience to prefer India to Pakistan; thus it establishes a setting for its audience to make the comparison. Audiences tend to disregard India because it does not live up to the ideals of democracy but feel pushed to India. Pick any article or any program that established such setting and tell how the framing of the situations effect the way in which subjects approached two countries; and how framing effects create a decision scenario.