This study examined the framing of genetically modified organisms in two American newspapers, The New York Times and the Washington Post (2000-2016) and tested the impact of risk and opportunity ...framing on attitudes and behaviors regarding genetically modified organisms. The content analysis (N = 165) showed that the two newspapers did not have a dominant frame type in their coverage. A randomized three-condition experiment (N = 182) showed that the type of framing significantly affected individuals’ attitudes and was able to change them. The type of framing affected individuals’ behavioral intentions through postexposure attitudes but was not able to significantly affect actual behavior.
This study extends framing theory by identifying two causal mechanisms and one contingent condition for a new type of frame to be used with issues where people dispute scientific claims. This new ...“adaptive frame” focuses on adapting to climate change impacts without cueing deeply held beliefs by discussing causes. An experiment shows this frame works by reducing persuasion knowledge and increasing perceived behavioral control, resulting in science skeptics being significantly more likely to intend to take action, engage with the news, and agree with the story’s perspective. This effect is moderated by science skepticism, with adaptive frames working significantly better on the very people the news media are not reaching. We contribute to theory with an understanding of how a frame that eliminates references to deep-seated beliefs is more effective than the existing frames of conflict, attribution of responsibility, and possibly others.
In this study, we examined how metaphors used in the Russian media to describe the COVID-19 virus affect the audience’s judgment about the virus and their willingness to take a vaccine. We found that ...the two conventional metaphors used to describe the dynamics of the spread of the coronavirus (‘wave’ and ‘flash’) have a limited impact on the audience. In particular, by conducting an online experiment (N=737), we revealed that texts in which the virus and vaccination were described metaphorically (‘a new flash of coronavirus’ / ‘vaccination could extinguish the flames of a new flash of coronavirus’; ‘a new wave of coronavirus’ / ‘vaccination could curb the onslaught of a new wave of coronavirus’) reduced fear and anxiety at the thought of the coronavirus, but this effect appears only in vaccinated participants. Metaphorical framing, while impactful at the affective level, did not affect ‘rational’ reasoning, such as estimates of the likelihood of becoming vaccinated or estimates of the number of cases in the country. Also, subjects’ responses to most of the questions correlated positively with their confidence in official information about the coronavirus. The article interprets the results in the context of current work in the field of metaphorical framing and health communication.
Between Risk and Opportunity Schuck, Andreas R.T.; de Vreese, Claes H.
European journal of communication (London),
03/2006, Volume:
21, Issue:
1
Journal Article
Peer reviewed
This multi-methodological study examined the news framing of the 2004 European Union
enlargement in terms of risk and opportunity and the effect both frames had on
public support for the enlargement. ...A content analysis showed that EU enlargement
was portrayed as a controversial issue, but with an overall balanced tone of
coverage. Risk and opportunity framing played an equally prominent role in the news.
An experiment examined the impact of both frames on support for EU enlargement.
Participants in the opportunity frame condition showed significantly higher levels
of support compared to participants in the risk condition. This framing effect was
moderated by political knowledge. Individuals with low levels of political knowledge
were more affected by the news frames and more susceptible to risk framing.
Prior research on the influence of various ways of framing anthropogenic climate change (ACC) do not account for the organized ACC denial in the U.S. media and popular culture, and thus may ...overestimate these frames' influence in the general public. We conducted an experiment to examine how Americans' ACC views are influenced by four promising frames for urging action on ACC (economic opportunity, national security, Christian stewardship, and public health)—when these frames appear with an ACC denial counter‐frame. This is the first direct test of how exposure to an ACC denial message influences Americans' ACC views. Overall, these four positive frames have little to no effect on ACC beliefs. But exposure to an ACC denial counter‐frame does significantly reduce respondents' belief in the reality of ACC, belief about the veracity of climate science, awareness of the consequences of ACC, and support for aggressively attempting to reduce our nation's GHG emissions in the near future. Furthermore, as expected by the Anti‐Reflexivity Thesis, exposure to the ACC denial counter‐frame has a disproportionate influence on the ACC views of conservatives (than on those of moderates and liberals), effectively activating conservatives' underlying propensity for anti‐reflexivity.
The COVID-19 pandemic is challenging healthcare systems worldwide and is causing numerous deaths. Vaccination is an important tool to help us get back to normal; however, the majority of the public ...must be willing to get vaccinated to reach herd immunity. By considering postulates of message framing and socioemotional selectivity theory, this study investigated the effects of gain-loss framing on younger and older adults' reactance arousal, attitudes toward the coronavirus vaccination, vaccination intention, and recognition performance. In a 2 × 2 online experiment in October 2020, 281 participants received textual health information about future vaccination against COVID-19 with either gain- or loss-framed messages (Factor 1). Half of the participants were aged 18-30 years, and the other half were 60 years and above (quasi-experimental Factor 2). Among younger adults, we found an antagonistic pattern of effects: While loss framing positively influenced vaccination attitudes and led to stronger vaccination intentions, it simultaneously decreased recognition accuracy. In contrast, there was no framing effect on attitudes and intentions in older adults, which might be a consequence of the positivity effect. These findings can be interpreted as a first step to uncover the interaction of age and framing in the coronavirus pandemic.
Public Significance Statement
This study highlights the importance of an age-related communication approach to promote vaccination against COVID-19. The findings suggest that younger and older adults react differently to gain and loss frames in the context of the coronavirus pandemic.
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CEKLJ, FFLJ, NUK, ODKLJ, PEFLJ
This study examined how framing of residential energy-saving benefits as environmental or economic (i.e., benefit framing) and long-term or short-term (i.e., temporal framing) influenced individuals' ...attitudes toward and perceived outcome efficacy of energy-saving behaviors, and, especially, how individual differences in environmental concern, political orientation and consideration of future consequences (CFC) moderated message framing effects. Data were collected from 461 U.S. residents in an online experiment. Results from moderated regression analyses suggested that environmentally framed benefits induced more positive attitudes toward energy saving than economically framed benefits among those with moderate levels of environmental concern and among more politically liberal participants, suggesting that environmentally framed messages might stimulate positive responses only within a subset of U.S. energy consumers. Short-term, economic benefits induced the most positive attitudes and highest outcome efficacy among participants with lower levels of CFC. Implications for promotional messages about energy saving are discussed.
•We manipulated benefit and temporal framing of messages promoting energy saving.•Environmental framing led to more positive attitudes among those moderate in environmental concern.•Environmental framing led to more positive attitudes among political liberals.•Short-term economic framing led to more positive attitudes among low-CFC participants.•Short-term economic framing led to greater efficacy among low-CFC participants.
We study the effects of two exogenous modifications in the Swedish pension system application form nudging individuals towards a fixed-term payout. Meanwhile, the set of available options and the ...default option—life annuity—were unchanged during the period under study. We examine the effects on individuals’ payout decisions and the spillover effects on labour supply and other pensions using a difference-in-difference framework and detailed administrative data on actual payout decisions and a wide range of individual-level outcomes. Each modification increased the demand for the nudged payout by around 30 percentage points. The first modification also induced individuals to work less.
Abstract This article examines two teachers' efforts to re‐organize their science teaching around issues of environmental and food justice in the urban community where they teach through the ...pedagogical approach of community‐oriented framing. We introduce this approach to teachers' framing of phenomena in community as supporting students' framing of phenomena as personally and locally relevant. Drawing on classroom observations of remote learning during the COVID‐19 pandemic, we took an analytic approach that characterized features of classroom discourse to rate community‐oriented framing at the lesson level. Results show that teachers framed phenomena as both social and scientific, and as rooted in students' lived experiences, with classroom activities designed to gather localized and personalized evidence needed to explain or model phenomena. We also share examples of how Black and Latinx students took up this framing of phenomena in their classroom work. By providing a detailed description of the launch and implementation of activities, findings illustrate how community‐oriented framing supported teachers in posing local questions of equity and justice as simultaneously social and scientific, and helping students perceive science learning as meaningful to their everyday lives. Community‐oriented framing offers a practical means of designing locally and socially relevant instruction. We contribute to justice‐centered science pedagogies by conceptualizing transformative science learning environments as those in which students understand their goal in science class as understanding, and later addressing, inequities in how socioscientific issues manifest in their community.
Using media coverage of animal welfare as an example, this study examines how the perception of multimodal news frames shapes recipients’ visual attention, attributions of responsibility, emotions, ...and policy support. To investigate the mechanisms of multimodal-episodic versus thematic framing, we combined eye-tracking measurements with a pre-post survey experiment in which 143 participants were randomly assigned to an episodic or a thematic multimodal framing condition. The results show that episodic multimodal frames are viewed longer than thematic frames, elicit stronger individual and political responsibility attributions, and increase political support for stricter animal-welfare laws. Understanding multimodal framing as a multistep process, a serial mediation model reveals that episodic frames affect viewing time, which leads to stronger attributions of political responsibility and, in turn, stronger policy support. Our results support the idea of a complex interplay between subsequent stages of information perception and processing within a multimodal framing process.
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