Assignment #9 for the Departments of English & Media Studies by Prof Dr Sohail Ansari

Learn the limits of Frames

The perspective on framing is dependent on the assumption that all perception is reference dependent; framing, therefore, embodies a context-sensitive explanation for shifts in political beliefs and attitudes.

A media frame as the central organizing idea or story line provides meaning to an unfolding strip of events suggesting what the controversy is about, the essence of the issue.

People use this meaning and suggestion to understand the essence or controversy. The Press tells its readers how to think about by having them interpret the stimulus in line with the context in which it is framed thus, it thus succeeds in determining the scope of what to think. 

The Press, therefore, after having stunning success in telling its readers what to think about succeeds in telling its readers how to think about and thus can herald its triumph in telling people what to think by promoting a particular definition, causal interpretation, moral evaluation, and/or treatment recommendation

                                                                    

It may, however, somewhat logically premature to embrace the assumption that how we interpret information differs depending on how that information is contextualized or framed because cited grounds for  assuming that it could also be seen differently if framed in an alternative way are far from conclusive.

Press can have people interpret the stimulus in line with the context in which it is framed but the context itself is determined or defined by the tendency deeply embedded or etched into the DNA of a nation.

People tend to see and think about the world through the lens of religious, cultural and social affiliations; therefore never take the first step:  Acknowledging the truth about themselves and others. Framing acknowledge the truth that people never acknowledge this truth and therefore is always in line with  implicit bias what may appear as an example of tacit racism but  actually is the manifestation of a broader propensity to think in terms of “us versus them.”  

Attitudinal outcomes that are due to variations in how a given piece of information is being framed in public discourse encourages the broad conceptualization of  framing because framing appears to be framing  the relationship between ideas and symbols used in public discourse and the meaning that people construct around issues.

Frames, however, are to be common set of cultural frames to emerge in public discourse to guide people’s thinking emanating from meanings that are shared within a culture.

The fact that the most important aspect of framing is how people interpret media information through their own personal field of meaning discourages the broad conceptualization of framing.

When individual frames interact with media frames, they are guided by mentally stored clusters of ideas that guide individuals’ processing of information. These audience frames are so firmly entrenched that they frame the response of people to the media frames.

 Media frames are, therefore, determined by audience frames.

If it is so, then what accounts for reversal in a broader propensity to think in terms of “Christians versus Jews?

For Jews, the name Jesus alone has nearly been synonymous for centuries with pogroms and Crusades, charges of deicide and centuries of Christian anti-Semitism.

Christian rhetoric towards Jews developed in the early years of Christianity, reinforced by the belief that belief in the divinity of any human being is incompatible with Judaism and Jesus is rejected in Judaism as a failed Jewish Messiah claimant and a false prophet 

The line of "modern antisemitic descent" from Luther, the author of On the Jews and Their Lies, to Hitler is easy to draw. Both were obsessed by the "demonologized universe" inhabited by Jews

Though the Holocaust has driven many within Christianity to reflect on the relationship between Christian theology, practices, and that genocide, majority within continued to view Jews through the lens of their own religion; but the degree to which people in USA today identify with Israelis definitely linked to exposure to media depictions of Jews.

Media approached the perception of Jews from a larger social- information processing framework to change it to lasting cognitive, behavioral, and emotional dispositions.

Jews direct mainstream cultural beliefs through various media; therefore cognitive schemas people gradually acquired to understand themselves and Jews were dictated by transactions with books, movies, and television; thus the self-schema of Christian  identity which came to serve as a filter for perceiving and reacting to Jews  predisposed individuals to be favorably disposed towards Jews.  

Audience frames, in the case of Jews are elicited by televised media; therefore, media frames are not determined by audience frames.

Does framing always morph into message? is a debate we cannot skirt around by believing it always does provided it is restricted to concerns not subject to or bound by religious rule or issues those do not have antediluvian dimensions, anomalies and restriction.

We are to be concerned to explore the strength of framing in interweaving primordial orientations with the universalistic constituted in modern civilizations and with its strength of abolishing primeval estrangement, primitive responses or sentiments of barbaric dimensions. 

We however, can say with almost certainty: the effects of framing can be known with certainty with a description of the contexts within which the relations between the framing and ideas (those are not linked with celestial, cared for, venerated and consecrated) take place.

We however, cannot say with certainty that framing may succeed partially or absolutely with issues correlated with a set of concepts or mental representations people carry around for centuries.

Exercise:

Instance framings morph into messages.

Instance framings fail to morph into messages.