Analyzing frame analysis: A critical review of framing studies in social movement research

Abstract

This critical review of more than three decades of studies of frames and framing in Social Movement (SM) research first offers a brief history of the notion of ‘frame’ in various disciplines, and then discusses empirical studies of frame alignment, frame disputes, frame resonance and master frames, among other notions. It is found that the very notion of discursive of cognitive frames remains very vague in these studies, and what are actually studied are for instance, beliefs, attitudes, goals, ideologies or values, especially how they are expressed in discourse. Also studies of relations between frames and culture, identity and discourse show that the notions of frames and framing are theoretically and methodologically unsatisfactory in empirical studies. It is concluded that the methods of the cultural paradigm of SM research may take advantage of the advances of more explicit methods in the study of language, discourse, interaction and cognition.