The processes behind the frame: Framebuilding from a sociological perspective.

Economic migrants who are coming to Europe for the money, refugees fleeing for war. The Bild who says that we all should help the refugees and the Telegraaf who writes about a housing shortage due to the arrival of asylum seekers. Lots of different frames are used in media reporting about refugees fleeing to Europe. Where we as Communication Science students are used to look at these differences in framing from a communication perspective, Vliegenthart & Van Zoonen (2011) argue that as scientists and PR-professionals we should also take into account the sociological perspective.

 

Bild

Telegraaf

According to Vliegenthart & Van Zoonen (2011) now a days the framebuilding perspective of media & communication scientists has several shortcomings. They say that current media & communication scientist fail to distinguish between ‘frames’ and ‘framing’ and they ignore the sociological point of view. Where communications researchers usually only focus on the level of the individual journalist when doing framebuilding research, according to sociologists such an one-level analysis is not sufficient. Sociologists focus on multi-level analyses when doing framebuilding research, as they see framing processes as an outcome of social interactions between political and media actors, and environments. Therefore communications researchers should also take into account aspects such as source influences, the ideological leanings of the news organization, influences of the market and national and international cultures. Furthermore the sociological approach takes into account the interpersonal and collective negotiation of meaning, where communication researchers mostly pass over how audiences interpret particular frames.

Our case about the news coverage of refugees shows that media report about the refugee issue by using different frames. When you look at the refugee issue from a communication researcher’s eye, you will probably focus on which frames are used by journalist or editorial teams and you would assume that the public will take over this frame.  When you look at the refugee issue from an sociological perspective, you will take into account that the public will look at the refugee issue from their own perspective and therefor a particular frame could be interpret in different ways. For example where some people will interpret the news coverage of the Telegraaf about the housing shortage as a negative and maybe threatening, other people will look positive to the refugees receiving a new home. So when you look at an issue from both a communicative and sociological point of view, framebuilding can be seen from a whole new perspective.

During the discussion in class, we came to the conclusion that both as a researcher and PR-professional it is wise to take the sociological approach into account when it comes to framebuilding. Because for example as an PR-professional you should for example consider that all of your stakeholders all have their own experiences and interpretations. Where some stakeholder may interpret a frame in a press release as something positive, another stakeholder will see it a something negative. But at the same time, for a PR-professional it is very hard to always take the sociological approach into consideration, as you just can’t communicate a press release with thousand different ways by using thousand different frames.

To read the whole article of Vliegenthart & Van Zoonen (2011), click here.

- Presentation summery by Margo, Iris & Bonnie -