Monday, April 1, 2013

Framing


 The idea of the framing theory is the manipulation, cut and paste or a filtering of information from media to viewer. From the text by Entman on Framing he states that "analysis of frames illuminates the precise way in which influence over a human consciousness is exerted by the transfer or communication of information from one location to that consciousness." Every day we, as consumers of the media, experience framing in our media. We all have a choice to what we watch and listen to, but when it comes to political or controversial subjects, does the media only tell us what we want to hear? Frames work in a way that highlights bits of information about an item that is the focus of the communication, which elevates them in salience. Entman writes that salience is when a piece of information is made more noticeable, meaningful and memorable to audience. In our class discussion, we discussed two articles that discussed the opposing view of legalizing gay marriage. Each article was framed in a way that was highly against gay marriage then an non-direct "pro" gay marriage. The specific use of word choice and attention to detail, such as photographs which lead you to believe which way the writer swayed. But in reality...do we really filter what we want to hear anyways? I think that many people could come to the table with their own view before they are "framed" by information. But then again, those who are uneducated on the possible topic only hear the framed media. I think that framing is used to draw the viewer in and keep them interested. Overall, I would say we had a decent class discussion on the topic, the video from the election was a great visual aide.


1 comment:

  1. Framing is not something that we can avoid or choose to do -- it is an effect of predispositions and the language we use. Whenever we choose a word to describe something, we are structuring ours (and our audience's) view of the world. A professor of mine used to say "A choice of words is a choice of worlds." The filtering you mention is already a side effect of framing. It's not that something can't be consciously framed, because it can. But we should not think about it only in those terms.

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