Framing in Public Relations

Chris Calabrese

The Pennsylvania State University

Abstract

The purpose of this report is to define the communications theory of framing and establish an understanding of its use in public relations. This will be accomplished by giving scholars’ definitions of framing, walking through the theory’s history, putting it within the context of public relations and providing an example of its use. By the report’s conclusion, the reader will have a full understanding of framing and its uses.

Introduction

Every public relations professional has the ultimate goal of establishing a connection between his or her client and a public or set of publics in order to send messages that influence attitudes and behaviors. In a world where a call to action lurks around ever corner, if a message is not well engineered, it is immediately useless. When crafting a message, one must understand how the people he or she is targeting perceive the world around them. This includes their values, their opinions, their experiences, their environment and what matters to them. The communication theory of framing encapsulates this process of designing a message by putting it within parameters that resonate with your target audience. Framing is absolutely necessary, and a campaign without a frame will quickly become a lost cause. To better understand framing, this paper will further define framing, explore its history and put it within the context of public relations.

Description of Framing

Framing is a process used by the media and publicists in an attempt to have a certain message perceived a certain way. In simply put, it is a set of neutral information placed within a certain field of meaning. The sender has information to send and decides how they want the receiver of the information to perceive the information. Then, taking into account the receiver’s set values and concerns, the sender constructs, or frames, a message that focuses on a certain part of the information and sends the message. The process of placing the information into a well thought out field of meaning is called framing. This may seem simple, but there are many moving psychological parts to this process that are best explained by walking through the theory’s history.

The concept of framing was first presented as its own entity by Erving Goffman in 1974 via his essay, Frame Analysis: An Essay on the Organization of Experience. Goffman explained that people perceive the world through a combination of memories and experiences called the primary framework. Goffman argues that this set of experiences within the individual creates a framework of associations and expectations that are automatically installed into any response. Goffman called these frameworks primary because, in his opinion, there is no original interpretation of an event that occurs before this one, it happens instantly. In Goffman’s words, “a primary framework is one that is seen as rendering what would otherwise be a meaningless aspect of the scene and into something that is meaningful” (Goffman, 21).

To Goffman, there are two “broad classes” of primary schema: natural and social. He describes natural frameworks as literally “natural,” and having to do with one’s physical and biological make up. There is no third party acting on the response. Social frameworks, on the other hand, are much more unique and complex. Unlike natural frameworks, they include intelligence. Goffman describes a reaction driven from the social framework as “based on its honesty, efficiency, economy, safety, elegance, tactfulness, good taste and so forth” (Goffman, 22). Therefore, in Goffman’s eyes, all human reaction is determined by these two primary frameworks. The natural reactions within one’s physical make up and the social formalities placed on each individual from his or her experiences, environment, motives and values determines how one will respond to a certain event, but how does this apply to communication?

Those in communications research had an issue with Goffman’s ideas because they claimed that framing was too similar to other theories. To many scholars, framing was synonymous with psychological terms such as script, or schema and other theories such as agenda setting or priming. In 1999, a scholar named Dietram A. Scheufele published an article in the Journal of Communication that outlined the difference between framing and the terms listed above. Goffman introduced the idea of human primary frames, but the media also “frames” the message it is presenting to the public. Scheufele argues: “mass media actively set the frames of reference that readers or viewers use to interpret and discuss public events” (Scheufele, 105). He goes on to quote communications researcher Denis McQuail’s idea that the media attempts to shape the reality that is consumed by each individual “by framing images of reality . . . in a predictable and patterned way” (Scheufele, 105). So, using this idea, Scheufele claims that the media’s framing of messages sent to publics combined with each individual’s frames of understanding the consumed message create the full concept of framing.

Furthermore, the media uses the public’s predisposed feelings to frame a message to be consumed a certain way by a specific group of people. Once they frame this message and send it, the message is then filtered through each individual’s primary frame where it manipulated and perceived in its own unique way. The public then reacts to the message, reshapes its feelings and
frame, and the process begins again. This process can be further explained by Figure 1 below.

Figure 1: Scheufele’s Model of Framing

            Using this model, it is easy to see how the media, take journalists for example, can use this process to achieve whatever reaction they hope to. Journalists can frame information to have a certain impact on their readers, but public relations professionals can use the same process to achieve a similar result.

Framing’s Application in Public Relations

Imagine a town that wants to run a campaign against drug use brings in a public relations practitioner to draw up a strategy. During the first meeting, the practitioner brings in plans with a stellar strategy, a perfect target audience analysis, a solid set of objectives and a fresh set of tactics. He or she then presents a huge piece of paper with the mantra “DON’T DO DRUGS” written in bold font. The message is clear, direct and to the point, but the town kicks the practitioner out of the room. What is the problem here? The practitioner is not using the research he or she performed to write the message, but instead turns to a tired slogan that the town’s people have ignored a hundred times. The issue here is framing.

For help, the public relations professional above should turn to Kirk Hallahan’s 1999 “Seven Models of Framing: Implications for Public Relations.” Hallahan took the research and ideals put before him about framing in the media and applied them to seven different situations in public relations. Broadly, Hallahan fits framing into public relations via the following logic: “If public relations is defined as the process of establishing and maintaining mutually beneficial relations between an organization and publics on whom it depends (Cutlip, Center, & Broom, 1995), the establishment of common frames of reference about topics or issues of mutual concern is a necessary condition for effective relations to be established” (Hallahan, 207). What Hallahan is saying is that if the essence of public relations is to establish a relationship between an organization and the target audience, understanding how they perceive the world is key in creating that relationship. Once one understands a public’s frame, there are different styles of framing that can be used to incorporate the information. According to Hallahan, there are three primary types of framing:

• Valence Framing – putting information in either a positive or negative light.
• Semantic Framing – the simple alternative phrasing of terms.
• Story Framing – involves selecting key themes or ideas that are the focus of the message and incorporating a variety of storytelling or narrative techniques that support that theme.

Once one evaluates his or her target audience and identifies what form of framing to use, the next step is crafting that message. For this, Hallahan turns to the following framing structures:

• Syntactical – stable patterns of arranging words and phrases in a text
• Script – The orderly sequencing of events in a predictable or expected pattern.
• Thematic – The presence of propositions or hypotheses that explain the relations between elements within a text—including the presence of words such as “because,” “since,” and “so.”
• Rhetorical – subtly suggest how a text should be interpreted using strategies such as metaphors and similes, familiar exemplars and illustrations, provocative language and descriptors, catchphrases, and visual imagery.

Using these strategies and structures, the public relations practitioner in the first paragraph could have certainly done some things differently. Take the successful “Above the Influence” national anti-drug campaign. A nationwide study found that “12 percent of those who had not reported having seen the campaign took up marijuana use compared to only 8 percent among students who had reported familiarity with the campaign” (Grabmeier). This campaign has the same basic message as the public relations practitioner had before, and has the same message that many failed local and national anti-drug campaigns have had in the past, but what was different? Michael Slater, principal investigator of the study and communications professor at Ohio State University, said: “The ‘Above the Influence’ campaign appears to be successful because it taps into the desire by teenagers to be independent and self-sufficient.” The developers of this campaign understood the social frames of their target audience, and crafted a message that appealed to those very frames in order to have the message perceived a certain way. Without understanding this idea, as Hallahan says, the foundation of a public relations campaign is not stable. This idea transcends to all public relations efforts, as framing is not only useful, but necessary.

Conclusion

Framing is absolutely imperative, and is apparent in all successful public relations campaigns. It allows those with the goal of influencing attitudes and behaviors design a message that will pull a specific reaction from those that receive it. Framing exists within each individual and in each message sent and received. Stemming from psychological tendencies, this theory evaluates a target public in a unique way. Even if a public relations professional has the research done, a dynamic team of communicators and the tools to plan effective tactics, if the message does not have a frame, the campaign has no foundation.

 

Works Cited

Goffman, E. (1974). Frame analysis: an essay on the organization of experience. New York, NY. Harper & Row

Scheufele, D. A. (1999). Framing as a Theory of Media Effects. Journal of Communication 49 (4), 103-22.

Hallahan, K. (1999). Seven Models of Framing: Implications for Public Relations. Journal Of Public Relations Research, 11 (3), 205-242.

Grabmeier, J. National Anti-Drug Campaign Succeeds In Lowering Marijuana Use, Study Suggests, Ohio State University Communications Research, Retrieved from http://researchnews.osu.edu/archive/aboveinfluence.htm