‘Framing’ the Copenhagen School: Integrating the Literature on Threat Construction

Abstract

In recent years, the field of security studies has turned increasing attention to the processes through which security threats are constructed. Two approaches in particular have flourished, securitisation and framing, but scholars working within these frameworks generally do not draw on the other body of literature to inform theoretical development or to accumulate cases. This has resulted in the production of parallel literatures and the duplication of concepts and terminology, and has hindered the development of theory. This article demonstrates that securitisation and framing are substantively similar research programmes, that security operates as one of a number of distinct master frames, and that securitisation should be viewed as a subfield of framing. This would produce a division of labour whereby securitisation scholars could continue to focus on the distinct realm of security, while drawing on the broader framing literature to inform a number of areas that are under-theorised in present securitisation studies, such as audience acceptance, non-linguistic communicative forms, empowerment and marginalisation, and resistance and desecuritisation.