Issue Definition (Framing)

Issue definition, or framing, refers to the careful use of language or other symbols in public discourse. If individual frames reside in both mental structures of the mind and in political discourse, framing is a social process that links the two. As such, framing is an important construct in the measurement and understanding of public opinion. Elected officials, other key decision makers, special interest groups, journalists, scholars, lobbyists, and pollsters are among those interested in issue definition (and its measurement) because of its importance in public policy formation and acceptance in modern democracies.

Public issues are inherently matters about which people disagree. There are often powerful financial interests backing one side or another. Other times, profound moral principles may be at stake. This accounts for the importance of public issues and the difficulties in studying them. Language used to describe political issues is not static. As the major political parties and interest groups fight over issues, the key battleground is political language. Interest groups struggle to gain acceptance for their terms and ideas and to have them incorporated into political dialogue. To win the battle over the acceptance of key terms is often the key to a wider political victory.

One key aspect of issue framing is that the terms used are carefully chosen by political and other intellectual elites to convey messages that resonate in particular ways with key elements of the public. As Donald Kinder and Lynne Sanders have noted, frames lead a double life. What they mean is that issue frames are both literary devices and mental devices. Frames are powerful because they are precisely [Page 396]chosen terms or phrases that resonate with the ways humans are programmed to think.

The most successful frames for issues are never casually chosen. They are carefully cultivated by elite communicators—such as politicians, political pundits, and prominent media correspondents—who know exactly what they are doing. Sociologist William A. Gamson is a leading figure in studying how public issues are described in the mass media, and how people learn these ideas, use them, and reproduce them in their daily lives. Gamson's research points to a series of framing devices and reasoning devices that together make up an “issue package.” Issues that are in front of the public for a long period of time will eventually have fully developed frame structures that are quite complete. Particularly complex issues will also have a variety of competing frames associated with them. One of the key framing devices is metaphor. When a political figure uses a metaphor such as “war” to describe the appropriate response to a social problem such as terrorism, this choice is made advisedly. The term is chosen in such a way that alternative ways of thinking about the problem do not come to mind. Effective framing often is done in a way that seems so natural and uncontro-versial that other ways of conceptualizing the issue can hardly be imagined.

The effective framing of a problem is often inclusive of preferred solutions to the problem. For example, the George W. Bush administration's choice of phrases for framing the global struggle with terrorism in the wake of attack and destruction of the World Trade Center as the “War on Terrorism” emphasized the use of organized military force to maintain public order and allay the fears of the population. The war metaphor also diverted thinking away from alternative forms of force such as police or detective work, as well as various soft-power strategies of public diplomacy and cultural engagement.

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