You've been framed!

Last night was my first Organizing for Social Change class at the Cultural Wellness Center. Needless to say, I am stoked, and you will probably be hearing more about the learning from this class if I balance the semester well.

One particular part of class I wanted to note was about the principles of "media framing" and how that can trickle into our daily lives.

Quick background:

Gregory Bateson was an anthropologist who first used the word "frame" to refer to two parts of communication:

1) Frames allow people to interpret and evaluate messages; they are cognitive models that are "cultural understandings, those that are shared, durable and have motivational force"
2) Frames are messages about messages (aka "metacommunications")

Now for the critical thinking part this blog offers you today: there are some dominant frames in our culture's media. The two main frames we see in the media are episodic and thematic. 80% of the frames we see on television news are episodic and 20% are thematic.

Episodic frames tend to place responsibility on the individual rather than societal forces, whereas thematic puts public issues into a broader perspective.

Now enough of the academic talk, let's relate this to our lives.

Examine the following examples of how the news can broadcast the same story with different frames, placing the blame on different people.

* "An infant left sleeping in his crib was bitten repeatedly by rats while his 16-year-old mother went to cash her welfare check."

* "An eight-month-old South End boy was treated yesterday after being bitten by rats while sleeping in his crib. Tenants said that repeated requests for extermination had been ignored by the landlord. He claimed that the tenants did not properly dispose of their garbage."

*"Rats bit eight-month old Michael Burns, five times yesterday as he napped in his crib. Burns is the latest victim of a rat epidemic plaguing inner-city neighborhoods. A Public Health Department spokesperson explained that federal and state cutbacks forced short-staffing at rat control and housing inspection programs."

Friday morning food for thought:
How do you think these stories shape our cultural attitudes and belief systems about the world?
What do you think about the fact that the media most commonly uses the episodic frame in its reporting?
Are you surprised? Why or why not?