Framing Global Warming: Is That Really the Question? A Realist, Gramscian Critique of the Framing Paradigm in Media and Communication Research

Abstract

Framing is a widely used concept in research on communication and climate change. From a Gramscian realist position, this article criticizes underlying assumptions in the framing paradigm itself. The article examines how frames are defined, understood, and theorized in key texts on Anglo-American framing and uses examples from the scholarly literature on climate change communication and the Norwegian media to argue that global warming should not be posed primarily as a question of framing. It argues that the framing paradigm suffers from three main problems: (1) anthropocentrism; (2) a strategic approach to truth; and (3) an underestimation of the importance of latent meaning. Instead of communicative attempts by framing scholars to resonate with a plurality of already manifest, already culturally resonant and already familiar frames in public discourse, the essay suggests that global warming is an ethical challenge which communication scholars can best help solve with a combination of natural realism and political advocacy.