Science, Framing, and the Media

An interesting blog post examines how important the "framing" of science is for public understanding. Social scientists are "critical friends" of other scientists, according to the post, and the "picture we present" to the public can influence perceptions. All in all, interesting stuff.

The idea of "framing" is an old one in the literature. What is framing? Whatever the hell you want it to be, since there are about a million definitions. Like porn, we know it when we see it, but in general framing sets the way we understand a story. Is a story framed as little guy versus big guy, or is it framed as a morality piece? An election framed as a vote on the economy can turn out very different than an election framed on the safety of a nation (see 1992 and 2008 U.S. presidential elections as examples).

And people don't need a lot of information, or any information, to form an opinion, especially about science. A good 2005 study, for example, found that people use heuristics, or shortcuts, to make sense of science stories about nanotechnology depending in part on how they are framed by the media or political elite.

Mixed Media

People are skimmers: a little from this medium, a little from that medium, a dash of this and a smidgen of that. There is hard news and soft news. Some rely on the New York Times or NPR, some rely on Jon Stewart and Rush Limbaugh, but most people take a little of everything to make up their news media diet.

Take this notion and combine it with criticism of how journalists often frame the news as a contest and you get -- best I can tell -- an interesting study like this. The link provides only the abstract, but these are serious folks doing the study and the abstract alone is enough to make me want to find an obscure journal like CyberPsychology and Behavior.

From what I read, they seem to suggest that framing political stories as a game, as competition, or as they call it -- strategically -- appears to help people who use mixed media make sense of the political world, or at least keep "absorbing and learning in a mixed media environment."

As I can't see the whole piece, we'll have to rely on the abstract, but it raises a pretty cool question and point. For some people, stories framed as a competition keeps them engaged, especially if they use a mix of lots of media (and are perhaps less politically involved on a whole). Horse race polls are bad? Perhaps not always. Stories framed as a game trivialize the process? Maybe, but they may also engage people. We know that entertainment-based news like The Daily Show does seem to break through the attention barrier for some folks, though it remains up in the air how much they learn versus how much they think they learn from such programs.

Obama is Elitist ... and Other Stuff

What people know about political candidates is largely, if not completely, the product of the media they consume, filtered of course by their own biases and predispositions. After all, who among us gets to spend quality time with Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama, or John McCain? Only people who live in New Hampshire in an election year.

In the last couple of days, after Obama's "bitter-guns-religion" remark about people in small towns, he's being labeled elitist. That's the news frame of the day and if it sticks, it'll do some damage. Democrats are often open to this frame, this attack, so it's interesting to see Clinton latch onto it as some way, any way, to get traction. Given the huge socio-demographic gap between their candidacies (Clinton appeals more to working class, Obama to upper class), this label just might be one he finds again and again to be a problem. Whether it's true or not doesn't matter. It's whether it "feels" true.

What people know, and I use "know" here in a larger sense than mere knowledge, is a gut feeling. A strong Democrat just "knows" Bush is a disaster. A strong Republican just "knows" the Clintons are evil. Sometimes we can elaborate these feelings, sometimes we cannot. And when there is an echo effect, when it rings true in some way, that can be damaging. Remember Dukakis bobble-heading in that tank? Kerry in the goofy hunting outfit? Bush mangling the Queen's English? All help us to "know" the person, even if we've never met them.

So knowing is more than a mere ability to correctly identify a candidate's policy stance. It's also knowing them as a person, even if we've never met them.

Framing matters.

The Invisible Man

Poor John McCain. A guy I really like, who is the presumptive nominee for his party, and he gets no love. Or, rather, attention.

Asked who they had heard about in the news, respondents said:

1. Barack Obama, up in March from 38% to 70%
2. Hillary Clinton, down in March from 37% to 15%
3. John McCain, down in March from 6% to 3%
4. Other, down from 4% to 1%
5. Don't know, also down from 15% to 11%

Of course this raises the question of whether any publicity is good publicity. Obama's all over the news during this period thanks to video of an inflammatory sermon by his pastor, the Rev. Jeremiah Wright. Is there an effect? Says the Pew survey:

Most voters aware of the sermons say they were personally offended by Wright's comments, and a sizable minority (35%) says that their opinion of Obama has grown less favorable because of Wright's statements.

So we have an effect not only on what people know, but how a candidate is framed. That's important stuff. But for Obama fans, at least he's being talked about (and, apparently, has weathered this particular storm).

For our friend John McCain, almost no one is even talking about him. It'll be interesting to see analyses on the image people have of McCain now versus later in Fall, when the ads on both sides attempt to define the candidates.

Interest versus Coverage

The fine folks at Pew often compile numbers on what stories people cover, and sometimes they mesh it with what the news has actually covered. For you PhDweeb types, this sounds a lot like agenda-setting, the tired idea that the media do a terrible job of telling people what to think but do a helluva job telling people what to think about.

There's a nice match in this report between what the press covered and what people were interested in. Scroll down and see how media coverage is related to personal interst. The 2008 campaign is first in both, as is the Spitzer story. It's interesting that only 1 percent of coverage forcused on the death of the UNC student (who was from Athens, Ga., my town, a sad story), but 7 percent of Americans were interested. A slight disconnect.

Why does it matter what people think about?

It colors everything. It frames an election. It influences how you consider a candidate, a policy issue. Hell, it affect everything. Political knowledge is one thing, but how a campaign or issue is framed has more persuasive power. The PR folks know this. So do the advertising folks. And the pros who plot political campaigns.

People need to know it too.