Visual Framing

An Excerpt from “How Visuals Contribute to Framing Effects.”

---

In today’s modern news coverage, photos, illustrations, graphics, and other visuals play a prominent role. It is accepted that visuals in news media help define and frame issues. Framing is often used in discussing news media reporting. Gamson and Modigliani (1987) explain that a frame is a, “central organizing idea or story line that provides meaning” (p. 143). Pan and Kosicki (1993) describe framing as a, “strategy of constructing and processing news,” in a way that reflects and operates in, “shared beliefs,” “meanings,” and “stories,” of the intended audiences (p. 56-60).

Exactly how visuals affect public opinion and behaviors is an issue that is frequently debated. This is an important debate as emotionally charged images are a powerful vehicle for the framing of messages (Powell, Boomgaarden, Swert, & Vreese, 2015). While there has been much research focused on framing effects produced by a news story’s text, the actual effect that images have on the viewer remains relatively under researched (Coleman, 2010).

Framing Theory

Renowned sociologist, Erving Goffman, originally introduced framing theory. In his article, “Frame Analysis: An Essay on the Organization of Experience (published in 1974),” Goffman presented that frames are a set of concepts and theoretical perspectives that organize experiences and guide the actions of individuals. Goffman suggested that a given person interprets everything that is going on around him/her (their immediate world) through a primary framework, which is taken for granted by said person (Goffman, 1974).

In media studies, American Journalist, Walter Lippmann, was the first scholar to introduce the concept of how the media can construct a simple frame through which the audience can more easily interpret events. Of his work, Lippmann said, “For the real environment is altogether too big, too complex, and too fleeting for direct acquaintance. We are not equipped to deal with so much subtlety, so much variety, so many permutations and combinations. And altogether we have to act in that environment, we have to reconstruct it on a simpler model before we can manage with it” (Lippmann, 1921, p. 16).

Durham (1998) explains “when successfully employed, as they generally are, frames make the world a more knowable and understandable” (p.100). According to Berkowitz (2005), the more “unusual and unexpected” an event is, the more journalists seek to explain it in a way that is “relatively familiar” (p. 608). The motive behind this method is the ability of journalists to make their stories better resonate with their respective audiences. Frames represent “ideological” positions and “social narratives” through which journalism “create meaning” (Durham 1998, p. 105). Stories with particularly spectacular content, such as athletes performing unbelievable feats, need a frame through which journalists can provide some type of meaning in order to aid their audience in understanding and coping with the event. Fuglsang (2001) argues that journalists rely on “readily understood, interpretive frames” found in “ritual, myth, and metaphor” in order to develop frames (p. 185).

Much of the media’s ability to utilize agenda setting and framing theories is predicated on their credibility of particular issues (Walgrave & Van Aelst, 2006, pp. 88-109). A media outlet that is thought of as highly credible has more power to guide the way an audience views an issue or event. Likewise, a media outlet with little credibility with a particular issue would have less ability to guide audience beliefs. For example, the Food Network, despite being a very credible source for all things cooking, would not possess the same ability as ESPN when people are looking for sports news.

Media Framing

More specifically, media framing refers to the process of putting a news story together, including the ways in which a story is organized and structured (Littlejohn, 2011). The way in which the media depicts events (frames them) can constrain how audiences interpret these events. This can happen by various textual features of the event, such as headlines, audio-visual components, metaphors used, and the way in which the story is told (Rhee, 1997, pp. 26-48).

In the book, “The Art of Framing,” by Gail Fairhurst and Robert Sarr, the authors list seven popular techniques in which the media utilizes framing. These techniques are through: the use of metaphors, stories (narration), tradition, jargon, artifacts, contrast, and spin (Fairhurst & Sarr, 1996, pp. 18-43)

A metaphor is used to frame a conceptual idea through comparison to something else. Stories, such as myths and legends, are used to frame a topic via narrative in a vivid and memorable way. Traditions are the cultural mores that imbue significance in the mundane. The use of artifacts, which is closely related to the use of traditions, involves objects with intrinsic symbolic value – a visual/cultural phenomenon that holds more meaning than the object itself. Slogan, jargon, and catchphrases are used to frame an object with a catchy phrase to make it more memorable and relatable. Contrast is utilized to describe an object in terms of what it is not. And lastly, spin is used to present a concept in a way to convey a value judgment (positive or negative) that might not be immediately apparent (Fairhurst & Sarr, 1996).

In recent years, both the ways in which media producers create stories and the values under which they operate have been explored by scholars in a variety of domains, including mass communication, journalism, and political science (Price, Tewksbury, & Powers, 1997). Although most media producers do not intentionally use specific frames over others, they must nonetheless select a certain number of stories and relevant features to report due to time and content restraints (McCombs, 2004). Indeed, framing is a necessary journalistic tool used to reduce the complexity of the content (Gans, 1979).

Visual Framing

The study, “The Role of Images in Framing News Stories,” used the framing theory to help provide a basis for the study. It centered around the media’s coverage of African Americans in television news. Paul Messaris and Linus Abraham’s (2001) study focused on three distinctive properties of visual images: their analogical quality, their indexicality, and their lack of an explicit propositional syntax-each of which may make visual framing less obtrusive than verbal framing (Messaris and Abraham, 2001). After analyzing the information gathered, the researchers argued that viewers may be less aware of the process of framing when it occurs visually than when it takes place. Consequently, Messaris and Abraham concluded visual images may have the capacity of conveying messages that would meet with greater resistance if put in words, but which are received readily in visual form (Gandy, Grant, & Reese, 2001).

As far as news media, visuals fulfill a unique role in shedding light on international conflicts (Powell et al., 2015) as well as bringing unfamiliar and complex stories to life. News visuals has seen a shift toward contemporary formats, in which eye-catching images are presented with accompanying text kept to a minimum means that an image’s impact when viewed alone is no longer a trivial matter. Of course, news images still typically appear in the context of a report and therefore should also be considered alongside an accompanying text (Powell et al., 2105). Framing effects of images and texts depend on their unique characteristics (Geise & Baden, 2014). Images serve to index and reproduce reality (Messaris & Abraham, 2001) and are attention-grabbing (Garcia & Stark, 1991). By evoking a heightened emotional experience compared with text (Iyer & Oldmeadow, 2006), visuals connect with a reader and in turn might also be more persuasive. In contrast, text is less salient, but possesses a clear structure for inferring who did what to whom and why (Entman,1993).

In their 2015 study, Thomas Powell, Hajo Boomgaarden Knut De Swert, and Claes Vreese of the University of Amsterdam found that when presented alone, images generate stronger framing effects on opinions and behavioral intentions than text. When images and text are presented together, as in a typical news report, the frame carried by the text influences opinions regardless of the accompanying image, whereas the frame carried by the image drives behavioral intentions irrespective of the linked text. The researchers explained these effects by the salience enhancing and emotional consequences of visuals (Powell et al., 2015).

Scholars have long acknowledged visuals as a vehicle for news frames by visualizing and emphasizing a particular aspect of an issue (Grabe & Bucy, 2009). In the newsroom, editors choose which images to publish beside an article’s text, and in what size and position. These stylistic-semiotic decisions have a connotative influence over how visuals are decoded by the reader (Kress & van Leeuwen, 1996) and how they resonate with the viewer’s internal frames of reference. News visuals have also been shown to be more memorable, leading to better recall of images over text (Newhagen & Reeves, 1992, as cited in Powel et al., 2015). Beyond memory, images are also more attention-grabbing than text. Eye-tracking studies have shown that images are the most common entry point into newspaper pages (Garcia & Stark, 1991), which points to their amplifying effect on psychological processes.

Discussion

It is obvious that visuals play an important role in the framing effects of news media. The effects of powerful visuals on audiences are much more nuanced than they appear at first sight. Current research goes to show that visuals are most effective at personifying abstract ideas, visually dramatizing movement ideology, grievances, goals, and tactics, and narrating features of struggle (Morrison & Isaac, 2012). Going beyond framing and agenda setting, visuals also help form culture and the way the general public wants to receive news media. In other words, a picture truly is worth a thousand words. Visual aids are often used to contribute to a framing bias.

On Monday, December 5, 2015, ESPN.com (through espnW) had their annual IMPACT25 awards, which recognizes female athletes and influencers who have played a prominent role in sports. On their landing page, ESPN.com asked,

“What do you get when espnW IMPACT25 honorees Carli Lloyd, Lydia Ko, Serena Williams, Ronda Rousey and Misty Copeland join forces with Ms. Marvel, The Black Widow, Thor, She-Hulk and Medusa? A #SUPERSQUAD, that’s what. And below, see more original renderings as Marvel artists turned our illustrious list of 2015 Influencers and Athletes into super versions of themselves.” A list of Marvel Comic illustrators (Marvel and ESPN are owned both owned by the Disney Corp.) made renderings of how the IMPACT25 honorees as mythical beings.

Below are examples of their work.

Moving forward, I will be using this research to determine how ESPN.com uses visuals to contribute in the framing of athletes as mythical beings. I have previously conducted a rhetorical analysis regarding ESPN.com’s framing messages within the text of stories, but I hope to see the role visuals play in this process.

---

References

Berkowitz, D. A. (2005). Social meanings of news: A text-reader. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications.

Campbell, J. (2015, December 5). EspnW and Marvel Create Super IMPACT25 Heroes. Retrieved April 14, 2016, from http://espn.go.com/espn/feature/story/_/page/Impact25/espnw-marvel-create-super-impact25-heroes

Coleman, R. (2010). Framing the pictures in our heads: Exploring the framing and agenda-setting effects of visual images. Doing news framing analysis (pp.233-262). New York: Routledge.

Durham, F.D. (1998). “News frames as social narratives: TWA flight 800.” Journal of Communication, 48 (4): 100-117.

Entman, R. M. (1993). Framing: Toward clarification of a fractured paradigm. Journal of Communication, 43(4), 51–58.

Entman, R. M. (2003). Projections of power: Framing news, public opinion, and U.S. foreign policy. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.

Fairhurst, G. T., & Sarr, R. A. (1996). The art of framing: Managing the language of leadership. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.

Fuglsang, Ross Stuart. 2001. Framing the Motorcycle Outlaw, 185-194, m. Framing Public Life: Perspectives on Media and Our Understanding of the Social World. Lawrence Erlbaum Associates. Oscar Gandy Jr., August Grant, and Stephen Reese.

Gamson, W. A., & Modigliani, A. (1987). The changing culture of affirmative action. In R. G. Braungart & M. M. Braungart (Eds.), Research in political sociology, 3, 137-177. Greenwich, CT: JAI Press.

Gandy, O., Grant, A., Reese, S. (2001). Framing Public Life: Perspectives on Media and Our Understanding of the Social World. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.

Gans, H. J. (1979). Symbolic ethnicity: The future of ethnic groups and cultures in America. Ethnic and racial studies, 2, 1–20

Garcia M., & Stark, P. (1991). Eyes on the news. St. Petersburg, FL: Poynter Institute for Media Studies.

Geise, S., & Baden C. (2009). Putting the image back into the frame: Modeling the linkage between visual communication and frame-processing theory. Communication Theory, 25(10), 46-49. Doi:10.1111/comt.12048.

Goffman, E. (1974). Frame Analysis: An Essay on the Organization of Experience. Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, 601-601.

Grabe, M. & Bucy, E. (2009). Image Bite Politics: News and the Visual Framing of Elections (New York, NY: Oxford University Press).

Iyer, A., & Oldmeadow, J. (2006). Picture this: Emotional and political responses to photographs of the Kenneth Bigley kidnapping. European Journal of Social Psychology, 36, 635–647.

Kress, G., & van Leeuwen, T. (1996). Reading images: The grammar of visual design. London, England: Routledge.

Littlejohn, S. (2011). Theories. In Theories of human communication  (11th ed., 1.342-345). Belmont, California: Wadsworth Pub.

McCombs, M. E. (2004). Setting the agenda: The mass media and public opinion.

Malden, MA: Blackwell. Messaris, P., Abraham, L. (2001). The Role of Images in Framing News Stories, 215-226, in Framing Public Life: Perspectives on Media and Our Understanding of the Social World. Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.

Morrison, D. R., & Isaac, L. W. (2012). Insurgent Images: Genre Selection and Visual Frame Amplification in IWW Cartoon Art. Social Movement Studies, 11(1), 61-78. doi:10.1080/14742837.2012.640530

Newhagen, J. E., & Reeves, B. (1992). This evening’s bad news: Effects of compelling negative television news images on memory. Journal of Communication, 42(2), 25–41.

Pan Z. & Kosicki, G. M. (1993). Framing analysis: An approach to news discourse. Political Communication, 10, 55-75.

Powell, T. E., Boomgaarden, H. G., Swert, K. D., & Vreese, C. H. (2015). A Clearer Picture: The Contribution of Visuals and Text to Framing Effects. J Commun Journal of Communication, 65(6), 997-1017 doi:10.1111/jcom.12184

Price, V., Tewksbury, D., & Powers, E. (1997). Switching trains of thought: The impact of news frames on readers’ cognitive responses. Communication Research, 24, 481–506.

Rhee, J.W. “Strategy and Issue Frames in Election Campaign Coverage: A Social Cognitive Account of Framing Effects,” Journal of Communication 47 (1997): 26-48.

Walgrave, S. and Van Aelst, P. “The Contingency of the Mass Media’s Political Agenda-Setting Power: Toward a Preliminary View,” Journal of Communication 56 (2006): 88-109.