Research Methods
Strategic Frame Analysis™, developed by the FrameWorks Institute, is an approach to communications research and practice that integrates essential constructs from the cognitive and social sciences to describe and explain how communications in general, and media in particular, influence public support for social programs and policies.
The innovative research that undergirds Strategic Frame Analysis™ comprises a set of multi-disciplinary, multi-method, iterative processes that emphasize empirical testing of potential frame effects. Below we list the basic methodological components of the Strategic Frame Analysis™ approach. Some methods are unique to FrameWorks, others are more common social science methods, but all underscore the power and potential of strategically reframing social issues.
Content Analysis of News Media
FrameWorks' conducts media content analyses that review and analyze the framing of various issues in a wide variety of news outlets including: network television, major national and regional newspapers, news radio programs, online news from major outlets such as CNN.com or MSNBC.com, and news magazines such as Time and Newsweek. This research allows FrameWorks to review media coverage of issues, discern important thematic patterns in news reporting (in terms of reporting style, content, allocation of news time, etc.) as well as to identify the leading frames within that coverage.
Cognitive Interviews
FrameWorks routinely invests in a series of one-on-one interviews with citizens to discern how they think about the issues we are studying. This approach combines techniques from cultural anthropology and cognitive linguistics. Essentially we examine the way people think about a topic, the pattern of reasoning, the connections they make to other issues, and the devices they use to resist new information. In-depth interviews conducted from this perspective allow FrameWorks researchers to identify the cultural models—implicit shared understandings and assumptions—that guide people's thinking about abstract social issues.
Peer Discourse Analysis
Peer discourse analysis captures the effects of frames in social settings by exploring inter-group negotiations around the social issues we are studying. The analysis is organized to validate the findings from the cognitive interviews and the media content analysis, to experiment with promising alternative frames, and to observe the negotiations between members of the public (i.e. peers) when using dominant cultural models and potential reframing elements. The analysis consists of a discourse analysis conducted using data from a set of moderated focus groups of 10 to 12 community influentials.
Expert Interviews and Materials Reviews
To better understand how experts and advocates communicate about an issue, as well as to better understand the basic content of the messages they want to advance with the public, we interview them, attend their professional meetings, and analyze an array of publicly available materials they produce. Using the data from these sources, FrameWorks is able to draft a core story that lays out the central problems associated with the issue, the evidence or science base that supports these conclusions, as well as the policy and program solutions that expert knowledge and understandings suggests will help resolve the issue.
Mapping the Gap Conceptual Analysis
In the Map the Gap analysis, FrameWorks' researchers juxtapose public understanding of an issue (identified through the cognitive interviews, peer discourse analysis, and media content analysis) and the understandings of policy experts and advocates on the issue (gathered via the expert interviews and material reviews). In this way, we are able to “map” or situate the ways that experts and advocates explain social issues against the dominant cultural models that the public brings to bear on the same issue. In this analysis, we specifically look for places where there is incongruity between experts’ and the public’s conceptualization of the issue. These incongruous spaces then become our primary targets for reframing.
Simplifying Model Development
A simplifying model is a reframing tool that concretizes and clarifies technical concepts and processes through a familiar and easily understood metaphor. These metaphors capture the essence of a scientific concept or explain an important mechanism on an issue and have a high capacity for spreading easily through a population. Numerous studies in the cognitive sciences as well as a growing body of FrameWorks research have established that the public’s ability to reason about complex, abstract or technical public policy concepts rely heavily on metaphor and analogy. As a result, we actively develop simple and concrete metaphorical frame elements that help people to organize information on issues in new ways, to fill in understanding currently missing from the public’s repertoire, and to shift attention away from the default patterns they already use to understand those issues. FrameWorks identifies, empirically tests, and refines simplifying models for complex social problems using a wide range of the discrete methodologies discussed on this page.
National Experimental Surveys
FrameWorks uses experimental surveys to test the efficacy of using some frames over others. To conduct these experiments, we employ web-based surveys and randomly assign a nationally representative sample to one or more treatments and a control group. The treatment groups are exposed to framed messages and are subsequently asked a series of question that assess their support for a variety of related policy questions. By comparing the responses of the treatment groups to the control condition (which received no stimulus at all), we can ascertain any effects that emerge as a result of the way in which the issues were framed in the stimuli. Using this method, we can demonstrate the magnitude and extent to which exposure to particular frames affect the public’s policy preferences.
Talkback Testing
Talkback Testing is based on established cognitive science techniques and allows FrameWorks to make preliminary evaluations of which simplifying models and other frame elements are most easily understood by the public, allow the public to most productively use new information, have the best chance of seeping into the public discourse and have the least chance of breaking down and morphing unproductively from their original form during transmission. In conversational group settings, subjects are asked to think about a particular simplifying model or frame element, and then asked to communicate with a third party about that issue. By measuring and comparing subjects' acceptance of and facility with different simplifying models and frame elements — as they try to explain and reason about an issue — FrameWorks is able to judge how effectively these elements are likely to be absorbed and used once introduced to the wider public.
