Assignment #12: Frame analysis for the Departments of English & Media Studies by Prof Dr Sohail Ansari

Frame analysis is a broadly applied, relatively flexible label for a variety of approaches to studying social constructions of reality.

The sociologist Erving Goffman, who is credited with coining the term in his 1974 book Frame Analysis, understood the idea of the frame to mean the culturally determined definitions of reality that allow people to make sense of objects and events. For example, a car advertisement might seek to frame driving as an essentially pleasurable activity by associating it with recognizable symbols of play and leisure (in the target culture) such as a beach.

Plato's idealism held that all things have such an "essence"—an "idea" or "form". In Categories, Aristotle similarly proposed that all objects have a substance that, as George Lakoff put it "make the thing what it is, and without which it would be not that kind of thing". West does not subscribe to the contrary view—non-essentialism—that denies the need to posit such an "essence’ “and hence as far Islam is concerned it essentializes Islamic societies as  fossilized—thereby fabricating a view of Oriental culture that can be studied, depicted, and reproduced. Implicit in this fabrication is the idea that Western society is developed, rational, flexible, and superior.

A car advertisement cannot seek to frame driving as an essentially pleasurable activity if associating it with a beach is not possible because either target culture does not have beaches or even if it has it is not associated with play and leisure.

A car advertisement, however, frames driving as an essentially pleasurable activity by associating it with a beach that does not exist in the target culture or even it exists it is not associated with play and leisure.

The response advertisement extracts depends on the audience’s understanding of its context not on the audience’s perception capability; a car advertisement understandably fails but this failure is capitalized on to hurl derogatory epithets. Phrases which must receive the sobriquet that they are vacuous at best, meaningless at worst are taken as the gauge for evaluating audience as philistine, uncultured and lowbrow people. Implicit in this deprecation is the idea that a society that has no beach or even if it has beaches but not for play and leisure is not developed, rational, flexible, and superior.

West commits intellectual dishonesty as it makes sense of objects and events associated with Islam without the definitions of reality determined by Islam.

Exercise

·         Examine the frames used by contemporary scholars perpetuating the tradition of prejudiced outsider-interpretation of Arabo-Islamic cultures, especially Bernard Lewis and Fouad Ajami to configure the academic study of Islam.

·         Read Michel Foucault's theorisation of discourse (the knowledge-and-power relation) to understand how he criticizes the frames used in the scholarly tradition of Oriental studies.

·         Read The Venture of Islam: Conscience and History in a World Civilization by Marshall Goodwin Simms. The work of his is recognized as a masterpiece because it not only radically reconfigures the academic study of Islam but also resituates the geographical locus of Islam. Examine the frames used for reconfigution.

·         What is not said as much as what is said. What is not said is not said if the shared understanding that populate social and cultural environment is not taken into account. Analyze discourses for frames those misconstrue silence.

Goffman envisioned frame analysis to be an element of ethnographic research that would allow analysts to read identifiable chunks of social behaviour, or “strips,” in order to understand the frames that participants use to make sense of the behaviour (whether they apprehend their reality, for instance, through a religious or a secular frame). The study of framing and its role in social life has had wide effects across a broad spectrum of the social sciences.

Exercise

·         What are the identifiable chunks of social behaviour, or “strips,” of secular and religious lobby of Pakistan and how they differ in frames to apprehend their reality?

Social psychology and economics found common ground in Daniel Kahneman and Amos Tversky’s Nobel Prize-winning research into how the framing of problems influences decision making. Social movement researchers developed more-specific uses for frame analysis, turning the general ethnographic method into a more-specified tool for understanding the particular dynamics of activist movements.

Media scholars emphasized the political role played by frames in mass communication, examining the use of frames to guide audiences to preferred conclusions by simultaneously highlighting particular aspects of reality and hiding others.

Religion and culture outpace politics across all regions of West and are the root cause of tension between Muslim and Western worlds. Islamophobia existed in premise before the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, but it increased in frequency and notoriety during the past decade. The Runnymede Trust in the U.K., for example, identified eight components of Islamophobia in a 1997 report, and then produced a follow-up report in 2004 after 9/11 and the initial years of the Afghanistan and Iraq wars. The second report found the aftermath of the terrorist attacks had made life more difficult for British Muslims.

An exaggerated fear, hatred, and hostility toward Islam and Muslims that is perpetuated by negative stereotypes resulting on the one hand in bias, discrimination, and the marginalization and exclusion of Muslims from social, political, and civic life and on the other such framing of Muslims influences decision making.

Read or watch the language of political and social discourse before Afghanistan and Iraq wars for the political role played by frames that influence the decision for wars and the language during wars to sustain them and after victories to justify them.

Decision making is the process of making choices by identifying a decision, gathering information, and assessing alternative resolutions. Using a step-by-step decision-making process can help one make more deliberate, thoughtful decisions by organizing relevant information and defining alternatives.

Exercise

·         Examine the use of frames to guide audiences to preferred decisions by simultaneously highlighting particular aspects of reality and hiding others so that audience cannot make deliberate, thoughtful decisions by organizing relevant information and defining alternatives.

            

Social movement research and political communication have been the two main subfields of political science to consider the role of frames. However, work in both areas has moved substantially away from Goffman’s formulation by reconsidering the role of intentionality in framing. Goffman saw frames as being either “primary frameworks”—the product of larger culture and shared by all within a culture—or as intentionally fabricated by individuals—a “transformation” of the primary frameworks. Individuals who intentionally deploy frames transform a culturally constructed social reality and do so either in play or to deceive.

Goffman’s reading of intentional framing thus cast it as a move away from a more “authentic” reality rather than as an element that revealed the struggles for power constituting or maintaining that reality. Meanwhile, both social movement and political communication scholars viewed the question of intentionality in framing in a substantially different way. Both lines of research saw frames as relevant to politics precisely because they can be intentionally deployed to create a change in attitudes.

Social movement theorists also recognized framing as a pillar of organizational activity. These theorists moved quickly to recognize that the intentional deployment of frames is an important function played by organizations to mobilize adherents and constituents. They recognized the process of frame alignment—the linkage of individual and organizational interpretive frames—to be not a deception enacted between two people but rather a legitimate means to organizational ends.

Theorists of political communication studied frames as one way that media (or the elites who manipulate them) can influence audiences’ political attitudes. Although audiences can potentially interpret texts in a number of different ways, people are most likely, in the absence of having additional information, to interpret problems, causes, and solutions for issues in terms of the way that those issues have been framed. Emily Shaw

Culture is the stock of commonly invoked frames. Frames are the cognitive organizing frameworks audience members hold; determined by the culture within which they operate, manifested through the use of certain keywords, stereotyped images, or stock phrases that reinforce a theme.

Journalists do not, therefore, frame frames because frame packages are rooted in culture that reoccurs frequently.

Goffman saw frames as being either “primary frameworks”—the product of larger culture and shared by all within a culture

Exercise

·         What are the commonly invoked frames of West for Islam and Muslims?

·         What frames the cultures of Muslim countries determine for west?

Goffman’s reading of intentional framing thus cast it as a move away from a more “authentic” reality rather than as an element that revealed the struggles for power constituting or maintaining that reality

Exercise

·         What authentic reality frame helps to hide?

·         Examine frame as an element that reveals the struggles for power constituting or maintaining reality rooted in culture.

Islamophobia is not because of political interests but because of deeply ingrained cultural and religious differences with Islam. Frames against Islam are intentionally fabricated by the Western media but they are the “transformation” of the primary frameworks people of West hold.  Western media intentionally deploy frames to transform a culturally constructed reality of Islam for its harangue comes packaged in aggressive characterization for banging the drum for a war against Islam.  Western media recognized framing after 9/11 as a pillar of organizing people for a war against Muslim.

Exercise

·         Watch or read discourses to recognize the intentional deployment of frames and examine their important function played by politicians to play on their constituents and media to mobilize public opinion.

·         Examine the process of frame alignment as the linkage of individual and Western Governments interpretive frames to be not a deception enacted between Government and people of West but rather a ‘legitimate means’ to end: the war against Islam.

Manipulation of frames cannot influence audiences’ political if, people are in the presence of having additional information to interpret problems, causes, and solutions for issues in terms of the way that those issues have not been framed. Audiences can potentially interpret texts in a different ways if they have additional information.

Exercise

·         Suggest that additional information and its framing to stymie the process of frame alignment as the linkage of individual and Western Governments interpretive frames so that the script writers of war against Islam themselves are harangued for writing it.