Oppositional Frame Research Articles

Not Worth Keeping Alive? News framing of physician-assisted suicide in the United States and Great Britain

This essay seeks to analyse and understand the news framing of a major issue for disabled people in the late twentieth century - physician-assisted suicide. We argue that news frames within the coverage of physician-assisted suicide present narratives that ignore or devalue disability issues. The US disability rights movement has created an oppositional frame to mainstream media presentations, arguing that physician-assisted suicide has been "presented" to many disabled people as a way of self-termination in accordance with a dominant cultural belief that disabled people are "not worth keeping alive". For this study, we analysed reports in two elite newspapers, the New York Times in the United States, and The Guardian in Great Britain during 1996-1998. Our analysis identifies six narrative frames in news stories about physician-assisted suicide.

Not Worth Keeping Alive? News framing of physician-assisted suicide in the United States and Great Britain

This essay seeks to analyse and understand the news framing of a major issue for disabled people in the late twentieth century - physician-assisted suicide. We argue that news frames within the coverage of physician-assisted suicide present narratives that ignore or devalue disability issues. The US disability rights movement has created an oppositional frame to mainstream media presentations, arguing that physician-assisted suicide has been "presented" to many disabled people as a way of self-termination in accordance with a dominant cultural belief that disabled people are "not worth keeping alive". For this study, we analysed reports in two elite newspapers, the New York Times in the United States, and The Guardian in Great Britain during 1996-1998. Our analysis identifies six narrative frames in news stories about physician-assisted suicide.

Strategies in a volatile world

Globalization and localization are usually considered to be two very opposite theoretical frames for studying today's political economy. Rather than accepting this theoretical dualism, this article argues that the combination of the two worlds is dependent on strategies. By analysing the action of a business unit of a multinational corporation, it is shown how it is possible for local actors to combine their strategies into a coherent whole by which a locality takes advantage of its channels to the corporate markets of the multinational corporation. This case-study then questions our usual theortical observations concerning internationalization and sketches out an alternative way of thinking, combining globalization and localization.

Framing Effects and Choice Shifts in Group Decision Making

An experiment was conducted to examine the effects of framing on group decision-making. Decisions involving risk were posed in terms of either gains or losses to individual subjects. Subsequently, subjects were divided into groups and the decisions were presented again in either the same frame or the opposite frame. As hypothesized, when the same frame was presented to subjects both individually and in groups, individual-level framing effects became larger in groups; when the opposite frame was presented to groups, initial framing effects were reduced. However, these results were observed on only two of the four decision cases. On the other two cases, significant choice shifts occurred independently of the framing manipulations. Implications of these results for decision making groups in applied settings are discussed.

Use of three measures of field organization with young children.

Research with children utilizing the global-analytic field articulation construct ( 4 ) has resulted in modification of test instruments for use with school-age Ss (1, 2 ) and development of other measures presumed to tap the field dependence-independence dimension ( 3 ) . Appropriateness of the modified tests for primary grade children and relationships between measures is uncertain, however. This study was conducted to determine the feasibiliry of three measures of field organization for use with young children, specifically, to consider relationships berween measures and performance according to sex groups. Forty-four children enrolled in regular classes in an Anglo, middle-SES, public school were individually administered the portable Rod-and-frame Test ( I ) , Karp and Konstadt's ( 2 ) Children's Embedded-figures Test (CEFT), and Pattern Drawing (PDT) and Pattern Walking (PWT) tests ( 3 ) . MCA and SD for the 22 boys were 87.54 and 3.68 mo.; for girls, 88.0 and 3.29 mo. On the Rod-and-frame Test (RFT) Ss responded to three blocks of four trials each, scores reflecting degrees from vertical. CEFT scores represent total number of correct responses, range 0 to 24. Walked and drawn patterns were scored 1 to 4-point scale per pattern, range of total scores 9 to 36. RFT total scores were analyzed with a 2 (sex) X 3 (blocks) analysis of variance; only the main effect of sex was significant (F = 9.04, df = 1/4, p = .05). Boys' errors were 57% to frame, 37% opposite frame. Comparable errors for girls were 72% and 24%. Boys dearly aligned the rod to uue vertical more accurately than did girls. No differences by sex were found on the CEFT. Pattern-drawing scores were also nonsignificant by sex, but pattern-walking favored boys ( t = 4.67, d f = 42, p < .01). Relationships between measures were determined with Pearson I . Values of r based on total N scores were -32, -.42, and .36 for relationships between RET-CEFT, RFT-PWT, and CEFT-PWT, respectively ( p < .01). For boys, comparable values of T were -.18, -.33, .40, only the last reaching significance ( p = .03). Values of 7 for girls were -.36 ( 9 = .O5), -.32, and .42 ( p = .02). Pattern-drawing scores were not related significantly to other measures. Findings suggest: ( a ) that the modified rod-and-frame and pattern reproduction tests are feasible and appropriate for use with primary grade school children but that the CEFT is too difficult and time consuming for children to be useful in primary school settings; ( b ) that sex differences in field organization are identifiable at this age on the modified rod-and-frame and pattern-walking tests but not on ,the CEFT or panern-drawing test; (c) when sex differences occur, boys are more field-independent than girls; ( d ) that the measures tap a common dimension but considerable variance is unexplained. REFERENCES 1. GERARD, H. Factors contributing to adjusment and achievement. Progress Report of a Joint Project of Riverside Unified School District and Univer. of California, Riverside, May, 1969. 2. KARP, S. A., & KONSTADT, N. L. Manid for Children's Embedded Figurer Test. Brooklyn: Cognitive Tests, 1963. 3. KEOGH, B. K. Partern copying under three conditions of an expanded spatial field. Developmen&l Psychology, 1971, 4. 25-31. 4. WITKIN, H. A., DYK, R. B., FATERSON, H. F., GOODBNOUGH, D. G., & KARP, S. A. Psychological differentiation. New York: Wiley, 1962.