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Research on Thematic and Episodic Frames: The Health News Connection
Early in our analysis of the research articles selected for this project, we noticed the high number of studies using thematic and episodic frames to investigate health news. While we were not surprised to see this trend based on our own academic research on health news, we decided it was necessary to discuss why this is the case.
As we explained in the summary of the book, Is Anyone Responsible, Iyengar’s thematic and episodic frames introduced a realistic and useful way to categorize frames in news coverage of political issues. Iyengar content analyzed five contemporary political issues covered by ABC, CBS and NBC between 1981 and 1986, he demonstrated most news coverage was primarily episodic framing or thematic framing, usually a combination of both (Aaroe, 2011). Numerous media effect studies have established these frames can sway audience members’ attributions of responsibility and policy views (Major, 2018; Barry, Brescoll, & Gollust, 2013; Major, 2009; Iyengar, 1991).
Our current investigation shows for the past 25 years, health studies dominate the academic research on episodic and thematic framing in news. It seems appropriate for us to explore why health research has overshadowed other areas in thematic and episodic framing in news. While others may identify different reasons for the preponderance of these frames in academic research on health news, we argue three primary reasons account for this trend.
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First, since the mid-1960s framing research has become increasingly popular in communication research (Ardèvol-Abreu, 2015). Framing is a multidisciplinary paradigm that allows for the holistic study of media and its four elements of the communication process: the sender, the receiver, the message and culture (Berlo, 1960). The relationship between these four elements and thematic and episodic frames is key in terms of their linkage to audiences and attribution of responsibility for social and health issues and persuasion of public opinion support possibly leading to action.
Second, news coverage of health issues has increased dramatically during the past fifty years. A 2001 study by Pierce and Gilpin published in Tobacco Control found a direct link between smoking cessation in middle age adults and news coverage of smoking and health between the years of 1950 and 1980. In 2008, Pew Research Center listed health news as the 8th biggest subject in the national news, comprising 3.6% of all coverage. The amount was more than three times the coverage for education or transportation, but less than coverage about foreign affairs, crime, or natural disasters. Despite significant changes in the media landscape allowing people immediate access to health-related information on websites and social media, news coverage remains a vital force in shaping the way we think about and discuss health (Walsh-Childers, Braddock, Rabaza & Schwitzer, 2018; Major, 2018).
Third, health communication research in academia has developed over the last thirty-five years as a thriving and significant field. Scholars in this area investigate the roles performed by human and mediated communication in health care delivery and health promotion and journalism while benefiting from ample funding opportunities not readily available to other areas of communication research (Kreps et al, 1998). This has led to an increase in health communication research programs.
We believe these three trends converge with Iyengar’s (1991) introduction of thematic and episodic frames as a way to categorize news frames and study their effects, and accounts for the prevalence of scholarly research on thematic and episodic frames in health news. This premise is discussed in the remainder of the chapter.
As Cacciatore, Scheufele, and Iyengar (2016) noted, “Framing has emerged as one of the most popular areas of research for scholars in communication. For evidence of this, one need look no further than our conference programs or the pages of our ←12 | 13→flagship journals” (p. 8). Most scholars agree the foundations of framing is found in sociology and psychology. Through these two unrelated academic approaches, we find the origins of equivalence framing and emphasis framing.
Psychology-rooted framing refers to how the same information is altered when presented to audiences. Kahneman and Tversky (1979, 1984) introduced what has been identified as equivalency framing because it relies upon dissimilar but logically equivalent words or phrases to create the framing effect. Their 1981 “Asian disease” experiment examined the effects of equivalent information except for changes of gains versus losses (Tversky & Kahneman, 1981). The researchers presented participants with a story detailing a hypothetical outbreak of an uncommon Asian disease threatening to kill 600 people. After reading the story, individuals were presented with a gain option (lives saved) as opposed to a loss option (lives lost) for dealing with the crisis. Participants were significantly more risk averse when presented with the option of saving lives (gain) but risk seeking when the same information was presented in terms of losing lives (loss). Across a variety of issues, these researchers found individual preference is conditional on how information is presented or contextualized as opposed to the expected usefulness of the choice (e.g. Kahneman & Tversky, 1981; Kahneman, 2011; Cacciatore, Scheufele & Iyengar, 2016).
“Emphasis framing” comes from a sociology-rooted approach. “Emphasis framing” involves focusing on one set of considerations over another. Instead of presenting logically equivalent information to the audience member in a story, emphasis framing offers individuals one set of facts or arguments over another. The sociological tradition views framing as a means of understanding how people construct meaning and make sense of the everyday world (Ferree et al., 2002).
Goffman, the first to introduce the sociological approach to framing, defined framing as a way people could use interpretive schemas to both organize and understand the information encountered in daily life (Goffman, 1974; Cacciatore, Scheufele, & Iyengar, 2016). Later, Gamson and Modigliani (1987) defined frames as ‘‘a central organizing idea or story line that provides meaning to an unfolding strip of events …. The frame suggests what the controversy is about, the essence of the issue’’ (p. 143). Clearly, some scholars