Framing active school travel in Ontario, or how spinach is good for you

Abstract

Active school travel (AST) is promoted in many jurisdictions, including Ontario, Canada, where there is provincial support for school travel planning (STP) efforts. Two pillars of school travel plans in the province are education and encouragement. For these pillars to stand, relevant stakeholders must be cognizant of and understand the issues and stakes. For this reason, we deem it important to understand how AST is communicated. In this research we adopt framing analysis to investigate the ways in which various organizations communicate to the public around AST. A frame is a central organizing idea or story line that provides meaning to a particular phenomenon, and thus helps to set the parameters for conversations about policy. In the case of AST, framing can influence what policy alternatives are perceived as available by children, parents, and their wider communities. The research is supported by natural language processing techniques applied to publicly available documents from Ontario stakeholders involved in school travel planning. We then compare the findings from these documents to a selection of academic studies on AST. We conclude that framing of AST in Ontario is mostly empirical-scientific in style, and largely in agreement with academic research on AST. However, it is essentially conservative and does not challenge the status quo of motorized travel. Furthermore, the frames tend to download responsibility for change to households, which limits the scope of policy alternatives by keeping collective action out of the frame.