This section of the theoretical framework discusses the notion of the “frame”. Framing is important to the part of the study dealing with media representation of protests. My contention is that media frame protests against a “single story”. As the section will make clear, there are a variety of reasons for this, related to agenda setting, news values, and political economy. The frame is a version of a single story. It shows protesters through a limited range of images. The opposite of the frame is the “thick” story, where the lives of protesters exceed the limits of media frame. I am adopting the notion of “thick story” from Clifford Geertz’s adumbration of the “thick description” in The Interpretation of Cultures (1973).
A frame may be defined as “an interpretive schemata that simplifies and condenses the ‘world out there’ by selectively punctuating and encoding objects, situations, events, experiences, and sequences of actions within one’s present or past environment” (Boykoff 2006). To frame is to select some aspects of a perceived reality and make them more salient in a communicating text, in such a way as to promote a particular problem definition, causal interpretation, moral evaluation and/or treatment recommendation for the item described (Boykoff 2006: 205). For instance, the media
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selects the violent aspect of protests and makes it more salient than the other aspects or stories that exist. A frame is a central organizing idea for news content that supplies context and suggests what the issue is, through an emphasis, use of selection, exclusion or elaboration (Severin & Tankard 2001).This is seen in the article “Hundreds arrested for violent riots outside home affairs in Pretoria” (News24 Online 13 January 2016). The article is organised in a way that labels the protesters as “freaks” of that moment (Boykoff 2006); the ones that just throw stones and damage state property without any justification. The article does not mention or feature any comments from the actual stone throwers. The police were given a chance to account for their actions whereas some of the people that were involved in this protest were only arrested. There is an exclusion of some people or some things, an elaboration or emphasis on the disruptive nature of the protesters, and a selection of which story to tell in order to make sense of the whole event. The major idea behind the framing theory is that a single issue can be viewed from a variety of perspectives and can have multiple implications for people of different values and considerations (Entman 1993; Chong & Druckman 2007).
The “single issue” at the centre of interest in this study protest, is the subject of protester-media contestation. Media framing is the saliencing of characteristics of media coverage in order to alter/sustain interpretations of the news stories in the media (Scheufele 1999: 103). The suggestion is that media such as the South African Broadcasting Corporation (SABC), eTV and Media24 have a strong impact in constructing social reality through framing images of reality in a way that is predictable. As mentioned above, the construction of reality takes place through a process of media discourse, where individuals as well as journalists construct meaning and discuss public opinion (Nelson et al. 1997; Scheufele 1999).
Protesters and protest movements are increasingly involved in a symbolic struggle over meaning and interpretation. Framing, as a process that refers to the ways by which people develop a conceptualization of an issue or reorient their thinking about an issue (Nelson et al. 1997) is central to this symbolic struggle over meaning and interpretation. On the one hand, protesters try to frame their own struggles to fit the
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news media screen. On the other hand, they try to exceed the media’s frame. This two-fold process is complicated by the fact that the news media – through framing practices – is regarded as setting the parameters of acceptable public discourse (Boykoff 2006: 228). Voices that fall outside the range of acceptable discourse are occasionally permitted space on the mass-mediatised terrain. However, the price of admission is often subjection to mass media deprecation. According to one study, mass media coverage of the Global Justice Movement protests in Seattle and Washington, DC, for instance, exploited five predominant frames:
1. Violence Frame, 2. Disruption Frame, 3. Freak Frame,
4. Ignorance Frame, and
5. Amalgam of Grievances Frame (BoyKoff 2006).
Thus, the media do not only record resistance but also situate it in the dominant framework of meaning (Hall 1997). Violent protesters, or the potential for violent protests, constituted the predominant frame through which news stories on the protests in Seattle and Washington, DC were presented. Even when protesters did not actually perpetrate violence, the frame remained in place as journalists remarked on the lack of destruction, the absence of violence, or the potential for violence (Boykoff 2006).
Media frames of protests in previous studies have shown “recurring ideological patterns” (Carragee & Roefs 2004: 224), including militant frames (Baylor 1996) and public nuisance frames (Di Cicco 2010). For instance, mass media coverage of social movements that features a frame emphasising violence clashes with – or at least challenges and buries – the unjust frames that the group may be trying to highlight (Boykoff 2006). By focusing more on the events organised by social movements and the characteristics of participants, and less on the social issues that galvanised the contention and the context that informs it, the mass media depict protest activity (and dissidence more broadly) in ways that can undercut the agendas of these movements
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(Boykoff 2006: 225).One protester in this study expresses suspicion that community leaders pay media houses to exclude some of their interviews or comments:
The leaders bribe the media people to only show certain things over others. An example of this would be Mandla’s story, a man that was left crippled after a protest here in Freedom Park. The media came to ‘cover’ that story, but when the story appeared on the news, it was different from the actual reality. The media only used a picture showing half of Mandla's body and not his legs, not his shack or his actual living condition or how he struggles to make ends meet. The reason for all these protests was not highlighted at all (Protester 5 [Abahlali base Freedom Park] pers. comm., 6 November 2015).
In as far as mass media actively sets the frames of reference that viewers use to interpret and discuss public matters, influencing pre-existing meaning schemas by which people process and interpret information, media framing can be understood on the basis of constructing reality (Scheufele 1999; Tewksbury & Scheufele 2007). One way to understand this theory is through understanding the conventional expectancy value model of an individual’s attitude (Chong & Druckman 2007). This model conceives of an attitude as a summary of a definable set of beliefs that an individual holds about a subject. This model’s assumption is that an individual can place different emphasis on various considerations about a subject and this is vital in discussing the framing theory (Chong& Druckman 2007).
The set of dimensions that affect an individual’s evaluation comprise of an individual’s ‘frame in thought’ and one’s ‘frame in thought’ can have a huge impact on one’s overall opinion. A frame in communication organises everyday reality by providing meaningful ways to unfold occurrences and promote particular interpretations of any issue (Chong & Druckman 2007). Media framing represents an alternative paradigm to the older paradigm of studying the media through ‘objectivity and bias’ (Severin & Tankard 2001). Scholars informed by this new paradigm often track frames to identify trends in media coverage or definitions and to understand the relationship between media and public opinion (Severin & Tankard 2001; De Vreese 2005; Chong & Druckman 2007). This study identified trends in the coverage of protest action by selecting a number of
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media texts on protests, identifying the frames on the texts, and analysing the text frames in comparison to the stories of AbFP.
One way of interpreting framing is by breaking the concept into three steps – identifying a media event or any issue; trying to understand how the frames in communication affect public opinion; thereafter an initial set of frames are identified for the specific issue. Frames in communication matter because they are assumed to affect the attitudes and behaviours of their audiences (Chong & Druckman 2007). Framing involves a communication source, such as a newspaper or television news, selectively defining an issue. Such selection involves a large amount of frame-building. Frame- building refers to factors that influence the structural qualities of frames. Frame-setting on the other hand, is a process of interaction between media frames and individuals’ prior knowledge and predispositions. In this study, frame building will be linked to the writer/reporter’s choice of words in describing a protest covered in media texts. Frame- setting will be linked to how the media’s interaction in turn creates or builds a certain reality or knowledge about certain issues.
The process of framing can be understood as an emphasis in salience, of different aspects of a topic (Entman 1993; Scheufele 1999; De Vreese 2005; Weaver 2007; Bryant & Oliver 2008). Salience is a way of making a piece of information more noticeable or memorable to audiences. For instance, in a coverage of a protest the violence is more noticeable and memorable. Salient frames appear to affect interpretation, learning and the evaluation of issues, and the consequences of frames can be conceived on an individual or societal level (Entman 1993; De Vreese 2005). The consequences of the framing of “service delivery” protests by South African media at individual or societal level, may include an incorrect evaluation of the issue at hand. For example, the participants involved may be misunderstood or limited to that specific frame, or an unsympathetic attitude towards the protesters may be created. Misinterpretation of the whole protest may thus happen, ultimately leading to “compassion fatigue” (Moeller1999).
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A further elaboration of framing theory is that framing consists of a communicator, a text, a receiver and a culture (Entman 1993; De Vreese 2005). In this account, communicators make conscious and unconscious framing judgements guided by their belief system. Journalists and editors in South African media may subscribe to the dictum, “if it bleeds it leads”, a conviction that violence sells more. Their media texts contain frames that are manifested by certain words, stereotyped images, or sentences that reinforce clusters of facts or judgements. Words may include such terms as ‘angry protesters’, ‘riots’ and protesters in ‘face-off’ with the police (News24 online 11 February 2016). Stereotyped images include protesters burning tyres or carrying weapons and throwing stones at people or cars. Sentences that reflect the framing of protests may mention “Rubber bullets, stun grenades fired in TUT clash” (News24 online 27 January 2016) and “Protesters burn clinic, municipal offices, fire station” (News24 online 14 January 2016).
Framing involves selecting, highlighting, and the use of highlighted factors to construct a judgement, cause, or a solution to an issue (Entman 1993). For instance, the article titled “Protesters burn clinic, municipal offices, fire station” (News24 online 14 January 2016), highlights the burning of certain things as the main occurrence. This highlight constructs a certain judgement on the protest, without reading the whole article or even understanding what happened before all the burning of buildings and amenities. Framing is conceptualised as a continuous process where outcomes of certain processes serve as inputs for subsequent processes. The inputs in a framing model can be organisational pressures, ideologies, other elites or attitudes – a process which consists of frame building, frame setting, a link between media frames, audiences, as well as the individual effects of framing (Scheufele 1999). For instance, the organisational pressures may include profit making efforts, protecting the interests of investors or elites that may be affected by the protest at the expense of “truth” (Berry 2013). This affects how reality is negotiated between the media and its audiences.
As far as agendas go, frame setting is regarded as the second level of agenda setting which involves the transmission of attribute salience. In this regard, frames influence opinions by stressing specific values, facts and considerations, thereby endowing
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them with greater relevance than they might have under an alternative frame (Scheufele 1999; Chong & Druckman 2007). Whilst agenda setting focuses primarily on which issue was covered in the media, framing theory/ second level agenda setting focuses on how these issues were covered or portrayed in the media (Reese et.al 2001; Weaver 2007).
There are three approaches to measuring frames namely ‘media package’, ‘multidimensional concept’ and the ‘list of frames’. Each of these present a different concept of media framing (Reese et al. 2001). The ‘multidimensional concept’ combines traditional story-presentation variables that can be looked at in a content analysis, such as the terms that were used to determine the frame that was used to refer to a specific issue. For instance, the article “Protesters burn clinic, municipal offices, fire station” (News24 online 14 January 2016), the use of terms like “protesters burn”, would be the ‘multidimensional concept’ measuring the frames of the text. Media package is handy for analysing pamphlets or advertisements (Reese et al. 2001), and as such it will not be considered in this study.
Framing differs from persuasion in that the latter takes place when the communicator is able to change one’s belief towards a certain object or make one like something that they had initially disapproved of. In contrast, framing takes place when the communicator alters the importance that one attaches to a particular belief and this may or may not change one’s overall opinion. Framing takes place when the communicator convinces the recipients that one belief is of more importance than the other (Druckman 2001:1044). For instance, SABC may report a specific “service delivery” protest as an event that was full of ‘angry protesters’ that caused disruption and ‘calm police’ officers that tried to maintain peace. An example of this would be the article, “Situation remains tense in Lusikisiki as armed police move in” (SABC online 27 January 2016). Framing differs from bias because it goes beyond what is acceptable and unacceptable, what is positive and negative. It also recognises the ability of a text or media representation to define a situation or set the terms of a debate. For instance, a text describing protesters as violent, angry or irrational actors brings a frame of strongly held emotions or beliefs against violence or disruption,
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whereas a text describing the everyday living conditions of the protesters, that is to say, the story of most protesters beyond the violence, might yield different values and emotions in an audience.
In summary, the basis of framing theory is that the media focuses attention on certain events and then places them within a field of meaning. Framing is a critical activity in the construction of social reality because it helps shape the perspectives through which people see the world. Framing theory then, hypothesises that realities or facts can be reconstructed through presentation (Khudiyev 2005). Framing can be performed by the media through the inclusion of specific subtopics of calculated size, strategically placed to aid in the telling of the news story as well as through the style of narration, the piece’s overall tone and through the specific details purposively included in or excluded from the story (Khudiyev 2005).