Prognostic Framing Research Articles

To What Extent Were There Attempts to Securitise the Malaysian Chicken Export Ban In Singapore? A Comparative Analysis of Frames Between Government and News Media

This article focuses on exploring the securitisation of the Malaysian chicken export ban that took effect on 1 June 2022. The effects of the chicken export ban seemingly went beyond the economics of food, and expanded into the realm of national identity, as the de facto national dish of Singapore got compromised. As food and national identity is intricately linked to societal security and a key part of securitisation theory, this research paper seeks to explore the extent to which the chicken export ban was securitised. Through the use of a frame analysis, three different categories of news media were analysed: governmental media, local news media and foreign news media. The analysis showed that the foreign news media had attempted securitisation, but the local news media and governmental media refrained from securitisation, and rather engaged in a prognostic framing to reframe the chicken export ban into a proactive management of the situation which desecuritised the ban.

Epidemic in the time of the COVID-19 pandemic: News media framing of the MMR vaccination controversy in Serbia

Rising vaccine hesitancy is often related to negative vaccination media coverage. It is generally accepted that the media played a great role in spreading the MMR (measles, mumps, and rubella) childhood vaccination scare first in the UK and then worldwide. During the COVID-19 pandemic, the MMR vaccination rate dropped further in some countries. This paper examines the Serbian news media framing of the MMR vaccination controversy in the period 2019–2023 (periods of declining MMR vaccination rate, rising COVID-19 vaccine hesitancy and the 2023 measles outbreaks). Furthermore, the paper questions whether the COVID-19 pandemic influenced the MMR vaccine narrative in the newspapers. For this reason, quality content analysis of the press in combination with framing approaches (diagnostic–prognostic–motivational framing tasks and responsibility framing) were used. In total, 122 articles dealing with the MMR vaccine and measles epidemics were analysed. According to the press, the most significant cause of the declining MMR rate is anti-vaccination campaigns and conspiracy theories by the “anti-vax lobby” (diagnostic frames). The pandemic was the other significant cause for the intake drop. Achieving herd immunity through vaccine uptake is offered as the best solution (prognostic frames). Finally, MMR vaccination campaigns and penalties for non-compliant parents and vaccine refusers are proposed as calls to action (motivational frames). During this period, the press did not publish any “sensational anti-vax stories”. Considering the low MMR vaccine numbers in Serbia in this period, positive media messages did not have a significant influence on improving the vaccination rate. Thus, I suggest that Serbian parents distrust vaccination information presented by the dominant news, including the advice of health experts.

The United Kingdom’s Rejoin movement: A post-Brexit analysis of framing strategies

Within the growing body of work on post-Brexit politics, there is a notable absence of research on pro-European activism. Although anti-Brexit activism received attention in the aftermath of the 2016 referendum, its development following the UK’s departure from the EU remains underexplored. This article addresses this gap by using discourse network analysis to examine posts authored by National Rejoin March speakers and organisers on X (formerly Twitter). Analysing the framing strategies of the post-2020 Rejoin movement, the article delineates existing conceptualisations of diagnostic and prognostic framing tasks by focusing on four key components: grievances, perpetrators, solutions, and strategy. The findings reflect the Rejoin movement’s emergence from the anti-Brexit movement, now advocating for EU membership in a post-Brexit context. Although economic grievances and anti-Conservative sentiment continue to dominate the movement’s framing, Rejoin placed a greater emphasis on solutions offered by the EU. Despite this, the movement displayed a lack of coherence in addressing key issues including free movement and democracy, both of which had been problematic for previous pro-European campaigns. This lack of coherence underscores the ongoing challenges in crafting a unified and compelling pro-European narrative within an evolving post-Brexit political landscape.

Framing Policy Reform in Europe. A Comparative Study of Frame Variation Across Countries, Newspapers, and Time

ABSTRACT Politicians must navigate the complexities of social policy reform to ensure sustainable fiscal policies while considering their impact on citizens. News media play a crucial role as a source of political information, influencing public attitudes towards policy changes through selective framing of issues. This study focuses on how European news media frame the controversial policy reform of raising the retirement age, and explores factors that potentially explain variations in framing across contexts. Using a manual content analysis of newspapers in Denmark, Spain, the Netherlands, and the United Kingdom over the period 2011–2020 (n = 1059 articles), we examine country-, newspaper-, and time-related factors to explain the relative presence of issue-specific diagnostic and prognostic frames in European news coverage of pension reform. While the results show that all three types of factors determine the coverage of the reform measure to some extent, in particular variations across newspapers and over time are prevalent. The most striking differences are that left-leaning newspapers emphasize frames related to inequality, and that over time, framing crystallizes into a more concentrated set of diagnostic and prognostic frames. This article sheds light on European news coverage of a much-debated policy issue and its contextual dependency.

Resisting and Reclaiming: Squatting as Contentious Urban Politics in the U.S.

Abstract Squatting as contentious politics has been well studied globally, expanding knowledge of how everyday people resist injustices, strive to remake cities, and respond to local/regional conditions. These histories and contemporary struggles have largely been overlooked in the U.S. This article uses qualitative data to compare three recent cases of organized housing occupations in Detroit (2011), Oakland (2019), and Philadelphia (2020) by mothers of color with their children, to better understand how this form of global urban politics manifests in the U.S. Using this comparison, we identify important dimensions that have shaped these three cases of contentious politics and their outcomes, including differences in goals, tactics, and socio-spatial context. We also uncover the diagnostic and prognostic frames reflected in each case: despite common legal violations, each case purposefully diagnoses locally-rooted housing problems and suggests different property-relations as solutions. We find that each case varies in terms of what kind of property squatters target, how these spaces reflect broader structural problems in the U.S. housing market, and what kind of property-relations they envision with these occupations. In turn, our findings also advance understanding of this global urban politics by showing how squatting efforts may dovetail with place-based legacies, such as racial segregation and settler colonialism in the U.S. Researchers have long attended to organized housing struggles in their varied manifestations, but by foregrounding resistance to and reclaiming of property by squatters, we draw out understudied problems and possibilities related to land and housing occupations that are subverted within broader housing studies.

Do Activists Prioritize Solutions Over Grievances? A Twitter Study of Black Lives Matter

Do social movements shift the focus of their framing from grievances to tactics as they mature? This paper examines the nature of the frames that social movements and activists co-create using the case of Black Lives Matter (BLM). Building on (Snow & Benford, 1988), we explore whether BLM’s frames have evolved from diagnostic to prognostic frames since the movement’s emergence. We compiled a novel tweet dataset collected from Twitter that contains 269,963 tweets sent under the hashtag “BlackLivesMatter” from Jan. 01, 2020, to Dec. 31, 2021. Using time series and network analysis, we show that frames do not naturally evolve from diagnostic to prognostic frames as movements mature. We find that BLM activists increasingly use prognostic frames while expressing their grievances because injustices and discrimination toward the Black continue. The evidence suggests that tweets on tactics and solutions outnumber the grievance-related frames only after Chauvin’s guilty plea alleviates grievances.

Examining #StopAsianHate discourse on Twitter using framing and thematic analyses: Focusing on motivational framing with express behaviour upon the 2021 Atlanta shootings

AbstractIn separate events on March 16, 2021, an armed man walked into a spa and a massage parlour in Atlanta and shot eight people, six of whom were women of Asian descendant. Within the first week of the Atlanta shootings, more than 400,000 tweets with the hashtag #StopAsianHate emerged in response to the violence. To highlight the importance of this issue, this current study analyses 5,146 English tweets with #StopAsianHate using social movement framing. Analysis of tweets using Thematic analysis shows that proponents of the AAPI community used diagnostic framing to situate the incident in the context of systematic racial discrimination against AAPI, used prognostic framing to suggest “what” to do to resolve the problem, and used motivational framing to share action words to encourage others and to encouraging political engagements. Findings also show that other than the social movement framing, actors expressed many emotions to show their support and gave immediate reactions in response to significant events as they occurred in relation to the hate crimes. Future studies should examine whether these findings are unique to AAPI members, online social movements, or the topic of racial hate crime.

Media, Legislation, and the Science of Reading: Understanding Policy Narratives for a Path to Collaboration

Using frame analysis, the present study examined the intersections of science of reading research, media coverage, and state literacy policy to explore how Colorado policy and media documents have defined reading achievement. It also analyzed the values, assumptions, and agendas within these definitions. It identified diagnostic frames that defined a state-level problem with reading education and prognostic frames that proposed curriculum and teacher training mandates as solutions. Underlying these frames were assumptions of objectivity, agendas of top-down accountability, and a binary separation between effective and ineffective methods for the teaching of reading. Implications include the development of a critical pragmatism in which researchers, teachers, school leaders, and other practitioners can collaborate to navigate shifts required by legislation while reflecting on the ways in which such shifts are situated in larger narratives. The authors argue that such analyses are essential for implementing reading reform in ways that are equitable and responsive to local contexts.

Teacher educator learning to implement equitable mathematics teaching using technology through lesson study

PurposeThis paper examines how mathematics teacher educators (MTEs) learn to enact equitable mathematics instruction using technology through lesson study (LS).Design/methodology/approachA LS team with three MTEs conducted three iterations of LS on teaching the Pythagorean Theorem in an in-person, technology-mediated environment. Many forms of data were collected: Desmos activities, videos of research lessons (RLs), videos of MTE RL debriefings, artifacts of student learning in the Desmos Dashboard, and MTEs' written self-reflection. The authors investigate the teacher educators' learning through LS by analyzing the MTE debriefings of the RLs using Bannister’s (2015) framework for teacher learning in communities of practice.FindingsThe MTEs learned to enact equitable mathematics instruction using technology through addressing emerging issues related to intellectual authority and use of student thinking. Throughout the LS, the MTEs sought ways of promoting students' mathematical authority and using student thinking through features of the Desmos platform.Research limitations/implicationsThis study focuses on MTEs' learning without examining participating preservice teachers' learning. It demonstrates the benefits of LS for MTEs' professional learning.Practical implicationsThis study showcases how a research-based Desmos activity is used and refined to promote MTE learning how to implement equitable mathematics instruction.Originality/valueThe study contributes to better understanding of how LS could be used to develop MTEs' professional learning. Moreover, the dual process of participation and reification was concretized through diagnostic and prognostic frames in the LS context, which enriches the concept of community of practice.

Working through frame incongruences: A process perspective on (re)framing for digital servitization

Industrial firms are increasingly seeking new means of competitiveness through digital servitization that involves incorporating digital services and platforms. Despite the growing prominence of digital servitization, we have yet to understand how such changes are being framed, reframed, and unfold in industrial firms. To this end, we undertake an in-depth longitudinal exploratory case study of an industrial firm to understand the organizational framing and reframing activities vis-à-vis digital servitization. Our findings identify how motivational, diagnostic, and prognostic framing gradually unfolds over distinct phases. Specifically, our findings reveal the occurrence of frame incongruence among different groups of actors, compelling the firm to engage in strategies and tactics to achieve frame alignment. Notably, we identify that management engages in the alignment processes of frame extension, translation, and clarification, which creates a space of workable certainty. While transient in nature, this state of workable certainty serves as a catalyst in propelling the firm forward in its pursuit of a digital servitization strategy. By shedding light on the process of digital reframing that firms undertake in order to materialize their digital servitization strategy, our study contributes to a deeper understanding of this phenomenon. Moreover, we raise pertinent managerial implications for firms embarking on the path of digital servitization, emphasizing the imperative of continuous attention to the ongoing framing and reframing processes accompanying such change endeavors.

“Urgently Needed to Protect Asian American Children and Families”: The Social Movement for Asian American Studies at K‐12 Grades

The national movement for Asian American Studies (AASs) curriculum at the K‐12 level has burgeoned during the COVID‐19 pandemic and the subsequent surge of anti‐Asian hate. Seventeen states proposed legislation requiring AAS content in their public schools and ten states have now mandated it. Using case studies of two states, Illinois and New Jersey, this article details how community activists and elected legislators framed their campaigns to successfully pass their bills. In both states, the campaigns utilized diagnostic frames from the broader Asian American movement. However, they also incorporated and developed prognostic frames and motivational frames more resonant with the current moment. Notably, stakeholders focused on organizing around a winnable issue, with an emphasis on racial bullying in New Jersey and multiracial solidarity and inclusion in Illinois.

Defending Europe from below: pro-European activism in Germany and the UK and its contribution to the politicisation of Europe

ABSTRACT The ‘politicisation of Europe’ has mainly been discussed with reference to Eurosceptic parties in the ‘conventional’ political arena. From the perspective of the anti-Brexit campaign in the UK and Pulse of Europe in Germany, this article focuses on grassroots pro-European mobilisation to explore the potential of politicisation ‘from below’. The two movements stood out in their ability to provoke considerable levels of grassroot mobilisation. We argue, however, that both movements reached a strategic impasse that was marked by a lack of clarity about their desired future of Europe, and which hampered their ability to generate political change. Our comparative analysis of campaign materials and interview data reveals that these movements struggled to articulate a) diagnostic frames that struck the right balance between problematising the current political situation whilst supporting the established order, and b) prognostic frames that extended much beyond the defence of the status quo (ante).

Why 'elevating country voice' is not decolonizing global health: A frame analysis of in-depth interviews.

Recent calls for global health decolonization suggest that addressing the problems of global health may require more than 'elevating country voice'. We employed a frame analysis of the diagnostic, prognostic, and motivational framings of both discourses and analyzed the implications of convergence or divergence of these frames for global health practice and scholarship. We used two major sources of data-a review of literature and in-depth interviews with actors in global health practice and shapers of discourse around elevating country voice and decolonizing global health. Using NVivo 12, a deductive analysis approach was applied to the literature and interview transcripts using diagnostic, prognostic and motivational framings as themes. We found that calls for elevating country voice consider suppressed low- and middle-income country (LMIC) voice in global health agenda-setting and lack of country ownership of health initiatives as major problems; advancing better LMIC representation in decision making positions, and local ownership of development initiatives as solutions. The rationale for action is greater aid impact. In contrast, calls for decolonizing global health characterize colonialityas the problem. Its prognostic framing, though still in a formative stage, includes greater acceptance of diversity in approaches to knowledge creation and health systems, and a structural transformation of global health governance. Its motivational framing is justice. Conceptually and in terms of possible outcomes, the frames underlying these discourses differ. Actors' origin and nature of involvement with global health work are markers of the frames they align with. In response to calls for country voice elevation, global health institutions working in LMICs may prioritize country representation in rooms near or where power resides, but this falls short of expectations of decolonizing global health advocates. Whether governments, organizations, and communities will sufficiently invest in public health to achieve decolonization remains unknown and will determine the future of the call for decolonization and global health practice at large.

Teachers’ Views of the Mathematical Capabilities of Students With Disabilities: A Mixed Methods Study

Background/Context: Most students with disabilities receive the majority of their instruction in general education classrooms. Yet, general education teachers persistently describe feeling unprepared to academically support students with disabilities in those spaces. Because disabled students are typically excluded from mathematics education research, and because special education researchers typically describe mathematics teaching and learning in ways that are incongruent with ambitious mathematics instruction, there is arguably a lack of guidance for these teachers. In the absence of clear guidance, teachers may turn to the well-established mathematical ability hierarchy, which positions disabled students (among others) as less capable. Purpose/Objective/Research Question/Focus of Study: The purpose of this study was to uncover teachers’ talk about the mathematical capabilities of students with (and without) disabilities. Existing coding schemes (perhaps inadvertently) treat teachers’ views as uniform across students despite evidence that teachers hold different views of different students, in part because of the multiple and varied identities that students bring to the classroom. By using an adapted interview protocol, which yielded more (and more nuanced) analytic categories, I foregrounded students’ disability status as a factor that could relate to differences in teachers’ conceptions of who they view as mathematically capable. Research Design: I interviewed general education mathematics teachers ( N = 20) about their students ( n = 407) using an adapted version of Jackson et al.’s (2017) semi-structured protocol that focused on uncovering teachers’ usages of diagnostic and prognostic frames. I used open and concept coding to develop an expanded version of Jackson et al.’s coding scheme and then applied the new coding framework to the entire data set. I used student demographic data to compare within-group percentages, noticing to what degree students with disabilities were represented within particular qualitative categories in relation to their representation within the entire data set. I also used transformed data to estimate two multinomial logistic regressions: one that used diagnostic frames as the outcome variable, and one that used prognostic frames as the outcome variable. Both models used students’ disability status and teacher dummy codes as predictor variables. Conclusions/Recommendations: The majority of teachers in this sample explained mathematical struggle in unproductive terms and said they would aim instructional adjustment at unproductive outcomes for students with and without disabilities. However, students with disabilities were overrepresented in unproductive categories and underrepresented in productive categories in relation to both diagnostic and prognostic frames. Regression analyses indicated that a student was statistically less likely to get a productive diagnostic or prognostic frame if they had a disability label. Findings from this study highlight the necessity of including teachers’ views of their students’ mathematical capabilities in instructional improvement efforts. Second, they indicate that student-level factors, such as disability status, relate to qualitatively and quantitatively meaningful differences in teachers’ views of their students, suggesting the importance of attending to broader narratives around constructs that may be associated with teachers’ views, and the subsequent enactment of those views, in mathematics instruction.

Framing access to essential medicines in the context of Universal Health Coverage: a critical analysis of health sector strategic plans from eight countries in the WHO African region

BackgroundFraming affects how issues are understood and portrayed. This profoundly shapes the construction of social problems and how policy options are considered. While access to essential medicines (ATM) in the World Health Organization (WHO) African Region is often framed as a societal problem, there is dominance of medical and technically oriented approaches to analyze and remedy the situation. Hence, the systematic application of social science approaches, such as framing theory, remains under-explored. Through a framing analysis of National Strategic Plans (NSPs) from eight countries, this study explores the applicability and potential usefulness of framing theory to analyze essential medicines policies.MethodsWe inductively coded the relevant NSP textual fragments using the qualitative content analysis software ATLAS.ti.22. Benford and Snow’s conceptualization of framing was used to organize the coded data into three frames: diagnostic (problems), prognostic (solutions) and motivational (values and ideological).ResultsThe following five diagnostic frames were dominant or in-frame: medicine unavailability, ineffective regulation, weak supply chain management, proliferation of counterfeit (substandard or falsified) medicines and use of poor quality medicines. Diagnostic frames related to financing, affordability, efficiency and corruption were given limited coverage or out of frame. Prognostic frames corresponded with how these problems were framed. Whilst Universal Health Coverage (UHC) and its guiding principles was the dominant motivational frame, we identified some frame discordance between the global discourse and national level policies.ConclusionsSocial science approaches such as framing analysis are applicable and useful to systematically analyze essential medicine aspects. By applying framing theory, we revealed that ATM aspects in the eight countries we analyzed are more often characterized in relation to availability at the expense of affordability which undermines UHC. We conclude that whilst UHC is a strong motivational frame to guide ATM aspects, it is insufficient to inform a comprehensive approach to address the problems related to ATM at country level. To effectively advance ATM, concerned actors need to realize such limitation and endeavor to gain a deeper understanding of how problems are framed and agendas are set at country level, the processes through which ideas and knowledge become policies, including the political demands, incentives and trade-offs facing decision-makers in selecting policy priorities.

Bad guy or good guy? The framing of an imam

In this paper, we investigate framing in the case of an imam in Switzerland. We conducted a qualitative content analysis of 175 articles from Swiss newspapers and public broadcasting websites in German and French to examine how Bekim Alimi, an imam in Wil, Switzerland, was portrayed in the news media from 2015–2019. Powerful and / or prominent actors who made an effort, journalists, as well as the object of the debate, Bekim Alimi, contribute to frame building. We identify two key events (the inauguration of the Gotthard Base Tunnel and Alimi’s naturalization process) as highly crucial for the framing of the debate because they stimulate some frame sponsors to become active. When they speak out, the debates become more intense and broader. In this way, key events hold the possibility to discuss a situation in depth, to create orientation, to offer solutions (prognostic framing), or to motivate people (motivational framing) to become active.

Who Pays the Cancer Tax? Patients’ Narratives in a Movement to Reduce Their Invisible Work

Many studies examine the division of labor inside organizations. Yet there is also an expected division of labor between organizations and their clients, which research to date has tended to ignore or has treated as static and easily accepted by both parties. How might clients change the expected division of labor with a service organization? We developed this question while studying an academic cancer center (ACC), where patient activists led a movement to bring to light the burdensome invisible work they and their families did to coordinate their treatment. They shared their own stories, developed formal channels for collecting more stories, and worked to broadcast the growing set of stories across ACC. Their stories became a resource for change and mobilized a coalition of staff allies. Coalition members drew on the patient stories to develop a new diagnostic framing of the “Cancer Tax”—the burdensome coordination work ACC required of patients. They also developed a prognostic frame for how ACC could help, which inspired a new program that took on some of the patients’ coordination tasks. In this way, the patients’ stories created new awareness of the problem and provided resources for staff allies to make the case for taking on some of the patients’ invisible work. This study shows that clients can effectively influence organizational change through movements fueled by personal narratives (for instance, lessening the coordination work they must do to coproduce complex services). Funding: This work was supported by Co-Investigators on the Cancer Center Transformational Initiative, funded by Stanford Health Care for $500,000 per year, 2012–2019. Supplemental Material: The e-companion is available at https://doi.org/10.1287/orsc.2022.1627 .

Exploring the grammar of othering and antagonism as enacted in terrorist discourse: verbal aggression in service of radicalisation

The social, discursive practice of othering in violent extremist discourse serves to present outgroups as distant yet real threats to the ideological and physical territories of an ingroup which a terrorist claims to represent. However, the role of grammatical choices (namely, non/transactive construction, voice, and mood) in enacting the othering act within the context of radicalisation to terrorism remains to be empirically verified. This paper explores the patterning and pragmatic functions—namely in framing situations, coercing into violence, and legitimising hostile actions against Others—of the syntactic structure of the othering utterances. The othering utterances, as realized in a set of eight public statements produced by former al-Qaeda leader, Osama bin Laden, were sorted manually and analysed qualitatively to help understand and showcase how grammar was strategically leveraged in the process of radicalisation. Results show that the act of othering in the dataset operates within the victimization and injustice frameworks to morally sanction antagonism and aggression via: (i) overt othering, where transactive construction, only declarative mood and active voice are used, and (ii) covert othering, in which nontransactive construction, any mood type, and passive voice are utilized. Overt othering foregrounds, through assertions and statements of presumed facts, the negative agentive role of Others and the diagnostic framing of the causal relationships between Others and negative experiences. Covert othering backgrounds this agentive role to place prominence on immoral actions and to serve in the motivational function of framing. The grammatical patterns provide evidence of the strategic character of OBL’s verbal aggression and how different mood types tend to construct the directive, illocutionary point of the utterances and to enact prognostic framing. The analytical strategy aids in threat assessment and preventing radicalisation by sensitizing assessors to, first, the kind of semiotic clues to engagement in the social and discursive process of radicalisation where utterances count as calls for action and activators of a reality of deontology, and, second, to the social functioning of terrorist texts in: (i) promoting putative readers’ awareness of particular outgroups, and (ii) ideological positioning and encouraging and legitimating violence that is liberty, loyalty and care metavalues-based.

Visualization on Twitter Activism Networks and Opinion Leaders: The Case of #FreeWestPapua

<p class="Default"><strong>Introduction: </strong>This study tries to visualize the Twitter activism networks and their opinion leader with the case of #FreeWestPapua activism. This study is important to find out who the opinion leaders and their networks are. This study also provides an overview of how the opinion leader frames opinions about #FreeWestPapua activism on Twitter.</p><p class="Default"><strong>Methods: </strong>This research used Social Media Network Analysis (SMNA). The SMNA method is the application of the Social Network Analysis (SNA) method to examine conversations on social media. Data collection and data processing are collected and visualised with Netlytic.</p><p><strong>Findings: </strong>The results showed that there are 13 opinion leaders and all of the opinion leaders are from outside Papua. This study concluded that there is alienation in separatist activism in the case of #FreeWestPapua on Twitter. The most influential opinion leader in the separatist activism on Twitter is @VeronicaKoman who has the biggest values and is also active to frame public opinion. #FreeWestpapua activism framed Indonesia as a colonial in diagnostic framing and #FreeWestPapua as a solution in prognostic framing. To attract support from the international community, opinion leaders in #FreeWestPapua activism took advantage of the various #BlackLivesMatter issue and other international moments such as Korindo news by BBC.com.</p><strong>Originality:</strong> Although a lot of research on the Free Papua Movement has been done, there has never been a study explains about who opinion leaders and their networks and also how they are framed public opinion about #FreeWestPapua activism on social media.

The Rassemblement National and COVID-19: How Nativism, Authoritarianism and Expert Populism Did Not Pay Off during the Pandemic

AbstractThe article examines the response of the French National Rally (Rassemblement National – RN) to COVID-19. It combines computer-based and qualitative content analysis of Facebook posts and press releases to uncover the salience and frames of the infection. I find that the RN used an ambivalent strategy to respond to the pandemic, linking an unexpected problem to its core ideological tenets, while also adapting its programmatic profile. Specifically, the RN interpreted COVID-19 in terms of immigration and defence. Diagnostic frames drew on nativist, authoritarian and populist tenets to identify the origin of the infection (migrants), and to attribute blame for its spread (lack of border controls). Moreover, prognostic frames used disagreement within the scientific community to criticize governments' policies and propose alternatives. While this strategy allowed the RN to address an issue outside its ‘comfort zone’, its support base remained stable. These results point at the radical right's strategic use of expert knowledge and populist logics to try to improve its credibility in mainstream public debates.