Framing: Toward Clarification of a Fractured Paradigm

In response to the proposition that communication lacks disciplinary status because of deficient core knowledge, I propose that we turn an ostensible weakness into a strength. We should identify our mission as bringing together insights and theories that would otherwise remain scattered in other disciplines. Because of the lack of interchange among the disciplines, hypotheses thoroughly discredited in one field may receive wide acceptance in another. Potential research paradigms remain fractured, with pieces here and there but no comprehensive statement to guide research. By bringing ideas together in one location, communication can aspire to become a master discipline that synthesizes related theories and concepts and exposes them to the most rigorous, comprehensive statement and exploration. Reaching this goal would require a more self-conscious determination by communication scholars to plumb other fields and feed back their studies to outside researchers. At the same time, such an enterprise would enhance the theoretical rigor of communication scholarship proper. The idea of “framing” offers a case study of just the kind of scattered conceptualization I have identified. Despite its omnipresence across the social sciences and humanities, nowhere is there a general statement of framing theory that shows exactly how frames become embedded within and make themselves manifest in a text, or how framing influences thinking. Analysis o f this concept suggests how the discipline of communication might contribute something unique: synthesizing a key concept’s disparate uses, showing how they invariably involve communication, and constructing a coherent theory from them. Whatever its specific use, the concept of framing consistently offers a way to describe the power of a communicating text. Analysis of frames illuminates the precise way in which influence over a human consciousness is exerted by the transfer (or communication) of information from