Northwest Institute for Social Change: The Blog

Framing for the Average Joe

Every once in awhile I do this thing where I try to make a point, and about mid-way through my explanation I realize I’m actually proving myself wrong. It’s a little bit like putting your foot your mouth, only more enlightening and slightly less embarrassing.

We were discussing the issue of framing with Tony Iacarinno. Framing is basically how you put things to people, what vocabulary or metaphors you’ll employ when trying to get your point across. This being Public Policy Week, we’ve been discussing framing in terms of how you go about convincing people of your viewpoint, that a certain issue is important and that they should not only care, but act. Often, you’re trying to employ framing in some limited context – a speech, essay or documentary. In this context, framing essentially reduces incredibly complex issues and narrative webs down to their simplest parts. This oversimplification makes an issue easier to comprehend because it plays off of our pre-existent ideas of the way things are, and evokes emotion. While this isn’t inherently bad, it can and has been used to manipulate and mislead people.

So anyway, the conversation got to a point where we were trying to justify framing. Why is it a necessary tactic? And then I caught myself saying the most elitist thing. We need framing to garner widespread support of the issues because there is power in numbers. The average Joe, I found myself arguing, doesn’t have the time or the energy to seek out the facts, sift through the various sources and viewpoints, because he’s too busy working, paying the bills and feeding the kids. The most widely accessible media sources do an inadequate job of informing the citizenry. Progressive or controversial viewpoints in particular – stories about activism, social movements, radical ideas – often never make it to the mainstream media, or are presented in a one-dimensional, biased way. Having access to more nuanced information about these stories requires not only the time and the energy to research them, but also access to the internet, a priveledge not to be taken for granted. Staying informed and getting involved (as I’m discovering this summer at the Institute) is a lot of work! And the average Joe and Jane, I claimed, didn’t have the time or energy for it.

Of course once I gave that statment a moment of reflection, I instantly thought of a half a dozen counter examples. Suddenly I felt very sheepish. Really, what I had just done, was reacted to the issues we were discussing from my own very situated knowledge frame. What Tony and my peers were saying made me think of last summer when I worked as a waitress at an understaffed greasy-spoon diner in Polson,MT – busting my ass one $2 tip at a time. That summer my worldview came under siege – living with my Fox news devoted grandmother while simultaneously staying up all night having heated discussions about “conspiracy” theories with a new friend I had just met. What I was referring to in my incredibly convaluted, elitist explanation was not the experience of the Average Jane or Joe (what is that, anyway?), but my own personal experience, my own existing frame: exhausted and discouraged with a raging thirst for more information than I was getting from mainstream media.

As a psychology student, it wasn’t hard to convince me that framing is a valid construct to begin with- it’s a basic concept of cognitive psychology. However, I often am unaware of just how powerful and influential these frames are. We oversimplify things all the time. Otherwise, we’d all be too busy trying to figure out what the hell was going on to actually accomplish anything.

The point of framing is not to dumb things down for the masses, though sometimes it seems that’s what ends up happening. The point is, if we’re serious about this “social change” thing, we need to find shared values, ideas to bring people together, if not to agree, at least to discuss. We need to realize what we have in common and acknowledge what is at stake for each of us in supporting or neglecting the well-being of our neighbors. We don’t need to dumb things down for the Average Joe – we need to engage him in conversation, listen carefully, and for heaven’s sake, hold on to enough self-awareness to recognize what we have in common.

Accomplishing this will not be easy, but it is possible.

Framing – a new form of activism?

On Monday we learned a harsh truth about today’s world of politics – framing. According to Robin, my fellow student, frames are “pre-existing cognitive structures that we use to make sense of incoming information.” Frames are those biases, those lingering traces of previous experiences that are invoked when someone uses certain phrases or images.  Frames are what prevent us from actively taking in information or spur us to constantly consume more information to discover the “truth.” Even now, as you read this, your pre-existing frames are absorbing some words and ideas while others simply flow through your mind – falling back into the vacancy of space.

But  to the point – why do we care about “frames” in social activism? Because we were told we should use them. Because all politicians use them. The conservatives. The liberals. The anarchists. The environmentalists. Every value-group that exists in our contemporary society.

Tony Iaccarino, the current Research and  Policy Director for Portland’s City Club and former professor of American History at Reed College, gave us some examples of “framing” in our three hour seminar with him on Monday. His favorite example – George Bush’s use of “permission slip” during his fourth State of the Union Address on January 20th, 2004. The exact quote:

“From the beginning, America has sought international support for our operations in Afghanistan and Iraq, and we have gained much support. There is a difference, however, between leading a coalition of many nations, and submitting to the objections of a few. America will never seek a permission slip to defend the security of our country.”

In other words, our former president was stating that he would not like to discuss his invasion in Iraq with the United Nations and the United States shouldn’t have to explain its motives. By using the phrase “permission slip” Bush was invoking the previous experiences of many angry parents with over-regulated and bureaucratic school systems. That or he was hoping to remind the younger generation of those times they couldn’t go to the beach because their parents hadn’t signed a piece of paper. Bush, or rather Bush’s speech writer, was toying with American emotion. He was using the frame of a “permission slip” in order to invoke an emotional rather than logical response from the American people – plunging the U.S. into war, debt, and universal hatred.

Yet Bush is not alone. Our current President Obama has recently used the term “effective government” when referring to his administration. Why? Because “big government” conjurs up Orwell’s 1984, and “limited government” frightens those fighting for universal health care.

These are gross generalizations – partially used to prompt further discussion. Just how aware are we of the “frames” in our own lives? Politics aside – what pre-existing cognitive structures do we adhere to that prevent us from deciphering our official’s words?

Think about it.