Frame Analysis: Effects of Abortion Restrictions in The United States

This assignment will require you to study each news report closely using the methods of frame analysis. Please pay special attention to the readings and discussions presented during the “Evaluating Information” week. In your paper, you are required to establish at least 1 link between your analysis and material that you have encountered in this class (Kitzinger, and Jackson & Jamieson). Please make relations to concepts that we encountered in these readings and cite them.
The purpose of the paper is NOT to argue for your position on the topic or the validity of information in the news reports. Rather, the paper is looking at HOW this story is CONSTRUCTED across news platforms. As you review each report in your sample, pay close attention to patterns in reporting, tools of persuasion, descriptions, visuals, sources and editorial bias.
The paper should be organized around frames and not the sources. The structure of your paper should include an introductory paragraph, the body, and a concluding paragraph. Your introduction should provide (1) a short background of your topic, (2) present your sources, and (3) announce the structure of your paper based on the frames that you are working with (findings). Be sure to include a well thought out thesis that introduces the frame analysis you will be detailing in the body of your paper. The body should be structured around your frames, not your sources (i.e. one paragraph per frame not one paragraph per source). Feel free to add subtitles to your paper--signposting is helpful for your readers. All 7 out of 9 your sources should feature in your frame analysis. (If you decide to skip any of them, please give convincing reasons for the omission.) Your conclusion should recap on these same frames, do not be afraid of repetition!
Tips for Frame Analysis
As you begin your analysis, use the following questions as a guide to help you focus on the tools and patterns of narrative construction.You do not have to answer each question for each news outlet. Rather, your paper should be a logical presentation of your overall findings organized around the frames you have observed. Tip: one way to help find patterns between outlets is to organize your observations to these questions in a spreadsheet.
The first group of questions will help you interrogate each report individually.
What facts are being presented by the report?
How much of the coverage is an apparent fact? And how much is opinion? How are these being presented?
What are the primary sources of information? Is it balanced?
What facet of the story is being held up as most salient by the author? What gets ignored?
What visuals are presented?
The second group of questions will help you discover frames used across outlets. Frame analysis requires close attention to detail and reflective engagement with words, facts, and statistics in context. Look out for “discursive cues” or labels, images, metaphors and analogies used in the report. Drawing on Kitzinger (2007), use the questions below to guide the frames you will discuss in your paper.
How is reality represented?
How are the key participants portrayed?
How is the problem defined?
Who is assigned responsibility for this issue?
What solutions are being presented? How much of an effort is being made to get at “the heart of the matter”/ “actual reality”?
What “narrative” is being built up across media outlets? (is there a single narrative or multiple competing narratives?) Is any of the above going against the narrative?
Example of Frame Analysis
For example, you might have recognized a distinct pattern between nonprofit and left-leaning outlets describing Greta Thunberg’s UN speech in overwhelmingly positive terms in stark contrast to the right-leaning outlets. (Be sure not to confuse the “frame” with the political position of the outlet--please refer to Kitzinger ) When writing your analysis paper, use the first paragraph to provide a brief overview of the most objective “uncontested” elements of the news event. Your thesis statement should appear toward the end of your introductory paragraph. It is crucial that your thesis statement briefly lays out what you are about to do by listing the frames you found and the role each plays in the narrative construction.
The rest of your paper will be organized around detailing each frame you find by drawing on evidence directly from your sample of reports. So, once you introduce the frames you found in Greta Thunberg story, an extolling social activist frame by left-leaning outlets and a disparaging frame by right-leaning outlets, the body of your paper would specifically present the ways in which these frames are constructed. Always support your analysis with specific examples from the sources you collect (include specific timecodes for long clips to help the reader).
APA Resources
Writing Guide and OWL Purdue University (Links to an external site.)