Framing Policy Debates

Abstract

This study examines how the news frames that journalists use to present contentious policy debates shape reasoning processes and opinion outcomes. Drawing on the notion that framing is a cognitive process in which the message affects how individuals weigh existing considerations (i.e., political orientations and relevant attitudes/beliefs) to make a judgment, the authors conducted two experiments in which they presented participants with news stories in which policy conflicts were described as either a clash of underlying values and principles (i.e., a value frame) or as a clash of political interests and strategies (i.e., a strategy frame). The results suggest that the framed news stories failed to change issue opinions directly but did alter the importance of the considerations used to make judgments on relevant issues. Specifically, individuals tend to react to strategy frames by discounting partisan affiliation as a primary consideration, turning to other salient alternatives when making judgments.