 So welcome students to this presentation on news framing. I'm sure this is one word which is used in very different connotations, and there is a very important distinction between how it is used literally and how we should see it as media and communication students. So before we start with framing, let me just tell you about how important framing is. So this was this research done in 2004 by Bryant and Myron in Journal of Communication, and they found out that the framing theory, if you see that right at the top, this is very small, probably you can't see that. So framing theory is one of the most important theories at that point of time in the articles that were published in Journal of Communication over so many years. So this has had a very important contribution in a lot of our journals. If you see the screen, you will find out that we have the two most important journals in the field of communication. One is the political communication, and the other is the Journal of Communication. And both of them have lots and lots of paper on framing. So according to Thomson Reuters' Web of Science, these two journals published a total of 33 papers on framing between 1990 and 2000. So within that 10-year period, they had 33 papers, but from 2001 to 10, they had about 86 papers. So lots of emphasis on news framing as we go along. So we will study these three different terms. And although they are at times regarded as belonging to the same family, we'll find out that agenda setting and priming has some very vital differences. And in today's classes, we'll talk about how framing is different from agenda setting and priming. I'm sure that these are the terms that we know from our undergraduate classes and otherwise because agenda setting is one of the original contributions to the theoretical field from the media and communication field. So we have an idea about what is agenda setting and what is priming. So we'll talk about all those things as we go on. Before I go on to framing, I'll talk about agenda setting for a moment. And agenda setting is related to this work by McComb and Shaw on the role of media in the 1968 United States presidential election. So basically what it meant was that they studied what was the public agenda. They did a survey of the people and wanted to find out what is the public agenda. Before that, what they did was that they calculated the media agenda from a content analysis of leading newspapers in North Carolina, in Chapel Hill. So as you can understand that if you have, say for example, five important news dailies in Calcutta and I want to find out that what is the media agenda, then I'll have to do a content analysis and based on what they're putting on the front page or how much space they're giving to a certain issue, we can find out what is the media agenda. So that is a very easy way of finding out it. It can be for television news as well. It can be for radio and it can be for any other kind of a thing where with a systematic content analysis, we can find out what is the media agenda. And then what these people McComb and Shaw did was they found out through a survey about what is the public agenda that what did they think was the public agenda. Then in this result, they found out that whatever was regarded as media agenda by the media institutions, by the newspapers there was what people thought was the public agenda. So whatever media highlights is what people see as being important. So this is a very simple way of explaining what is agenda setting. It shows that media agenda and public agenda, they correlate. There is a correlation between media agenda and public agenda. So the core proposition is about, again, the other level of agenda setting. So one of this is that media tells us what to think about. It tells us that, okay, this is important. The other part of agenda setting is that it also tells us how to think about it. Now, why am I talking of second level here? It will be clear to you in a moment's time when I talk about framing. Because a lot of framing or a lot of framing as people know it to be is related or is very similar to second level agenda setting. But important to understand that we are first of all, we have to find out what is the first level that media tells us that this is important. How does it tell us that this is important by giving more provenance to those stories in terms of their headlines or in terms of the coverage that they do on television or elsewhere. But the second level, it goes beyond another level. It tells us that what part of it is more important. So for example, they might be telling us that, okay, COVID-19 is a very important thing. But they can also be telling us about what to talk about COVID-19, whether we should talk about the vaccination part or whether we should talk about other parts as well. So that is the second level agenda setting. Priming, again, is an extension of agenda setting. As I said, I have to just give a background to agenda setting and priming before I go to framing because that's what we are going to discuss here today. I just wanted to draw a distinction. There will be probably another discussion on agenda setting and priming later on. So priming is a process by which individuals assign weights to particular issues when they make voting choices or those kind of things. So it essentially promotes certain evaluative criterion. So when I'm talking about maybe one particular government or one particular institution, then what are the things that I should use to judge that particular organization or to judge that particular government or to judge that particular institution? So media tells you that, okay, this is important and that is not important. For example, in America, for example, one party would want it to be about jobs. The other would want it to be about nationalities and so on and so forth. So media can play a role in letting people decide that which of these is more important than the other. But as I said, this is just a background to tell you a basic difference between agenda setting and priming and framing, which I'm going to just talk about in a moment's time. So priming hypothesis states that media makes certain issues more salient and that influences the standards by which the governments are going to be judged. So they might make, say for example, jobs issues as being more salient so that when people judge the governments, they will judge about how good they have been in this job creation or not. So as you can understand, there is a sophisticated or a subtle difference between priming and agenda setting. In agenda setting, it only tells us that what to think about and probably in the second level agenda setting, it tells us how to think about that. So priming effect, examine agenda setting as independent variable and priming effect as the outcome. So we'll talk about those independent and dependent later on. Now we come to the most important definition of framing and whoever has to talk about framing has to talk about Robert Entment's definition of framing, which is there on the screen. Robert Entment defines framing as something which selects certain aspects of a perceived reality and makes them more salient. That means it makes certain aspects of reality as more important in such a way as to promote a particular problem definition. So as I said, in the COVID-19 news thing, it can be framed to make one particular thing more salient. So at times it could be about how people are careless and how they are not wearing masks or whatever. So the same issue can be framed in different ways. And I will come to that in another moment's time as well. So framing basically select certain aspects of perceived reality and makes them more salient so that they promote a particular problem definition or maybe a moral evaluation, etc., which we will talk again in a moment's time. So framing effect refer not to behavioral or attitude outcomes, but it tells us how a given piece of information is being presented in the public discourse. As I said, that this information is not about what is being communicated, but how that information is communicated. What is being communicated is what agenda setting is that compared to, for example, cricket news, maybe football news is more, so that is agenda setting. But how they are presenting that cricket news is what is framing. So how that particular information is presented by making certain things more salient than others is important for our idea of what is framing. Now there are two different backgrounds or two different backdrops in which the framing theory is discussed. I will talk about these two. One is the sociological conception and the other is the psychological, which is about the behavioral science. And we will use the psychological conception slightly more than the sociological. So this is just for a reference that we use Irving Goffman's, this fabulous book on frame analysis. This is a huge book of more than 500 pages where he talks of frameworks of interpretation. So every time we locate somebody or every time we identify somebody or every time we see a particular situation, we do it within certain frameworks. So say for example, there are many people who talk to each other in maybe a language which is very friendly. So just by seeing two people, maybe they might even be patting each other's back or they might be just hitting each other or whatever, but they are not fighting. So somebody who sees it from a distance would know that okay they are not fighting, they are friends. So our society is made up of all these frameworks or schemata of interpretation by just by looking at those situations, we understand what this is about. So I don't want to, as I said, get into the details. This is just to give you a very slight backdrop to what is the sociological conception of framing. In maybe in a later video, we'll talk more about all these things later on. So Goffman basically identified three different processes of this framing. He says the first is keying where they bring into focus particular aspects, anchoring by relating it to some deeper frames and fabrication means recasting certain dimensions so that they are made more salient. So as I said, this is just about your everyday reaction, how it is framed by other people or how people make sense of what they're doing. So a lot of the times when people in journalism also they bring in some associations. They say that okay, say for example, they say that Prithvi Shah is the new Sachin Tendulkar. So they are framing him just by using one simple sentence. They're framing him as somebody who's very good with batting will do this or who's the best thing or whatever. So you frame things just by putting it into a particular idea. So instead of saying lots and lots of things, we can just put in a smaller or, you know, we can just anchor it in that kind of a situation. So that's a very, very simple idea of framing. So we have in that kind of a thing frame is a central organizing idea or a storyline that provides meaning. So just by, as I said, just by calling Prithvi Shah as the next Tendulkar or just by calling, you know, somebody as the next Einstein or whatever, or, you know, it can be about movies or any other thing. So whenever we use these metaphors or exemplars or whatever, we are providing a central organizing idea on which people can make their own ideas about what is being discussed. So that was so far. Later on in 2002, this picture is about somebody who won the Swedish Riksbank Prize in Economic Sciences, which is popularly known as the Nobel Economics Prize. Otherwise, you know, the Nobel Prize is not for economics, but the Swedish Riksbank Prize is known as the Nobel Prize for Economics. So he is one person who's largely associated with providing insights into framing. And I'm just going to talk about some of the experiments he did in these wonderful concepts of framing. So if you can just see this on the screen, I will try and make it very simple. And this was published in American Psychologist of in 1984 by Daniel Kahneman and Amos Tversky. As I said, he won the Nobel Prize in 2002. So he gave this kind of an example to people that imagine that the Americans are preparing for an outbreak of an unusual Asian disease. So mind you, this is about 36 years back, there was no COVID and all that. So that is a very different thing. This is just an imaginary account. Imagine that the United States is preparing for an outbreak of an unusual Asian disease, which is expected to kill 600 people. It is expected to kill 600 people. Two alternate programs are proposed. If program A is adopted, so there are two things we can do, if we adopt program A, then 200 people will be saved. If we adopt program B, there is one third priority that 600 people will be saved and two third priority that nobody will be saved. One third of 600 means 200. So when this question is put to people who understand the meaning of one third and the first one, even then if you see the one in the bracket, when it was framed or when the idea was put forth as a surety that in program A, 200 people will definitely be saved. 72% of the people said that that is a good program. We should adopt that. But in the second one, where they are saying there is one third priority that 600 people will be saved, so there is no surety. They are saying one third probability. Basically, same. One third priority that 600 people will be saved means 200 will be saved. There, only 28% of the people said that this is good. So although they are basically the same things, but they are framed differently, so people react to that differently. So the prospect of saving 200 lives is more attractive than a risky prospect of an equal expected value. So as I just said, now let's have the same story in different way. The same story, they gave this story to 155 people who knew that. Now this was put slightly differently. If program C is adopted, 400 people will die. But if program D is adopted, there is one third priority that nobody will die and two third priority that 600 people will die. So again, they are the same things. Again, they mean the same thing, but 78% of the people would opt for the second one, where there is a probability that two third people will die. So when there is a surety about people dying, then they are not going to take the first one. So just to go back to the first one, when there is a surety, then people will be saved. 72% people opted for that. So psychology works like that. They have these questions and they have these experiments and based on the experiments, they draw the conclusions. So as we can understand, the manner in which it is framed has an impact on how people will react to that. So when there is a risk, they would want to avert that risk. There is a risk aversion available there. So in the first case, it was in terms of the number of lives saved. So that is why people went for that. In the second one, it was more risky. So people opted for the second option. So just to tell you and I'm sure all of you understand that when you frame something in the positive or in the negative term, it can greatly alter its appeal. And I'm sure all of us have seen all these stories about vaccine being 99% or 90% or 94% successful, etc. They're not going to talk about 6% people might have this effect or 1% or etc. So when you frame something in positive terms, it alters its appeal. And in real terms also, we are asked to talk in or whenever people talk about those motivational talks or whatever, they will talk in terms of putting everything in positive terms, putting something in a negative term can alter its appeal. Again, a very similar thing that Kahneman talked about. They had a surgery of 100 people having surgery 90 live through the postoperative period, 68 are alive at the end of the first year and 34 are alive at the end of five years. So they are talking about surgery and if people have surgery 90 will live through the postoperative period after first year, 68 are alive after five years 34 are alive. Then they talk of the radiation therapy, they say that of 100 people having radiation therapy, all live through the treatment, 77 are alive at the end of one year and 22 are alive at the end of five years. So how was it answered by people? Then there was this, in the first frame as you can see, this is about the survival frame where they are suggesting that 34 people are alive at the end of five years and the second one they are saying 22 people are alive at the end of five years. So this is being framed as people surviving in the same thing they are talking in case of the mortality frame that exactly the same numbers that after five years 66 people will die. In the second one, after five years, 78 people will die. As you can understand in the first one, we are talking of 34 are alive. So if I subtract the 34 400 it will be 66. So basically they are the same things but told in a different manner and we see that it produced a marked effect in people's response to that. So people who favored radiation therapy rose from 18% in the survival frame to 44% in the mortality frame. So when it was presented as a survival frame then only 14% of people opted for that. As you can understand the surgery is better because 34 are alive but there only 14% people adopted this radiation therapy. But when it was framed as a mortality that 78 people will die and that is when 44% people say that no I will rather go for radiation therapy. So the advantage of this radiation therapy looms larger when stated as a reduction of risk. So this framing effect is there among all people. It's not only among common men it is for physicians or even people who know statistics that you know both these things mean the same. So if the same thing so this is not what I am suggesting this is what Kahneman suggested in his experiments. If the same thing is presented as a mortality frame then people would opt for radiation therapy but if it is you know as a survival frame then people would opt for surgery more. So this is a very very substantial difference from 18% to 44%. So that is why you know framing is a very important concept to be understood. So it could be regarding the topic of the frame. So what are we talking about? Are we talking about COVID-19? So that is one component of frame. The second component of the frame is the size and placement. So how much importance we are giving to that kind of a topic or you know which are the levels or which are the attributes that we are emphasizing. So that is very similar to the second level agenda setting that I just spoke of in a moment's time. And then there are the cognitive attributes and the effective attributes. What is cognitive? Cognitive is the thinking function. So what are the things that you that makes you think? And what are the effective attributes? Effective attributes are the emotional functions. So there are a lot of these things if they are presented as an emotional kind of a result then a lot of people will be impacted by that. So that's why you know a lot of people identify with much of you know what Bollywood shows or whatever because many of these things are framed in their effective attributes. We will talk in greater details about that. This is a very one you know important model about framing in public relations. I'm not going to talk in details about that but it says that situations can be framed differently. The attributes of a particular event or a person or an institution can be framed differently. How people make their choices that can be made you know frame differently. What actions people take, what issues are in question or who is to be held responsible for certain things and news framing. So this is a very important typology of framing in public relations. So I just want to skip on to these situations and attributes and all that choices that we've just spoken about. But important to understand that of late and this is a publication from August 2007. Of late we have to have a distinction between two kinds of framing and this is where you know today's lecture has to emphasize the most that there are two different ways in which we can see framing. One of the framing is that in which we emphasize certain elements we do not emphasize certain other elements. So that is you know one you know narrow way of defining framing. But the other way of framing that I just spoke of when I spoke of Kahneman and others is to see how similar messages are framed differently. So amongst the new research that is coming up it is not only about you know how or which part is made more important but it is about equivalence framing. So basically there is a very important distinction between emphasis framing and equivalence framing. So when we are talking of emphasis then we should not be talking in terms of framing but we should be talking in terms of second level agenda setting. And when we are talking of equivalent things being described differently that is where we can see framing effects more powerfully or that is what framing should actually be otherwise that is not the right way to describe frames. So we are talking about equivalence frames. The information that is being presented is equal and how we are framing that particular information. As I said it can be positive negative, it can be survival mortality, it can be about you know giving responsibility to some people and not to other people. There are many many different ways in which we can do that. And the other one which where one set of concerns are emphasized over other set of concerns that is what we said is a second level agenda setting. So that is not what framing is. Framing should be more about equivalence framing. So we are going to talk about the mode of presentation for a given information. So you know let me just go through all these. So the effect of particular frames they are or we can depending on what particular cognitive thinking or what are the thinking elements that are using for these equivalent information. Information is equal the mode of our you know providing this information or what cognitive schemes, what thinking frames we are adopting there is important to understand in the framing effect. So that is why this is seen more as an applicability model. So this is more about you know looking at framing in terms of being attributed to the interest groups or whatever. You know they are the ones who lead to the media frames and then there is the audience frame. And from there you can you know attribute the causes or how people react to that kind of a thing. So it does not conceive the news as the psychological stimuli but it views news texts as consisting of organized symbolic devices that will interact with individual agents memory. So it's not just about what as we as newspaper persons or we as communicators are giving but it is also about how people take that information as that is why the audience frames are very very important. So you are building up a frame is one kind of a thing but how audience reacts to that frame is again a very important element to understand. So it's not just about how it is put out but how people react to that and that is where these concepts of active audience and all that becomes important. So as you know in this handbook of political communication they give such a wonderful you know metaphor for framing. So framing is not about having two different paintings. This is the thing that if you go walk into an art gallery or whatever and you want to you know find out which one you want to buy. So if there are two different pictures then that is you know like we are which I just spoke of as emphasis framing but if there are two very you know similar pictures and how they are you know whether it is a gold plated frame or whether it is an aluminum frame or whatever how that impacts people's reactions is what is to be understood. So it is not about as I keep on emphasizing it is not about emphasis it is not about putting emphasis on one attribute of the information over the other but it is about you know which you know which are the attributes in equivalent information that we are putting out for people. So important to understand the distinction between emphasis and equivalent frames and also to understand the importance of audience members themselves in making a sense of what people or what is being presented to them. So we are not talking in terms of people being impacted by what information is provided to them but how people make sense of what is presented to them. So maybe the media intends it to be framed in a certain manner but how people react to that will be very different from you know how people assume it happens. So I understand there are too many intervening concepts involved there but I am sure this is a substantial introduction to the topic and we will have more on that in our future lectures as well.