Framing Public Discussion of Gay Civil Unions

Although the framing of public opinion has often been conceptualized as a collective and social process, experimental studies of framing have typically examined only individual, psychological responses to alternative message frames. In this research we employ for the first time group conversations as the unit of analysis (following Gamson 1992) in an experimental study of framing effects. Two hundred and thirty-five American citizens in 50 groups (17 homogeneously conservative groups, 15 homogeneously liberal groups, and 18 heterogeneous groups) discussed whether or not gay and lesbian partnerships should be legally recognized. Groups were randomly assigned to one of two framing conditions (a "homosexual marriage/ special rights" frame or a "civil union/equal rights" frame). Results indicated framing effects that were, in all cases, contingent on the ideological leanings of the group. The "marriage" frame tended to polarize group discussions along ideological lines. Both liberal and conservative groups appeared to find their opponents' frame more provocative, responding to them with a larger number of statements and expressing greater ambivalence than when reacting to more hospitable frames. This journal article is available at ScholarlyCommons: http://repository.upenn.edu/asc_papers/107 FRAMING PUBLIC DISCUSSION OF GAY CIVIL UNIONS VINCENT PRICE LILACH NIR JOSEPH N. CAPPELLA Abstract Although the framing of public opinion has often been conceptualized as a collective and social process, experimental studies of framing have typically examined only individual, psychological responses to alternative message frames. In this research we employ for the first time group conversations as the unit of analysis (following Gamson 1992) in an experimental study of framing effects. Two hundred and thirty-five American citizens in 50 groups (17 homogeneously conservative groups, 15 homogeneously liberal groups, and 18 heterogeneous groups) discussed whether or not gay and lesbian partnerships should be legally recognized. Groups were randomly assigned to one of two framing conditions (a “homosexual marriage/ special rights” frame or a “civil union/equal rights” frame). Results indicated framing effects that were, in all cases, contingent on the ideological leanings of the group. The “marriage” frame tended to polarize group discussions along ideological lines. Both liberal and conservative groups appeared to find their opponents’ frame more provocative, responding to them with a larger number of statements and expressing greater ambivalence than when reacting to more hospitable frames.Although the framing of public opinion has often been conceptualized as a collective and social process, experimental studies of framing have typically examined only individual, psychological responses to alternative message frames. In this research we employ for the first time group conversations as the unit of analysis (following Gamson 1992) in an experimental study of framing effects. Two hundred and thirty-five American citizens in 50 groups (17 homogeneously conservative groups, 15 homogeneously liberal groups, and 18 heterogeneous groups) discussed whether or not gay and lesbian partnerships should be legally recognized. Groups were randomly assigned to one of two framing conditions (a “homosexual marriage/ special rights” frame or a “civil union/equal rights” frame). Results indicated framing effects that were, in all cases, contingent on the ideological leanings of the group. The “marriage” frame tended to polarize group discussions along ideological lines. Both liberal and conservative groups appeared to find their opponents’ frame more provocative, responding to them with a larger number of statements and expressing greater ambivalence than when reacting to more hospitable frames. Political conversation is a central feature of democratic life (Barber 1984; Dewey 1927; Tarde [1899] 1989). In talking through their ideas, people are able to sort out various considerations and to learn, in the process, what they think about shared concerns (Gutmann and Thompson 1996; Kuhn 1991). VINCENT PRICE and JOSEPH N. CAPPELLA are professors in the Annenberg School for Communication, University of Pennsylvania, where LILACH NIR is a postdoctoral research associate. This research was supported by grants to Vincent Price and Joseph N. Cappella from the Pew Charitable Trusts and the Annenberg Public Policy Center of the University of Pennsylvania. Views expressed are those of the authors alone and do not necessarily reflect opinions of the sponsoring agencies. The authors thank Yariv Tsfati, Jenny Stromer-Galley, Danna Goldthwaite, Anca Romantan, Tresa Undem, Jo Piazza, Son-Ho Kim, Clarissa David, Masaki Hidaka, Emily West, Eun-Kyung Na, Anthony Danna, and Lisa Rand for their assistance, and three anonymous reviewers for the comments on an earlier draft. Address correspondence to Vincent Price; e-mail: [email protected]. Widespread information diffusion and citizen discussion gives rise to public opinion, “which, when organized, is democracy” (Cooley 1909, p. 85). Numerous analysts have drawn attention to the ways that citizen discussion unfolds in a complex relationship with news media discourse (see, for example, Bryce’s [1888] recounting of the phases of opinion formation). It is not necessarily the case that the news media entirely dictate public opinion—the whole notion of democracy rests on the view that the public sphere is at least semisovereign in its operation—but the news media are credited with triggering and widening political discussion among citizens (Kim, Wyatt, and Katz 1999). The news media also shape the terms of debate, largely establishing the “universe of discourse” for citizen discussion (Blumer 1946, p. 191). As Tarde ([1899] 1989, p. 82) put it early on, “even those who fail [to read the newspaper] are forced to follow the groove of their borrowed thoughts” (Kim, Wyatt, and Katz 1999, p. 380). This idea—that the news media establish the terms of public debate—has become widely accepted and studied in the form of framing research. A frame is “a central organizing idea or story line that provides meaning” (Gamson and Modigliani 1987, p. 143). Framing of public opinion has been conceptualized as a collective and social process in which meanings are constructed actively through public debate, and in which ordinary citizens make use of media discourse, personal experience, and “folk wisdom” in negotiating meaning (Gamson 1988). Despite this social constructionist model, experimental studies of framing have typically examined only individual, psychological responses to alternative message frames (see Scheufele 1999 for a recent review). In this study we employ for the first time group conversations as the unit of analysis in an experimental study of framing effects. Like other experimental studies of framing, we observe differences in public response to alternate issue frames—in this case either a “traditional morality” or an “equality” frame as it applies to the question of whether gay or lesbian partnerships should be legally recognized. Unlike other studies, however, and in keeping with Gamson and Modigliani’s (1987) methodological recommendations, we observe not isolated individual responses but rather group-level, discursive reactions to each frame. Framing Research: A Bifurcated Endeavor The idea of framing has been widely applied in political communication and is subject to varying definitions (Price and Tewksbury 1997), but its origins can be traced to a general perspective we may term “social constructivism” (Scheufele 1999). In the constructionist model, media audiences are viewed as active in interpreting and discussing public events, but they rely on the mass media to provide common frames of reference that guide interpretation and discussion. Closely aligned with the concept of a schema, a frame is a package of associated ideas that helps to guide attention, comprehension, storage, and retrieval of information. Frames evolve out of collective efforts to make sense of problems, and they help people “locate, perceive, identify, and label” their experience (Goffman 1974, p. 21). In the political world, multiple frames emerge naturally in the course of public debate. People on different sides of an issue understand it differently, focus on different aspects of the problem, and actively promote their perspective in arguing for favored courses of action. A major proponent of the constructionist approach to framing has been Gamson (1988, 1992), who contends that citizens actively use their own experience and interpersonal discussion, not just media frames, to negotiate socially the meaning of political issues. Several reviews of framing research (e.g., Entman 1993; Pan and Kosicki 1993; Scheufele, 1999) note that it has followed a bifurcated path. One line of research emphasizes a sociological conception of framing, applying it to the production of news discourse and conversations among focus-group participants. This research sets about the task of examining various media frames as they are applied to particular issues (e.g., Gamson and Lasch 1983; Gamson and Modigliani 1987, 1989; Gitlin 1980; Pan and Kosicki 1993; Tuchman 1978). A second line of study emphasizes a psychological conception of framing and focuses on individual patterns of information processing and opinion formation. This type of research tends to be experimental in nature, focusing on some particular aspect of news coverage (for instance, the adoption of a “human interest” frame or a “strategy” frame in reporting the news) and tracing the influence of alternatively framed news stories on individual cognitions and attitudes (e.g., Brewer 2002; Cappella and Jamieson 1996, 1997; Druckman 2001; Iyengar 1987, 1991; Nelson, Clawson, and Oxley 1997; Price, Tewksbury, and Powers 1997.) Experiments have commonly manipulated frames through experimentally prepared news stories or through survey questions worded to highlight certain issue frames (e.g., Jacoby 2000; Kinder and Sanders 1990). In either case, the manipulations are found to bias subjects’ information processing, often resulting in consequential differences in issue judgments and opinions. There is, then, a disjuncture in the study of framing processes. Sociological work, hewing rather closely to the constructionist model, views frames as emerging from a series of social and cooperative practices. In contrast, psychologically oriented studies of framing examine only isolated, cognitive responses to media messages. Although the experimental literature commonly cites Gamson’s work and borrows his definitions, it fails to take seriously his contention that citizens actively use experiential and interpersonal resources to negotiate the meaning of issues. Experiments typically allow only for the most limited forms of socially negotiated meaning—equating it essentially with individual variations in message comprehension. Indeed, the experimental research often implicitly construes audience members as passively subject to invidious influence, in the form of having their decisions unknowingly “framed” by alternative experimental messages (only one of which they typically encounter in a given study). A few studies have begun to explore the limits of framing effects, focusing on the ways people can spontaneously activate considerations outside of a frame imposed by reporting (Price, Tewksbury, and Powers 1997), or make use of source credibility judgments to reject frames (Druckman 2001). Some studies have examined responses to mixed-message sets, including opposing frames (Brewer 2002; Druckman and Nelson 2002). But the unit of analysis invariably remains the individual, and the process of interest remains a cognitive response to a frame manipulation rather than the social construction of meaning. No experiments to date have explored how citizens construct frames in interaction with one another, for example, in group discussions (as advocated by Gamson 1988, 1992). A Constructionist Methodology Perhaps the fullest explication of the constructionist model of framing processes remains that of Gamson (1988, 1992; Gamson and Modigliani 1987, 1989). In this model, “media discourse and public opinion are treated as two parallel systems of constructing meaning” (Gamson and Modigliani 1989, p. 1). Thus, what is commonly referred to as “public discourse” over any issue has two aspects: (1) an array of interpretive packages of metaphors, catchphrases, visual images, and moral appeals presented by the media in its coverage; and (2) meanings negotiated by citizens as they interact with the press and engage with their fellow citizens. Together, these make up the “issue culture” surrounding matters of public debate. The process is seen as a “symbolic contest” over competing interpretive packages, one played out both in media discourse and citizen discourse (Gamson and Modigliani 1989, p. 2). Audiences are dependent on media discourse for many of their understandings; but they use it actively—assisted by their own experience, common wisdom, and other resources in their “tool kits“—to construct meaning. Frames enjoy success or failure depending on resonances with popular thinking, active elite sponsorship, and media practices that might favor some frames over others. Frames develop in a dialectic fashion, as contesting parties articulate counter-frames to meet their opponents’ preferred interpretations. Some of these find fertile ground in public discussion and thinking, while others do not. Public discourse is thus a “set of discourses that interact in complex ways” (Gamson and Modigliani 1989, p. 2). 1. Druckman and Nelson (2003) report a framing study in which subjects were exposed to either unilateral or competing frames on campaign finance reform and were then surveyed after having been engaged (or not) in discussing the issue in small groups. However, the study does not examine the group discussions per se; rather, it deploys the customary analysis of individual, attitudinal responses to the framing manipulation, focusing on whether discussion prior to answering survey questions moderates the impact of the message frames. What sort of research methods does the constructionist model suggest? To study media discourse, Gamson and Modigliani trace the “careers” of various frames through analysis of news, political cartoons, elite pronouncements, and the like (e.g., Gamson and Lasch 1983; Gamson and Modigliani 1987, 1989). For analysis of public opinion, they find conventional survey-questionnaire methods to be problematic. Questionnaire responses “obscure ambivalence and disguise the presence of schemata that produce no clear-cut position“; they also blur the distinction between those without any working schema and those “with schemata that do not fit comfortably in a pro or anti category” (Gamson and Modigliani 1989, pp. 35–36). Depth interviewing might offer some more refined sense of public reasoning (as in the work of Graber 1984 or Lane 1962), but even these techniques do not capture the process of negotiation itself. Gamson thus advocates focus-group methodologies, which stand to make “underlying schemata visible in some fashion” by allowing “a glimpse of the thinking process involved” (1992, p. 20). In his research into collective action and political mobilization, for example, Gamson (1992) not only examined media discourse over a series of issues, but also studied 36 “peer group conversations,” each involving roughly five participants who discussed the issues in an informal group setting. Although Gamson used political cartoons and other materials to help stimulate conversations, he did not conduct any experimental manipulations to examine the influence of frames on citizen discussion. Thus, causal connections between media frames and public opinion, of the sort typically examined in psychological studies and posited as central to the larger process of framing (Pan and Kosicki 1993) remained outside the scope of inquiry. The present study, the first of its kind, is a randomized framing experiment using interacting groups as our units of analysis. As in other experimental studies of framing, our participants were asked to consider an issue—whether or not gay and lesbian partnerships should be legally recognized—after receiving one of two randomly assigned framing manipulations. On the other hand, following Gamson and Modigliani’s “constructionist” methodology, we observe not isolated individual responses to the frames but instead grouplevel, discursive reactions. As in Gamson’s (1992) research, our groups averaged about five participants each (fewer than in conventional focus groups), and the discussions were only lightly moderated. Whereas Gamson drew from a purposive sample of local “working-class” people to form his 36 groups, we instead drew from a probability sample of the U.S. population to form 50 groups that interacted online. Because evidence suggests that much political conversation occurs among like-minded people, we formed three types of groups: homogeneously conservative groups, homogeneously liberal groups, and heterogeneous groups with participants from across the political spectrum. This feature of the design permitted us to examine the extent to which our issue-frames—which had decidedly conservative and liberal overtones— resonated differently among groups of varying political leanings. Framing Gay Civil Unions Issues surrounding gay rights have been controversial for several decades and have received increasing attention in the U.S. media. During the 2000 presidential election campaign, when this study was undertaken, the question of whether gay and lesbian partnerships should be accorded the same legal status as heterosexual marriages received rather extensive coverage. Vermont, which had passed a law permitting such civil unions, became the site of heated controversy as an anti–civil union movement (dubbed “Take Back Vermont“) gained force in the fall and moved to center stage in the state’s gubernatorial campaign. Eventually, the issue found its way onto the national agenda and was addressed by both candidates Al Gore and George W. Bush in the presidential debates. Following Bush’s election to the presidency, controversies over gay civil unions continued, with the Massachusetts Supreme Court ruling in 2003 that same-sex couples were legally entitled to marriage rights under that state’s constitution. The U.S. Congress began debating a constitutional ban on gay marriage, an action that President Bush indicated he supported. As with many gay rights issues, media discourse over the legal standing of gay partnerships has been framed largely in terms of two core values: morality and equality (Brewer, 2002, 2003; Bull and Gallagher 2001; Rimmerman, Wald, and Wilcox 2000). Concerns over “equal rights” are commonly invoked by gay activists. Although they would like to obtain full marital status for same-sex partnerships, popular objections to treating such partnerships as marriages (which have religious as well as legal standing) have led many to advocate instead for “civil unions,” which are viewed as more feasible politically. By contrast, foes frame the matter in terms of traditional moral values, highlighting the threat such unions would pose to the long-standing social and religious institutions of marriage and family. Both frames were prominent in news coverage during the presidential campaign in the fall of 2000. A review of the LexisNexis news database indicates that, in the two months leading up to the November election, “homosexual marriage,” the phrase most closely associated with the morality frame, was invoked considerably more often (with 29 occurrences) than the “gay civil unions” phrase more commonly adopted at the time by supporters (with 18 occurrences). Eight news articles made use of both phrases. The dialectical nature of symbolic contest is readily evident in the discourse over gay civil unions. While opponents of gay rights emphasize morals and family values, supporters counter that “hatred is not a family value” 2. Surveys do generally find somewhat more public support for same-sex “civil unions” than for “marriages” (e.g., Gallup Poll 2004; Pew Research Center 2003; Public Agenda 2005). 3. The search terms “gay civil unions” and “homosexual marriage” were used in a full-text search of the LexisNexis General News/Major Papers database (which contains major national and regional American newspapers such as the New York Times, Washington Post, Boston Globe, Seattle Times, Baltimore Sun, and USA Today). The search was limited to articles appearing from September 1 to November 7, 2000. (Brewer 2002, p. 306). And in response to calls for equality for gay couples, social conservatives often cast their position as one that favors “equal rights, not special rights,” suggesting that gay rights advocates seek special treatment not granted to unmarried heterosexual couples (e.g., see Bull and Gallagher 2001, chap. 4). Research Questions and Hypotheses How do these alternatives—the “civil union/equal rights” frame and the “homosexual marriage/special rights” frame—shape the ways citizens think and talk about the issue? Although there are clear pro/con orientations implicit in both frames, with the former lending support and the latter opposition, we would do well to note that a “frame typically implies a range of positions, rather than any single one, allowing for a degree of controversy among those who share a common frame” (Gamson and Modigliani 1989, p. 3). Brewer (2002), for instance, found from an analysis of open-ended survey questions that respondents invoked both morality and equality concerns when asked about gay rights, even after exposure to news stories intended to frame their responses one way or the other. Thus, we would not expect uniform positive or negative responses to the proposition that gay partnerships should be given legal standing based solely on the adoption of one or the other frame; instead, we would expect to find general tendencies of groups to argue, predominantly pro or con, in keeping with the general frame. We hypothesize that: H1: Groups responding to the proposition framed in terms of “homosexual marriage” and “special rights” will generate discourses that show more opposition, in their opinionated statements and arguments, than those generated when the proposition is framed in terms of gay “civil unions” and “equal rights.” H2: Group discourses will not be uniform in adopting a given frame. Even when a given frame has been privileged by manipulation, alternative frames will nevertheless be invoked. These two basic propositions need to be elaborated, however, in view of the variable degrees of resonance each frame will enjoy with different citizens. As Price and Tewksbury (1997) argue, frames work psychologically by interacting with citizens’ existing knowledge stores. Framing is a knowledgeactivation effect, which operates through construct applicability (Higgins 1996). Instead of imparting new information, a frame directs attention to certain aspects of an issue, heightening the likelihood that citizens will render those salient beliefs and considerations that are applicable to the issue at hand and thus indirectly shape judgments. Psychological framing effects are theoretically amplified by the automatic spreading activation of memory from one construct to another with which it is semantically related (for example, activation of “special rights” may heighten the odds that ideas such as “inequity,” “privilege,” or “affirmative action” will also be stimulated). In the group context, the relevant knowledge store is a collective fund of ideas held by assembled group members—what psychologists have termed a “transactive memory system” (Hollingshead 1998; Wegner 1995)—and the spreading activation of constructs across the group takes place not only psychologically but also interpersonally, through discussion (see also recent research in organizational behavior on “shared cognition” and “team mental models”— e.g., Cannon-Bowers and Salas 2001; Mohammed and Dumville 2001). The ideological makeup of the groups should profoundly affect the availability of constructs in the transactive memory system, such that conservative groups will tend toward more negatively loaded constructs, while liberal groups possess shared ideas that, if not positively valenced, will at least be less negatively inclined toward gay civil unions. Naturally, then, we would expect the ideological makeup of the group to shape powerfully the nature of the opinions and arguments voiced in discussion. Furthermore, alternative frames should interact with these existing, shared mental models, such that homogeneously conservative groups will be particularly responsive to the “homosexual marriage” and “special rights” frame, while homogeneously liberal groups will be particularly responsive to the “civil unions” and “equal rights” frame. Specifically, we expect the following as a function of the ideological makeup of the groups: H3: Homogeneously conservative groups will generate discourses that show more opposition, in their opinionated statements and arguments, than those generated by homogeneously liberal groups. Heterogeneous groups will generate the most balanced discussions. H4: Issue frames and ideological group composition will interact. Homogeneously conservative groups will be particularly responsive to the “homosexual marriage” and “special rights” frame, showing the largest negative effects of that frame on opinionated statements and arguments, while homogeneously liberal groups will be particularly responsive to the “civil unions” and “equal rights” frame, showing the largest positive effects of that frame on opinionated statements and arguments.