Frames, Framing, and Reframing In, and Through The Mass Media: Reflection of Four Protracted Environmental Disputes in the Israeli Press

Abstract

The mass media is part and parcel of modern life. In recent years environmental conflicts have increasingly become part of the public agenda, and they now gain vast media coverage. While all agree that fully functioning media sectors are essential for expanding and supporting democracy on global, national, and local levels alike, many claim that the media’s interference, by definition, escalates conflicts. Recent studies confirm that many roles can be attributed to media coverage, including some that lead conflicts toward constructive resolutions. The hypothesis of our research is that through frames, the media is both influenced by and influential with regard to the conflict’s dynamics. This paper presents parts of a research project, aimed at improving the understanding of the framing and reframing processes of intractable environmental conflicts. It introduces a hybrid typology for analyzing the media framing and reframing patterns, and discusses the frames used by the media while covering four Israeli case studies. The paper portrays existing patterns of mutual impact between environmental conflicts, their press coverage, and public decision making, and raises several queries related to interventions in the media’s framing processes. The Study’s Subject, Goals, and Methodology Environmental conflicts gain vast media coverage. This raises many questions regarding the linkage between the media and the conflict. In a way, the public can learn about environmental conflicts via the media, which uses the parties’ frames but has no obligation to reflect them. The audience receives a reframed “story” that combines parts of the original frames used by the different actors in the conflict and new frames that are created by the media. That is why media coverage influences the perception of the conflict. Members of different interest groups, as well as individuals whose values differ, might interpret or reframe the accumulated “news,” “stories,” and other information related to a conflict in ways that are poles apart. Consequently groups and I Framing is a cognitive process that helps us organize information in patterns that serve as cognitive maps. Framing helps us organize knowledge and sort and predict the meaning of new information, events, and experiences. Parties in a dispute develop considerably different frames about what the dispute is about, who should do what about it, and how and when they should do it. Many processes of conflict resolution include one or more stages during which there is deliberate reconsideration of existing frames.