Topic: A Framer Reads the News.
Susan Bales for the FrameWorks Institute, July 2002Reading the op/ed pages of your daily newspaper can serve to keep up your framing skills. Everything is there: the "just the facts" frame, the "putting a face on the problem" frame, and many values frames — some artful and some inadvertent. With just a little bit of extra effort on your part, you can use your daily newspaper as an exercise in framing analysis.
First, what is this article about? Then, questioning the intent of the author is a good place to continue your analysis: What were they trying to do? Next, look at the way they build their frame: How did they set up for the reader the lens through which we are to examine their issue? Finally, ask yourself if they were strategically competent in their framing: Did their framing work to set up a coherent perspective on the issue? And, what are the policy implications of their frame?
Let's take a look at an especially artful op/ed, provided us via the Washington Post ("Supersize Country," Saturday, December 15, 2001, A29) by co-authors Shannon Brownlee and Patti Wolter. Take a moment to read the attached article and then let's deconstruct it together. If you wish, jot down your answers to the above questions and make note of any elements of the frame that seem especially important: messengers, metaphors, social math, context (Who's in the frame? Who is responsible?), etc.
What is this article about? It's about obesity, of course. But more than that, it's about the national problem of obesity. From the very first paragraph, the article works to construct obesity as a national threat — using the Surgeon General as the credible authority (messenger), his "call to action" and "epidemic" references to underscore that this is serious and that it is societal. "Last year obesity cost the nation $92 billion, according to federal figures." Whose pocketbook is this coming out of? Ours, the nation's, the authors say. Moreover, rising obesity rates threaten to wipe out "the tremendous gains made in the past 25 years against cancer and heart disease by the middle of the 21st century." Whose gains are those? Our gains, of course: collective progress toward better health for all Americans. In effect, by defining the problem as collective, the authors have set us up for a collective solution to the problem.
And that is precisely the tact they pursue: "So what are the institutions responsible for protecting the nation's health doing to help Americans keep from getting fatter?," they ask in the first question to be posed by the article. Who is responsible? Institutions, the article asserts, and directs us immediately to their identity and performance. So, whereas this article could have been written about your obesity or mine, that of teenagers or boomers, instead this article turns out to be "about" Congress, the Centers for Disease Control, the National Institutes of Health, and medical schools, and what they are or aren't doing to protect our nation's health and pocketbook. Not a bad framing accomplishment in four paragraphs!
What were they trying to do? The entire article works off the metaphor of smoking and obesity. By reminding us that we used to consider smoking a "personal" issue, not a public health issue, the authors hope to open us up to a reconsideration of obesity as a societal issue as well. The analogous reports from the Surgeon General serve to establish this connection. In essence, the article works off of a "it's not what you think it is" construct, in which smoking is used as the frame to woo us away from personal responsibility for obesity and toward institutional responsibility.
How did they set up for the reader the lens through which we are to examine their issue? The expectation is set up at the end of the first paragraph: "Just as nobody in 1964 could conceive of restricting citizens' God-given right to smoke, few Americans today can imagine regulating something so personal as the way we exercise and eat." We were wrong then, the article infers, and we're wrong now, so let's take a fresh look at the problem. Does the set-up work? The irony implicit in "God-given right to smoke" tends to remind us that smokers, once prevalent in every restaurant and workplace, have been regulated out of public places in order to protect the public's health. In this particular instance, the debunking of the old frame undermines its power.
But there is a great deal of "don't think about elephants" going on in this article — the authors find it necessary to acknowledge again and again the public's tendency to "think of fat as a failure of will." This is precisely the frame they were trying to overpower. Would the article have been stronger without explicitly acknowledging this default frame? Probably. Remember that sloth is one of the seven deadly sins; so, like it or not, the idea of fat as a failure of personal will is likely to be widely and deeply held in our culture. All the more reason not to name it explicitly, not to prompt people to remember what they thought about obesity before reading this article.
The weakest part of the article occurs in the transition from the definition of the problem from personal will power to environment in the fifth and sixth paragraphs. Consider this bridge statement: "That's because doctors, like the rest of us, still think of fat as a failure of will. Sure, lack of will power is partly at fault, but the larger problem lies with the environment." Could this have been stated in such a way that it didn't cede so much power to the default frame? Sure. Following the tobacco metaphor, the authors could have defined tobacco as a defective product that required consumer protections and then moved to establish junk food as similarly flawed. Advertising - or the "environment" — then becomes a vehicle that promotes a defective product and must be held accountable. This is the theme pursued in the eighth paragraph, with its introduction of the deceptive advertising of exercise under the guise of progressive public service advertising. Duplicity helps underscore the charge of villainy.
On the other hand, the article is working off of a strong frame construct that goes like this: if obesity is like smoking, then it's not a matter of personal choice but rather one of manipulation by corrupt industries which require regulation. That is the "lesson" of the tobacco wars of the last decade. This is precisely what the authors do when they say "restaurateurs and food and soft drink manufacturers have already taken a page from the tobacco industry playbook."
But it takes a long time to get to the villain industry — not till we are in paragraph eight do the authors name names and focus our attention on "the food industry."
Before we get there, however, the article takes the important step of presenting solutions. Paragraph seven permits us to see that solutions abound and are not so onerous that it sets off our fear of government intervention. Who can be against "requiring all chain restaurants and fast-food outlets to prominently display the calorie and fat content of their foods" or "offering incentives for communities to build parks and walkways"? Note how skillfully the taxation interventions — taxes on sugar and sodas and incentives on fruits and vegetables — are sandwiched in between the more popular and less regulatory solutions.
The final paragraph is perhaps the strongest in the entire article, making the explicit connection between McDonald's and Joe Camel, and establishing manipulation of children as the proof of industry irresponsibility. But if it is so powerful in establishing the frame of obesity as smoking, why didn't it come in the first paragraph, rather than the last? This excellent op/ed might have been even stronger if it had used this piece of evidence to set the frame in the first paragraph.
Did their framing work to set up a coherent perspective on the issue? And, what are the policy implications of their frame? The article has a frame coherence that is truly laudable. It works entirely within the metaphorical framework it has established. We end by understanding the relatively unfamiliar problem of obesity through the process of mapping onto it the more familiar problem of smoking.
To judge the effectiveness of the framing attempt, ask yourself a simple question: Who is responsible for stopping obesity? If you did not name parents in your answer, the authors have won a good deal of the reframing challenge. For it is parents (or individuals) that constitute the usual responsible agents in health promotion stories. Next ask yourself, is obesity a big problem or a little problem? Score again; the authors establish it as a problem that is national in scope. Is there anything that can be done? Solutions abound in this article, and they are policy-oriented. The personal solutions — like exercise and diet — are shown to be inadequate against the industry that is pushing the product.
Is this a good opinion piece? We think so. It demonstrates strategy and skill in its selection and execution of frames. It exhibits discipline in the way it stays on message throughout the piece. It carefully assigns responsibility and points out solutions. While there are some things we quibble with ("don't think about elephants," save your punch for the last paragraph, etc.), for the most part, this op/ed makes a strong statement for the reframing of obesity as a national problem requiring regulation of an industry that is abusing the public's health. Will the reframe hold up over time? We suspect you will find it hard to see the "Be Active America!" ads without seeing the face of Joe Camel!
Now choose an op/ed in your daily newspaper and see if you can deconstruct it along these lines. If you find it a useful exercise, share it online with your Kids Count colleagues!
