Divergent Frames Research Articles

Contesting Narratives: A Comparative Analysis of Indian, Pakistani and Kashmiri Print Media Framing of the Abrogation of Article 370

The revocation of Article 370 by the Indian government in August 2019, stripping Jammu and Kashmir of its semi-autonomous status, dramatically exacerbated tensions in the long-standing Kashmir conflict. This decisive unilateral action triggered a harsh security crackdown and communications blackout in the Kashmir Valley. Given the disputed territory's centrality to Indo-Pak relations and regional stability, the framing of this pivotal event by Indian, Pakistani and Kashmiri media assumed immense geopolitical significance. This study comparatively examined the dominant frames employed by elite English newspapers in all three stakeholder regions - The Hindu in India, Dawn in Pakistan, and Kashmir Times representing the local Kashmiri press. Underpinned by framing theory, a deductive qualitative content analysis revealed starkly divergent framings aligned with the respective nationalistic stances. The findings expose how media outlets strategically amplified certain aspects while marginalizing others to promote polarizing master narratives reflecting national interests regarding the Kashmir dispute. The implications underscore media's power to construct contested realities serving partisan interests in protracted geopolitical conflicts. To uphold ethical journalism principles, prevent further escalation, and promote inclusive human rights framing, the study recommends transnational collaboration between Indian, Pakistani and Kashmiri outlets rooted in objectivity and impartiality.

Social media engagement in health and climate change: an exploratory analysis of Twitter

Social media are increasingly used by the public to share information and opinions. This study explores social media engagement in health and climate change through an analysis of English-language posts on Twitter, one of the most widely-used platforms. We searched Twitter from 21 March 2023 to 11 May 2023 for posts related to climate change using climate-related textwords and hashtags; we then used health keywords (‘health’, ‘wellbeing’, ‘illness’, ‘illnesses’, ‘disease’, ‘death’) to identify posts related to health. Focusing on posts from general public users, we investigated the proportion of climate change posts referring to health and, for a random sample of these tweets, undertook a content analysis to identify the ways in which climate change and health were represented. The content analysis drew on media research on ‘framing’, a selective process through which particular aspects of an issue—for example, its causes, impacts and solutions—are highlighted. 668 810 posts related to climate change were posted during the study period. Health-related text words were included in 2.3% (15 434) of these posts. The content analysis pointed to two divergent frames. The first frame represents climate change as real, with real effects on people’s health. The second frame portrays climate change as a hoax, with hoax-generated health effects. While the ‘reality’ frame does not engage with the hoax frame, the latter provides an insistent counter-narrative that questions trust in mainstream science and government policy. Neither frame engages with people’s experiences of health and climate change. In conclusion, our study points to low levels of engagement in health in a key forum for public discussions about climate change. It also asks whether the failure of the ‘reality’ frame to engage either with people’s lived experiences or with hoax framings may be contributing to a polarised debate about climate change and health and hindering consensus-building.

What constitutes food system resilience? The importance of divergent framings between UK mainstream and local food system actors

PurposeThis paper examines how key actors in the UK food system (FS) understand the role of the local food sector in relation to FS resilience.Design/methodology/approachDiscourse analysis was used to assess and compare the framings of the UK FS in 36 publications released during Covid-19 from alternative food networks (AFNs) actors and from other more mainstream FS actors, including the UK government.FindingsThe analysis shows that AFNs actors perceive the UK FS as not resilient and identify local FSs as a route towards greater resilience (“systemic” framing). In contrast, other food actors perceive the UK FS as already resilient, with the role of local food limited to specific functions within the existing system (“add-on” framing). The two groups converge on the importance of dynamic public procurement and local abattoir provision, but this convergence does not undermine the fundamental divergence in the understanding of the role of “the local” in resilient UK FSs. The local food sector’s messages appear to have gone largely unheard in mainstream policy.Research limitations/implicationsThe paper presents an analysis of public sector reports focused on the UK FS released during the Covid-19 pandemic years 2020–2021. The corpus inclusion criteria mean that publications during this period which focus on other food sector issues, such social injustices, climate change and health, were not included in the analysis, although they may have touched upon local food issues. The authors further recognise that Covid-19 had a longer lasting effect on FSs than the years 2020–2021, and that many other publications on FSs have been published since. The time span chosen targets the time at which FSs were most disrupted and therefore aims to capture emerging issues and solutions for the UK FS. The authors’ insights should be further validated through a more complete review of both public reports and academic papers covering a wider base of food-related issues and sectors as well as a broader timespan.Originality/valueA comparison of how different FS actors understand the importance of local food, especially in relation to resilience, has not been undertaken to date. The findings raise important questions about the disconnect between AFN actors and other actors in the framing of resilience. Considering the need to ensure resilience of the UK FS, this study's findings raise important insights for UK food policy about the “local food blindspot” and for food movement actors wishing to progress their vision of transformative change.

The Russia-Ukraine conflict as a discursive continuum: A comparative study of Business Today and New York Times using an extended corpus-based discourse-historical approach

This paper presents a comparative discourse analysis of media representations of the Russia-Ukraine conflict in the American newspaper New York Times and the Indian newspaper Business Today. Using an extended corpus-based discourse-historical approach incorporating tools from critical discourse analysis and corpus linguistics, the study identifies key differences in main themes, discursive strategies, and linguistic means modulated by each nation’s geopolitics. The analysis reveals New York Times constructs the conflict predominantly as a moral and political crisis, employing critical language and ideological framing of Russia as the villain versus Ukraine as the victim. In contrast, Business Today approaches the conflict neutrally as an economic issue with pragmatic implications for India, avoiding explicit judgments and moral evaluations. While reflecting different ideological positions, the divergent framings and discursive strategies demonstrate the traditional “us versus them” dichotomy is an oversimplification. Through nuanced linguistic analysis of modal verbs, metaphors, analogies, hyperboles, and rhetorical questions, the study shows how historical relations, geopolitical interests, economic ties and cultural values create a complex discursive continuum rather than a static binary. By extending discourse-historical analysis, the paper advocates more pluralistic, self-reflexive journalism to enable nuanced policy debates attuned to on-the-ground realities, not just propagandistic binaries.

Mismatching ideas among the experts–Producing science edu-communication media for the citizen

The need to improve the status of the quality and the production efficiency of science news media is urgent. In order to depict the “misunderstanding” among the related personals, the current study interviewed the following members: “science edu-communicators” (those with science education background and worked as the mediators between the journalists and the scientists), “journalists” (those who interviewed the scientists and produced the science news media), and the “scientists” (those who were the knowledge providers explained the scientific contents to the audience). The “misunderstandings” were coded and labelled as “mismatch of frames”. Through a series of semi-structural interviews, it was found that these divergent frames led to different interpretations, understandings and expectations to the production of the educational science news media. Thus, these “mismatching of frames” caused their conflicts. A total of 47 conflicts of frames were identified in the process of interviewing protocol. Among them, eight conflicts were about “awareness”; three conflicts were about “enjoyment”; two conflicts were about “opinion formation”; and 34 conflicts were about “understanding”. There was no conflict related to “interest”. Possible reasons regarding why the three parties held different frames in science communication are analyzed and discussed. Further, recommendations for future development of production model for science news media collaboration were discussed.

White privilege, white grievance, and the limitations of white antiracism

ABSTRACT In the Trump and Black Lives Matter eras, many of the trends observed by theorists of colorblind racism have reversed, making whiteness newly visible to white Americans. This new white awareness of whiteness has emerged through divergent frames of white grievance and white privilege. In this article, we use a survey experiment to examine the effects of these frames on white antiracism, or opposition to racist institutions and beliefs. Results indicate that neither frame is able to significantly motivate white antiracism. These results suggest that the newly open discussions of white privilege by white Americans might not translate into the kinds of deeper behavioral and attitudinal changes for which racial justice advocates have hoped. However, the white grievance frame, which could be expected to elicit a backlash against racial progressivism, did not elicit significantly lower levels of antiracism, either. These null findings have important implications for the empirical and theoretical study of whiteness, the possibilities for and limitations of white antiracism, and white solidarity with racially minoritized groups. Further, this study takes an innovative approach by empirically testing insights from political theory, contributing to the study of race and politics by bridging disciplinary and methodological divides.

Mapping the discourse on evidence-based policy, artificial intelligence, and the ethical practice of policy analysis

ABSTRACT Scholarship on evidence-based policy, a subset of the policy analysis literature, largely assumes information is produced and consumed by humans. However, due to the expansion of artificial intelligence in the public sector, debates no longer capture the full range concerns. Here, we derive a typology of arguments on evidence-based policy that performs two functions: taken separately, the categories serve as directions in which debates may proceed, in light of advances in technology; taken together, the categories act as a set of frames through which the use of evidence in policy making might be understood. Using a case of welfare fraud detection in the Netherlands, we show how the acknowledgement of divergent frames can enable a holistic analysis of evidence use in policy making that considers the ethical issues inherent in automated data processing. We argue that such an analysis will enhance the real-world relevance of the evidence-based policy paradigm.

COVID-19, Climate, and Christianity in Rural Northern California: Divergent Frames for Masking

Abstract The American political and emotional response to COVID-19 during the first pandemic summer of 2020 revealed a great deal about who we are as a nation: one that is divided and diverse, as well as geographically, racially, and politically complex. Political representation of governors was a powerful indicator of the public health policies during that first year, such as mask mandates. Mask politics have been heralded as a great indicator of political division. However, unlike most of the nation that confronted masking recommendations for the first time, many residents in rural Northern California had for several years masked routinely for wildfires. We conducted a small ethnographic study of people’s perceptions and experiences around masking amidst wildfires in Redding, CA—a red district in a blue state—where many residents disagreed with the Governor’s public health policies. We conducted this research in comparison, or contrast, to concurrent research on masking perceptions and experiences among rural residents of a red district in a red state (Iowa), where many residents agreed with the Governor’s inaction around COVID-19 prevention. We found four dominant frames in the rural Iowa district (see Koon et al. 2021) that were both similar and different from those in California. The four frames were: concern, crisis, constraint, and conspiracy. The concern frame described careful masking to prevent COVID-19 transmission for the self and others; most worked in health care and related masking for COVID-19 with masking for wildfires. The crisis frame is often linked with the risk of COVID-19 with convergent political crises of inequality and climate. The constraint frame primarily highlighted how business owners felt forgotten by the government and overrun by national corporations. The conspiracy frame illuminated how older and more conservative residents perceived themselves as dislocated from state leadership. This research in Redding illustrates how perceptions of risk and norms around masking were not only influenced by politics but also social context and previous exposure to masking. This research emphasizes the need to push against oversimplified narratives of the American response because the nation exhibits cultural, social, environmental, and political differences that are not clearly divided within regions, states, districts, or communities and differ from place to place.

Working in the Gaps: Exploring the Strategy Work of Accomplished Sustainability Professionals

This study explores how experienced sustainability professionals perform strategy work to integrate sustainability into business strategies and processes. Drawing on in-depth interviews and research on strategy-as-practice, sustainability, and paradox, we bring to light how divergent frames and competing temporalities conjointly work against sustainability integration. We develop a theoretical model that explains how sustainability professionals use persistent optimal cyclical stretching to navigate these barriers and integrate sustainability into businesses. We show that cyclical stretching constitutes an essential form of strategy work that requires sustainability professionals to continuously and judiciously open and stretch others’ cognitive frames, temporal horizons and practice domains before cementing gains. By unpacking the complex process of cyclical stretching, the study offers new insights into the hard-fought strategy work involved in realizing sustainability transitions and draws attention to how divergent temporal orientations are central to the study of sustainability paradoxes and tensions.

The domestication of “the Arab Spring”: A comparison of news framing in the United States and South Korea

By employing a content analysis of news stories, this study explored how national history, national interests and journalistic values have affected the coverage of the Arab Spring by South Korea and the United States. Overall, the lens of national interest largely determined the newsworthiness of stories in the two nations. Journalists’ perspectives on journalism (specifically, on the role of journalists) as well as media routines have also influenced journalists’ presentations of the Arab Spring. The U.S. newspaper coverage relied on the views of Arab opposition figures and civilians most prominently, followed by those of U.S. government officials; while the South Korean papers relied heavily on foreign media as their sources (in particular, Western media). While this difference in news sourcing led to correspondingly divergent news frames, ironically, it often also resulted in a congruence between the news frames employed in each country’s major news outlets. This study proposes that national interests and history should be further considered as important dimensions for developing the models of media systems.

Stakeholder mapping as a transdisciplinary exercise for jaguar conservation in the Brazilian Atlantic Forest

AbstractTransdisciplinary projects are fundamental to a more effective and just conservation, but their application and coherent framing present challenges, since their nature is to bring together different epistemological backgrounds and world views. This paper identifies the possibilities offered by stakeholder mapping as a tool for generating common understandings in transdisciplinary conservation research projects. Lessons are drawn from experiential learning through the case of jaguar conservation in the Brazilian Atlantic Forest (BAF). Stakeholder mapping proved to be an essential diagnostic tool that generated an overview of the material context of human–jaguar interactions in the BAF to stakeholders engaged in the project. The process and overview drew attention to gaps in stakeholder knowledge that need to be addressed to enhance conviviality between humans and jaguars in fragmented landscapes. Recognizing these knowledge gaps assists in the production of methodologies that can effectively encompass different social groups, and increase all parties' perceptions of the legitimacy of conservation activities. We argue that, due to its collective nature, stakeholder mapping can foster mutual learning and deeper communication in the context of divergent framings of complex nature conservation problems, such as in jaguar conservation.

Emergent technologies, divergent frames: differences in regulator vs. developer views on innovation

Technology innovation is inherently uncertain. The risk–benefit divide for such innovation is a classical debate within scholarly literature and is often framed on a monetary scale where innovation approval is granted if benefit outweighs risk. However, such discussion leaves out a critical yet subjective vein of discussion within the innovation evaluation process — stakeholder context. Specifically, regulators and technology developers are often described as having respective motivations that are often at odds with one another. In theory, efforts towards balancing risk and benefit for technology evaluation should be driven by relatively efficient, inexpensive, robust methods, and processes. In practice, however, technology evaluation is often expensive, slow, and often of questionable quality for new and emerging technologies. Literature often frames the innovation-regulation tradeoff as a zero-sum game driven by regulators and developers that are inherently at odds with one another. However, we argue that such a relationship is actually worse than zero-sum and is a classic framing problem as described by Kahneman and Tversky. Specifically, the divergent frames adopted by regulators and technology developers, respectively, can drastically affect their perception of risk and tolerance for further development and commercialization of a given technology. There are known and natural solutions to such problems that can smooth the path towards realizing the societal potential of emerging technologies.

Multiple framings of uncertainty shape adoption of reference states during reform of water policy

There is growing recognition that multiple forms of uncertainty influence policy reform, but we need case studies illustrating how uncertainties influence reform, and strategies used to manage uncertainties in practice. We present a case study of how science was generated and incorporated into national water policy. We estimated turbidity (suspended fine sediment) reference states throughout the river network of New Zealand. A key decision-problem was: how region-specific should reference states be? We developed classifications of the national river network that grouped rivers with similar turbidity regimes into classes at four spatial resolutions. Choosing a classification was complicated by ontological uncertainties. Scientific actors framed these ontological uncertainties in different ways, introducing framing uncertainties (‘ambiguities’) into the decision-making process. Well-established statistical techniques were employed to objectively identify the most parsimonious classification, but those techniques had little impact on decision-making. Reframing ontological uncertainties in terms of risks to management objectives was required to reconcile divergent frames, and showed that the classification with the highest resolution was the most credible option. Nonetheless, local governments highlighted that the most credible classification was not the most relevant or legitimate one in light of implementation constraints. The final decision was made against a backdrop of ambiguities, was partially subjective, and balanced trade-offs among credibility, relevance and legitimacy. Looking ahead, ambiguities could be reduced by framing decision problems in terms of risks to management objectives. A barrier to doing this is the short duration of policy windows, so translational science must take place when such windows are shut.

Framing and localizing anti-corruption norms in transnational civil society organizations: Transparency International in Portugal

ABSTRACT Social mobilisations against corruption have been found to be notoriously difficult to sustain. A major problem from a frame analysis perspective is that the opaque and often abstract, systemic nature of the problem makes consensus about who is responsible and what should be done about it hard to reach. Based on an ethnographic case study tracing the local implantation of Transparency International in Portugal, this article shows how social mobilisations can be successfully created and maintained despite divergent and sometimes outright contradictory ways of framing the addressed social problem (i.e., corruption) among leaders, members and supporters. Process-tracing techniques serve to highlight ‘scholarly activism’ and trans-European advocacy coalitions as key mechanisms: Action-oriented social research fulfils the double function of providing funds for an independent non-governmental and non-business organization and, maybe more importantly, of creating common reference points for members and supporters (frame alignment) despite the persistence of divergent individual frames. However, the intellectually elitist nature of the self-identified ‘grassroots movement’ and the strong emphasis on academic ‘objectivity’ and social ‘respectability’ prevents broader advocacy coalitions with more dispersed, non-hierarchical social movements which address similar causes albeit with a very different repository of action.

Shells and Order: Questionnaires on Indigenous Law in German New Guinea

This article examines the short-lived colony of German New Guinea (1884–1914) to reflect on divergent frames of bureaucratic and academic knowledge production. Scholars of law at German universities from this period showed an avid interest in the legal customs of people presumed to be colonized, while readily admitting that bureaucrats knew more about this important emerging field and knew it first. In order to understand the unfolding dynamic of a crucial component of colonial rule, this article examines indigenous law as an entangled epistemic object. It traces specific formats of Western writing about indigenous law through different settings, ranging from questions asked in the field to debates in parliament. The argument is based on two main types of quantified, data-based, and standardized material: (1) a statistical survey on indigenous law, and (2) the shell money diwara, which was used to levy fines and punishments. The article shows how both the standardized rules and the medium of exchange were crucial to enforcing order. It demonstrates that liberal colonial politics from 1907 onwards had to be based on existing systems of license and valuation. Knowledge of local customs and institutions was indispensable to govern by means of forces already at play in German New Guinea. Slowly, the German bureaucracy translated these local customs into its own metrics. This article is a contribution to the history of bureaucratic knowledge, drawing on the history of law, colonial statistics, and the political epistemology of quantification. This article is part of a special issue entitled “Histories of Bureaucratic Knowledge,” edited by Sebastian Felten and Christine von Oertzen.

Divergent Perspectives and Fluid Responses: Multiplexed Framing in Incumbent Responses to Disruption

Research applying a socio-cognitive lens to disruptive innovation has often focused on overall incumbent response. This relies on the notion of binary frames and specialised framing distributions within an organisation where members of a particular unit hold similar frames. Such a conceptualisation fails to account for intra-firm and intra-unit heterogeneity in the framing of a disruptive innovation. To explore the framing processes involved, we conducted an in-depth case study of the response of Insurecorp plc – a UK based General Insurance provider – to the rise of online aggregator platforms between 2002 and 2007. We map different frames across three separate framing dimensions: Challenge Type, Response Urgency and Firm Heritage, to develop a multiplexed model of framing. Although framing has often been seen to be homogenous across an organisation, we suggest that frames are multiplexed and holographically distributed such that conflicting frames can be held by members of the same organisational department or group. While previous research has suggested that multiple, divergent frames may result in conflict and organizational inertia, we demonstrate that it allows for more agile and fluid responses through the pursuit of equifinality. That is, managers can leverage the ambiguity generated by multiple, non-binary frames to select the same response strategies for different reasons. We propose that multiplexed frames can enable an organisation to trial and adaptively switch back and forth between different strategic responses to disruptive innovation as circumstances change.

Data privacy against innovation or against discrimination?: The case of the California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA)

Conducting a case study on the California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA), this paper analyzes divergent frames of privacy argued by different stakeholders. While the United States has allowed corporate self-regulation of consumer privacy, California became the first state to introduce its own privacy law in June 2018. In early 2019, California held public forums on CCPA, which then became a battleground for various stakeholders to discuss data privacy regulations. Examining 105 public comments made by 99 speakers in 7 CCPA public forums, this study identified that corporate representatives and consumer advocates differed in seven major areas: (1) the purpose of CCPA, (2) definitions of personal information and consumer, (3) operationalization of opt-out, (4) non-discrimination rules, (5) economic ramifications, (6) consumer literacy, and (7) comparison with other privacy frameworks. The findings suggest that corporate speakers follow the frame of privacy as a commodity, while consumer speakers seek the frame of privacy as a right.

Persistent Category Ambiguity: The case of social entrepreneurship

Literature on categories recognizes that in the early stages of a category, ambiguity can arise from divergent frames used to define the category. Yet it also largely expects this ambiguity to be either temporary, or else detrimental to the survival and evolution of the category. In this study, we demonstrate and explain how, alternatively, category ambiguity can persist when multiple frames continue to be applied to a category as it progresses into maturity. Drawing on an in-depth qualitative study of the case of social entrepreneurship, we examine how and under what conditions this outcome occurs. We specify two co-occurring conditions that prompt category stakeholders to shift their framing from exclusive to inclusive, enabling category ambiguity to persist. We furthermore show how the use of category frames that draw from pre-existing resonant categories supports the persistence of category ambiguity. We contribute to literature on categories by clarifying the antecedents of category evolution towards a trajectory of persistent ambiguity.

The impact of differing frames on early stages of intersectoral collaboration: the case of the First 1000\u2009Days Initiative in the Western Cape Province

BackgroundWhile intersectoral collaboration is considered valuable and important for achieving health outcomes, there are few examples of successes. The literature on intersectoral collaboration suggests that success relies on a shared understanding of what can be achieved collectively and whether stakeholders can agree on mutual goals or acceptable trade-offs. When health systems are faced with negotiating intersectoral responses to complex issues, achieving consensus across sectors can be a challenging and uncertain process. Stakeholders may present divergent framings of the problem based on their disciplinary background, interests and institutional mandates. This raises an important question about how different frames of problems and solutions affect the potential to work across sectors during the initiating phases of the policy process.MethodsIn this paper, this question was addressed through an analysis of the case of the First 1000 Days (FTD) Initiative, an intersectoral approach targeting early childhood in the Western Cape Province of South Africa. We conducted a documentary analysis of 34 policy and other documents on FTD (spanning global, national and subnational spheres) using Schmidt’s conceptualisation of policy ideas in order to elicit framings of the policy problem and solutions.ResultsWe identified three main frames, associated with different sectoral positionings — a biomedical frame, a nurturing care frame and a socioeconomic frame. Anchored in these different frames, ideas of the problem (definition) and appropriate policy solutions engaged with FTD and the task of intersectoral collaboration at different levels, with a variety of (sometimes cross) purposes.ConclusionsThe paper concludes on the importance of principled engagement processes at the beginning of collaborative processes to ensure that different framings are revealed, reflected upon and negotiated in order to arrive at a joint determination of common goals.

Strategies for tropical forest protection and sustainable supply chains: challenges and opportunities for alignment with the UN sustainable development goals

Governance for sustainable development increasingly involves diverse stakeholder groups, with the promise of enhanced legitimacy and effectiveness in decision-making and implementation. The UN sustainable development goals (SDGs) emphasise the important role of multiple (non-state) actors, including businesses and non-governmental organisations, including in efforts to ensure the sustainability of supply chains, and to reduce tropical deforestation and forest degradation. This paper critically analyses sustainability strategies to examine how the UN SDG agendas related to ‘sustainable supply chains’ and ‘tropical forest protection’ are framed and enacted by two contrasting non-state actors: (1) Instituto Centro de Vida (ICV), an NGO in Brazil working to address deforestation, including by supporting farmers to produce commodities, and (2) Unilever, a global consumer goods manufacturer and major buyer of such commodities. By identifying areas of variability in the discursive techniques used by ICV and Unilever, we unearth particular power dynamics that can shape the processes and outcomes of sustainability strategies. This paper finds that the two organisations use diverse strategies at different levels of governance, both participate actively in multi-stakeholder forums to advance their organisations’ goals, but have divergent framings of ‘sustainability’. Despite being considered ‘non-state’ actors, the strategies of the two organisations examined both reflect, and influence, the structural effects of the state in the implementation of non-state organisations’ strategies, and progress towards the SDGs. Although there is alignment of certain strategies related to tropical forest protection, in some cases, there is a risk that more sustainable, alternative approaches to governing forests and supply chains may be excluded.