Telling Our Stories: Narrative and Framing in the Movement for Same-Sex Marriage

Although framing and narrative are both well-documented discursive features of social movements, the difference between them is often overstated; where frames are treated as logical, authoritative, and abstract, the usefulness of narratives is frequently documented in relation to pre-mobilization phases of movement development such as identity and community building. Drawing on an analysis of Connecticut's Judiciary Committee hearings on same-sex marriage, I challenge this distinction and elucidate the relationship between storytelling and framing, showing how narrative is used to make packages of frames cohesive and compelling. In demonstrating how proponents of the legislation deployed narratives and frames simultaneously, this research contributes to scholarship on the function and configuration of discursive strategies for social movements.     

The Place of Framing: Multiple Audiences and Antiwar Protests near Fort Bragg

Social movement leaders regularly invoke geographic places—such as cities, parks, and monuments—as symbols in strategic efforts to frame social movement activity. This article examines how place affects framing processes inside a movement and counterprotester responses with an ethnography of anti-Iraq War protests in Fayetteville, North Carolina. We show how place attracts the attention of movement leaders, creates opportunities for local community members to assert their interests, suppresses some frames within the movement, and encourages opponents to co-opt the meaning of place for their own ends. The multiple meanings of place can broaden the scope of conflict and reduce a movement leader’s ability unilaterally to define a movement’s agenda and public image.

Build Your Own Pension: Framing Pension Reform and Choice in Newspapers

Recent pension reforms in Norway mean that old-age pensions to a greater extent are a function of adaptations made and decisions made throughout the lifetime. How much you work, who you work for, when you retire, and how you invest will influence your standard of living as an old-age pensioner. This article investigates one important source of information about retirement and pension, namely service journalism in main national newspapers. How is the issue of pension framed in these articles? And what kind of advice is presented by which kind of actors? Findings indicate that service journalism is dominated by pension industry sources, and old-age pension is framed as a function of individual investment choices rather than as citizens’ rights.     

Framing environmental responsibility: 30 years of CSR messages in National Geographic Magazine

For decades corporations have been promoting their responsible behaviors toward the environment. This study looks at three ways organizations have framed their corporate environmental responsibility over the past 30 years. Specifically, the study finds that organizations focus on the way their environmental behaviors contribute to solutions (gain frame) rather than prevent environmental problems (loss frame). They focus on solving problems for the current generation rather than future generations, and they promote their actions (doing more) rather than promote their conservation (taking less from the earth). However, some differences in framing and use of environmental topic emerge over time.     

Krafting the obesity message: A case study in framing and issues management

This study examined the application of framing theory in issues management. Using case study methodology, the researchers analyzed message frames used by Kraft Foods in its public response to the obesity crisis, how the Kraft frames were reported by the media and whether Kraft's approach might help define effective framing and issues management practices in public relations. The study suggested that framing was indeed useful in Kraft's attempt to manage the issue of obesity.     

Framing political public relations: Measuring success of political communication strategies in Germany

The main goal of political public relations is the use of media outlets to communicate specific political interpretations of issues in the hope of garnering public support for political policies. This study elaborates on the question how successful political PR is at bringing its specific perspectives into the media. It uses the ‘framing’ concept to analyse the meanings and contexts of media coverage and political PR during the national debate on immigration in Germany between May 2000 and March 2002. The results show a high level of correlation between the preferred thematic and position frames of the political players and those in the press coverage. Yet, the media examined clearly did not have a passive relationship to PR. The findings indicate that journalists tend to use their power to alter PR messages when the communications from political players do not have a distinct focus and/or when the PR focuses were not among the (mainstream) aspects dominating the general political debate.     

Discourses of cultural heritage in times of crisis: The case of the Parthenon Marbles

The paper focuses on the commodification and politicisation of cultural heritage using as a case study the ongoing debate on the return of the Parthenon Marbles from the U.K. to Greece, recently reignited by the press release for the movie The Monuments Men in 2014. Greece has been in the throes of a severe financial crisis for over six years with the ever imminent threat of Grexit constantly disputed. In parallel with this ongoing turmoil, discourses of Greek antiquity have been persistently prominent in the media. In this context, we problematise the complex nexus of relationships between the financial crisis, national identity and cultural heritage. We combine the Discourse‐Historical Approach and Interactional Sociolinguistics drawing data from an online forum, and investigate how the users negotiate pro‐/anti‐return positions and make the financial crisis relevant in the argumentation process. The analysis shows that history, identity, value, and debt are recontextualised in relation to the Parthenon sculptures. The analysis identifies an underlying process of value trade off and brings the current political and economic environment to the fore. We close the paper by foregrounding the implications of our study and provide directions for further research.     

Boundaries are Made to be Crossed: The Magic and Politics of the Long-lasting Amazon/Andes Divide

The construction of Amazonia as a distinct entity, opposed to the Andes, results from processes associated with the expansion of Andean-centered state formations. Analysis of five short texts on the Amazon region, written in colonial and postcolonial Peru by a diversity of social actors, reveals a pervasive rhetoric of alterity whose content varies according to the particular objectives the authors had in mind. In all cases, however, the aim is the same, namely the imposition of boundaries of differentiation as justification for state integration, expressed in the commodification and symbolic consumption of the Amazonian Other. If the politics of boundary making consist in "peripheralizing" and "othering" the Amazon and its people, the magic of boundary making resides in the discursive sleight of hand through which contemporary agents conceal the fact that the Amazon has long ago been incorporated into the nation-state.     

Ecological restoration volunteers: the benefits of participation

There is an international volunteer movement to protect and restore sensitive natural landscapes. In Illinois alone, almost 40,000 acres of rare prairie, oak savanna, wetlands and woodland ecosystems in urban and suburban communities are monitored and managed by volunteers. As natural habitats disappear or become degraded worldwide, it is increasingly important to understand how a personal involvement with nature, in the form of restoration, benefits the individual as well as aiding in species and ecosystem survival. This study examined the satisfactions that volunteers derive from prairie restoration in the Chicago metropolitan area. Questionnaire responses from 263 volunteers indicate that volunteers experience high levels of many different satisfactions. Tenure, frequency and extent of involvement in restoration were used to predict restoration satisfactions, life satisfaction and life functioning. Implications for recruiting and sustaining volunteer involvement in restoration efforts are discussed.     

Issue and crisis management: Quicksand in the definitional landscape

The broad field of public relations is plagued by difficulties of definition, none more problematic than the definitional challenges facing issue management and crisis management. After considering the need for commonly understood language as a basis for meaningful discourse, the paper identifies the particular reasons for ongoing ambiguity in issue and crisis management and charts some distinct approaches which have developed within each discipline. It then analyzes how these evolutionary changes are creating further difficulties for defining the interplay between the two, and identifies a more integrated process approach focused on characterizing clusters of activities.     

Image restoration: An examination of the response strategies used by Brown and Williamson after allegations of wrongdoing

Organizations often respond to allegations of wrongdoing made by whistle-blowers. Response mechanisms may take several forms, from simply denying the wrongdoing, to offering an apology. This study sought to examine the various response strategies an organization employed after a whistle-blowing incident. Using the whistle-blowing case of Brown and Williamson Tobacco Company, this study sought to examine the different image restoration strategies the organization (Brown and Williamson) used in responding to the allegations of wrongdoing made by the whistle-blower, Dr. Jeffrey Wigand.     

SK-II China and its skin cream scandal: An extended analysis of the image restoration strategies in a non-Western setting

SK-II, a global luxury cosmetic and skincare brand of Proctor & Gamble (P&G), was sued by a Chinese consumer in 2005, which raised serious questions about SK-II's product safety and the credibility of its advertisements. This public relations debacle resulted in a dip in SK-II's performance in the China skincare market. The theory of image restoration discourse was applied in this case to analyze SK-II's public relations efforts to rebuild its prestigious brand image in China and to regain Chinese consumers’ trust. More rigorous image restoration strategies for multinational corporations (MNCs) in the Asian market were also discussed.     

Discourses on rurality in post-socialist news media: The case of Lithuania's leading daily “Lietuvos Rytas” (1991–2004)

The Soviet regime defined rurality as a collective-farm or kolkhoz-based society. Since the late 1980s such a state-imposed definition of rurality was rapidly unraveling under the tensions and conflicts produced by perestroika and post-socialist reforms. In the new politics of the rural, the role that the news media was playing in shaping public opinion on rural matters was of growing importance. The paper analyzes 3827 articles on rural issues published during the post-independence period (1991–2004) in the leading Lithuanian daily “Lietuvos Rytas” (LR). Two types of discourses in rural coverage are discerned. During the 1990s rural coverage in LR was reflective of conflicts and tensions between relatively prosperous urban classes which benefited from post-socialist reforms and pauperized rural population. Rurality was increasingly associated with the failure of “the moral modernization” of the rural population. Rural population was stigmatized as deficient in values and character, remaining in the grips of the Soviet mentality and state dependency and, therefore, unable to take advantage of opportunities created by the reforms. Since the early 2000s when economic situation in the country improved significantly and Lithuania started negotiations on European Union membership, rurality in LR coverage was gradually re-defined in EU terms as a socio-spacial entity shaped by regional, national, and local policies promoting multifunctionality of rural areas, well-being of rural communities, and active citizenship. Factors that influenced changes in rural discourses are analyzed. Impacts of changing discourses on rural identities, rural politics and policies are discussed.     

When sorry is not enough: Archbishop Cardinal Bernard Law's image restoration strategies in the statement on sexual abuse of minors by clergy

In January 2002, the Boston Globe ran a two-part story on sexual abuse of minors by clergy in the Archdiocese of Boston that sparked the biggest crisis in the history of the American Catholic Church. Two days after the articles appeared, Archbishop Cardinal Bernard Law held a press conference to respond to the Globe's charges. This study examines Law's image restoration strategies in his press conference and proposes that even though Law failed to restore his image, he provided a fitting response. The study proposes that one may attribute Law's failure to restore his image to his relational history with his audience and to the perceived offensiveness of his actions.     

Dynamics between fragmentation and unity: Identity and nonprofit relationship management in the Asian American Community

Focusing on community-based nonprofits with specific missions of serving the Asian American community, this study examined the dynamics between various layers of identity, including ethnicity and panethnicity, and identified how intercultural relationship management contributed to a sense of community and empowerment among minority communities. Interviews from both nonprofit community organizations and community members revealed the following major findings. First, Asian American community nonprofits needed to manage a myriad of identities within their community, particularly the interplay between diverse ethnic identities and the pan-Asian ethnic identity. To help manage these identities, these nonprofits adopted a dual approach using both segmented outreach and coherent advocacy. Second, these community nonprofits used intercultural relationship management to build a sense of community and efficacy, promoting outcomes such as health awareness, communicative activeness, cultural shift, political engagement, and community alliances. This study contributes to relationship management literature through introducing identity-based relationship building strategies.     

The National Review “fires” Christopher Buckley: Image restoration and the rhetoric of severance and restraint

Image Restoration Discourse, Situational Crisis Communication Theory, and related crisis-response models tend to involve charges leveled at entities: individuals or organizations. In The New Rhetoric, Perelman and Olbrechts-Tyteca suggest an important mid-ground: stakeholder concerns regarding aberrant actions of a member of a larger public. Perelman and Olbrechts-Tyteca's “techniques of severance and restraint” comprise 11 strategies for countering the possible effects of an aberrant member's acts on the image and reputation of a larger public. This article will explore those techniques through an examination of how the National Review Online, the Web site complement of National Review magazine, responded to columnist Christopher Buckley's endorsement of Barack Obama in the 2008 U.S. presidential election.     

从《十亿之夜》看后现代语境下身份认同的复杂性

认同问题是当今世界的热点,而跨越不同国家和文化的女性写作所寻求的身份认同往往是多元认同的结合。本文力图通过对在阿拉伯国家甚至在西方世界都享有盛名的作家嘉黛最重要的作品之一《十亿之夜》的介绍,探讨后现代语境下身份认同的复杂性。     

Hope for Haiti: An analysis of Facebook and Twitter usage during the earthquake relief efforts

The Haitian earthquake devastated the small island of Hispaniola, leaving thousands dead and billions of dollars in property damage. The earthquake also ignited a firestorm of social media use by organizations. By applying framing theory to the analysis of Facebook posts and tweets sent by nonprofits and media organizations, this study discovered differences between nonprofits and media in terms of social media use. Nonprofits and media organizations used information dissemination and disclosure effectively, but failed to capitalize on the innate two-way communication nature of social media.     

The Gulf Coast oil spill: Extending the theory of image restoration discourse to the realm of social media and beyond petroleum

The explosion of Transocean's Deepwater Horizon, an oil-rig licensed to BP, set in motion a chain of unfortunate events that led to BP's ruptured oil well disgorging millions of gallons of oil into the Gulf of Mexico. Since the spill, the corporate image of BP has been severely challenged. The company has used many strategies to preserve and restore the corporate image, and has sought means to mitigate the intensity of the ongoing threat to individuals, businesses, and a delicate ecosystem. Among these means are interacting with individuals and interest groups through social media channels. Benoit's (1995) theory of image restoration discourse posits various strategies corporations use to restore their image during a crisis. The BP crisis presents an opportunity to extend the theories of image restoration to the realm of social media. Results of a content analysis showed that corrective action was the dominant image restoration strategy employed by BP in their Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and Flickr pages. A high presence of negative emotions revealed that corrective action was not an effective means of swaying public opinion in favor of BP's efforts. Dominant themes in all four social media channels and audience comments in terms of dominant issues and emotions on Facebook and YouTube were also analyzed.     

Communicating strategically in the face of terrorism: The Spanish government's response to the 2004 Madrid bombing attacks

With the re-emergence of insurgency tied to terrorism, governments need to strategically manage their communications. This paper analyzes the effect of the Spanish government's messaging in the face of the Madrid bombing of March 11, 2004: unlike what happened with the 9/11 bombings in the USA and the 7/07 London attacks, the Spanish media did not support the government's framing of the events. Taking framing as a strategic action in a discursive form (Pan & Kosicki, 2003), and in the context of the attribution theory of responsibilities, this research uses the “cascading activation” model (0030 and 0035) to explore how a framing contest was generated in the press. Analysis of the coverage shows that the intended government frame triggered a battle among the different major newspapers, leading editorials to shift their frame over the four days prior to the national elections. This research analyzes strategic contests in framing processes and contributes insight into the interactions among the different sides (government, parties, media, and citizens) to help bring about an understanding of the rebuttal effect of the government's intended frame. It also helps to develop an understanding of the role of the media and the influence of citizens’ frames on media content.