Introduction

Framing theory, or framing analysis as it is also called, is widely used by disciplines such as psychology, media studies, anthropology, political studies, social movement studies, rhetoric studies, history and economics to analyse how individuals perceive, make sense of, and communicate their understandings of reality. Within sociology, framing is understood, broadly, as a powerful means by which individuals make sense of the world around them, or as Robert Entman notes, framing is the means by which individuals ‘select some aspects of a perceived reality and make them more salient in a communicating text, in such a way as to promote a particular problem definition, causal interpretation, moral evaluation, and/or treatment recommendation for the item described’ (1993: 51). Erving Goffman, whose work has significantly influenced my research for decades, defined framing as a ‘schemata of interpretation’ (1974: 21). In The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life (1959) and Frame Analysis: An Essay on the Organization of Experience (1974), Goffman analysed framing as the process by which individuals and groups including communities ‘locate, perceive, identify, and label’ events around them such that these occurrences are given meaning and guide action (ibid: 21).

Media studies particularly uses framing theory to make sense of the ways that news media influences public discourse. News media build frames according to current societal norms and values and, more broadly, the cultural context, pressures from interest groups such as industries and corporations (who fund news media), political and ideological affiliations and so on. The difference in how news sources such as CNN, the New York Times and the Washington Post framed the 2021 Capitol Hill riots in Washington, DC compared with how Fox News, OneAmerica News Network and the Freedom First Press reported on this event illustrates how ideological and political affiliations coupled with interest-group pressures dramatically influence not only how events are framed but also how individuals and groups already cleaving to these affiliations differentially either readily accept or scrutinize these frames.