The Dynamics of Framing: Image, Emotion, and the European Migration Crisis
2020; Academy of Management; Volume: 64; Issue: 5 Linguagem: Inglês
10.5465/amj.2017.0510
ISSN1948-0989
Autores Tópico(s)Management and Organizational Studies
ResumoAcademy of Management JournalVol. 64, No. 5 ArticlesOpen AccessOpen Access licenseThe Dynamics of Framing: Image, Emotion, and the European Migration CrisisJanina Klein and John M. AmisJanina KleinVrije Universiteit Amsterdam and John M. AmisUniversity of EdinburghPublished Online:27 Oct 2021https://doi.org/10.5465/amj.2017.0510AboutSectionsPDF/EPUB ToolsDownload CitationsAdd to favoritesTrack Citations ShareShare onFacebookTwitterLinkedInRedditEmail What we need are gunships sending these boats back to their own country. … Some of our towns are festering sores, plagued by swarms of migrants and asylum seekers, shelling out benefits like Monopoly money. Make no mistake, these migrants are like cockroaches.—The Sun, April 17, 20151Aylan Kurdi2 has shaken us from a national stupor. The image of the three-year-old, face down in the sea, has finally made visible the fact we have so often ignored—that thousands of refugees die in their desperate attempts to reach safety. … We finally see the "swarms" of "migrants" as people, human beings, just like us, but in need of help.—The Guardian, September 8, 2015How societal issues are framed matters. Organizational, public policy, and social outcomes are invariably contingent upon the ways in which associated issues are framed (e.g., Ansari, Wijen, & Gray, 2013; Furnari, 2018; Meyer & Höllerer, 2010; Lounsbury, Ventresca, & Hirsch, 2003). In this sense, frames are rhetorical devices used by actors to try to convince others of the utility of a position (Fiss & Zajac, 2006) by creating a context that determines what constitutes meaningful models of legitimate activity (Hirsch, 1986).However, our understanding of how and why the framing of societal issues—particularly, contentious ones—changes over time remains nascent. This is primarily because our conceptualization of macro-level frames and the meanings associated with the issues that they present are largely static with a focus on outcomes rather than processes (Cornelissen & Werner, 2014; Hahn, Preuss, Pinkse, & Figge, 2014; Litrico & David, 2017; Polletta, 2019). Litrico and David (2017) have provided one of the only studies that adopted a dynamic approach to track "trajectories" of macro-frames over time, but what remains lacking here and across the framing literature is an understanding of how and why frame composition changes, and how this influences frame prominence. This is significant because, without insight into these issues, not only will our theories of framing remain incomplete but so also will our understanding of how to reach agreement on pressing societal concerns (Furnari, 2018; Litrico & David, 2017). The ongoing inability of European governments to deal effectively with the migration crisis—the focus of our study—is an excellent, and tragic, example of this.In our heavily mediated world (Luhmann, 2000), discerning how framing takes place necessitates a close understanding of the workings of the media, powerful social arbiters that not only reflect but actively craft societal opinion (Bail, 2012; Bednar, 2012; Steidley & Colen, 2017). However, our understanding of what drives changes in media framing remains underdeveloped. As the opening quotes to the paper indicate, the framing of an issue can change quickly and fundamentally. In our case, the pivotal event that precipitated change in the framing of the European migration crisis was the publication of the photograph of three-year-old Alan Kurdi lying dead on a Turkish beach. The responses to the photograph point not only to the importance of understanding the dynamics of framing change, but also to the potential role of emotions in driving such change—again, something that is not well understood (Lok, Creed, DeJordy, & Voronov, 2017; Zietsma, Toubiana, Voronov, & Roberts, 2019). Therefore, our purpose in this paper is to develop theory regarding the dynamics of framing—and, in particular, the role of emotions—in media organizations.Our investigation allows us to make theoretical contributions to an emerging understanding of framing as an inherently dynamic process. First, we reveal frames to be much more malleable than previously understood and demonstrate how rapid changes to the composition and prominence of frames can take place. We show that central to this revised understanding of framing change is the concept of an "emotional array." Second, we expose the mechanisms by which framing change takes place in media organizations. We show how iconic images can exert powerful emotional and instrumental effects on media organizations and how the ideologies of those organizations impact the duration of framing change.THEORETICAL FRAMINGOur theoretical starting point is that societal issues, such as the European migration crisis, are not objective facts but rather are given meaning by those who have an interest in them (Bansal & Penner, 2002; Blumer, 1971). Thus, important in understanding how change takes place is to uncover how significant issues and associated events are framed and contested by constituent groups (Furnari, 2018; Lounsbury et al., 2003).Frames and FramingWhile introduced as a concept by Burke (1937), it is Goffman (1974) who can be credited with more fully articulating an approach to "frames" and "framing" that has subsequently been developed across the social sciences, including the disciplines of communication, economics, linguistics, organization theory, psychology, and sociology (see Cornelissen & Werner, 2014, for a review). According to Goffman (1974: 21), frames are "schemata of interpretation" that are continually in use and allow users "to locate, perceive, identify, and label a seemingly infinite number of occurrences defined in its terms." This definition of frames was further developed by Entman (1993: 52, emphasis in original) who noted that "to frame is to select some aspects of a perceived reality and make them more salient." In this way, frames can simplify and condense aspects of the world in ways that can mobilize potential supporters and "demobilize antagonists" (Snow & Benford, 1988: 198). Frames can thus be seen as representations of the exercise of power (Butler, 1997).Work in this tradition has developed insight into the ways in which actors engage in "framing contests" to advance their positions (Kaplan, 2008; see also Gurses & Ozcan, 2015). Often key to the outcome of such contests is the shifting of structural conditions, as Kellogg (2011) showed in demonstrating how hospital reforms only gained traction when societal discourse shifted to support them. However, as Cornelissen and Werner (2014) pointed out, understanding of how such conditions influence framing struggles over time remains nascent. A significant reason for this is that the conceptualization of a frame has been predominantly static. This has led to calls for research to examine framing as a more dynamic process (Cornelissen & Werner, 2014; Furnari, 2018; Giorgi, 2017; Reinecke & Ansari, 2021).Litrico and David's (2017) study of environmental issues of noise and emissions in the civil aviation industry is a rare empirical investigation of how issues and associated "framing trajectories" can evolve over time. Ansari et al.'s (2013: 1018) work on climate change also conceptualized a more dynamic approach to framing showing how frame convergence can lead to greater institutional stability. Reinecke and Ansari (2021) further encouraged us to go beyond static conceptualizations of frames and demonstrate how frames can emerge from interactions between framing agents and their constituents. While these papers all provide important insights into framing processes, understanding of the ways in which the composition of frames change over time remains lacking. Not only is there a scarcity of studies that provide comparative analyses of the content of frames but the ways in which such content changes and the influence of this on processes of framing change remain largely unknown. There is therefore a need for research into the dynamics of framing that compares how different frames change at different speeds in different patterns (Furnari, 2018). We build on this line of thought with a similar belief that examining how and why framing changes over time can help us uncover why some issues trigger change but others do not.EmotionsIn addition to the lack of attention accorded to understanding the dynamics of framing, we also lack insight into the role of emotions in framing processes. Noting how preferencing the cognitive has resulted in emotional mechanisms largely going unacknowledged, Jasper (2011: 286) lamented "virtually all the cultural models and concepts currently in use (e.g., frames, identities, narratives) are misspecified if they do not include explicit emotional causal mechanisms. Yet few of them do." Collins (2004: 103) similarly noted that, while emotions have often been overlooked in favor of the structural and cognitive in sociological theorizing, "the emotional part gives us something essential for a realistic theory—its dynamics." Giorgi (2017) also pointed to the importance of uncovering the emotional resonance of frames, but most recent work that has advanced our understanding of frames and framing has been almost entirely silent on the role of emotions (e.g., Cornelissen & Werner, 2014; Furnari, 2018; Hahn et al., 2014; Litrico & David, 2017).In pursuing our interest in emotions, we adopt a sociological approach whereby emotions, while they may be sensed individually, are inherently social and potentially political because they are experienced in a world of interactions (Collins, 2004; Emirbayer & Goldberg, 2005; Voronov, 2014) and relationships (Goodwin, Jasper, & Polletta, 2001; Stets & Turner, 2014; Voronov & Weber, 2016). Thus, emotions are "conditioned by one's place in the social world and one's relationship with others, especially the groups to which one belongs" (Zietsma et al., 2019: 4). In this respect, emotions are not only the "glue" that bind people together but also the mechanisms that generate commitment to social and cultural structures (Turner & Stets, 2006). Collins (2004: 104) contended that such mechanisms are most intensely exposed when existing understandings of social reality are "broken." This is exemplified in Cornelissen, Mantere, and Vaara's (2014) account of the 2005 Stockwell shooting that showed how shared emotions were pivotal in pushing individuals into a collective, and tragically erroneous, framing of a situation.Social interactions and the accompanying shared emotional experiences have been theorized to be important in the eventual institutionalization of micro-level frames (Gray, Purdy, & Ansari, 2015) and the growth of social movements, often articulated in the context of motivational frames. Weber, Heinze, and DeSoucey (2008), for example, suggested that the producers of grass-fed meat and dairy products were motivated to continue by a strong emotional connection to their work. Sine and Lee (2009: 136) made a similar observation, suggesting that the construction and spread of motivational frames in the U.S. wind energy industry depended on "affective processes of persuasion and socialization." In this sense, emotions "give symbols, identities, narratives, and other carriers of culture their power to move people" (Jasper & Polletta, 2019: 64; see also Gould, 2009; Summers-Effler, 2010).Thus, emotions can provide energy to bring about shifts in understanding or approach (Collins, 2004; Fan & Zietsma, 2017; Toubiana & Zietsma, 2017) depending on audience receptivity (Bail, Brown, & Mann, 2017; Massa, Helms, Voronov, & Wang, 2017). Emotions can impact our feelings of solidarity with group members (Collins, 2004; Creed, Hudson, Okhuysen, & Smith-Crowe, 2014) and encourage moral judgements of what is right or wrong, and hence legitimate (Wright, Zammuto, & Liesch, 2017; Zietsma & Toubiana, 2018). It is important to point out, however, that those espousing "positive" emotions can be opposed by those promoting alternate emotions, such as resentment or hate (Betz, 1994; Fetner, 2008; Greenfeld, 1992).Whether positive or negative, the emotional response to an event is often rapid (Huy, Corley, & Kraatz, 2014) with the effect generally assumed to be short-lived. Ekman (1999: 54), for example, noted that emotions are triggered very quickly and have an effect that lasts "not hours or days but more in the realm of minutes and seconds." There is some evidence of longer-lasting effects, with Jasper and Polletta (2019), for example, arguing that some emotions that sit in the "background" can have a longer-lasting impact on reactions to events. While there is therefore a need for more insight into the duration of such effects, it is apparent that shared emotional interactions can link individuals across time and space (Friedland, Mohr, Roose, & Gardinali, 2014; Gray et al., 2015). In sum, we know little about not only the duration of their impact, but also how these emotional processes unfurl over time (Toubiana & Zietsma, 2017), suggesting a need to "rethink" our conception of frames to uncover the mechanisms "hidden inside" (Jasper, 2011: 299). As Zietsma et al. (2019: 8) noted, "enriching our theories with a better understanding of emotions and their influences represents an important challenge and opportunity."Framing and the MediaThe media are central to the framing of issues but there has been surprisingly little explicit investigation in the organization and management literature of how the media shape public understanding of particular issues. We have even less understanding of the factors that influence the role of the media in the framing process. Roulet and Clemente (2018) in fact described the media as a "black box" in need of opening up to uncover how influence flows from and to them. There is, however, acknowledgment that the media play a defining role in framing public events (Bail, 2012; Scheufele, 1999), able to "accelerate, impede, or set the policy agenda" (Lenette & Miskovic, 2018: 114). The media, therefore, do not just reflect societal opinion, but are actively involved in its crafting (Bail, 2012; Matthes & Kohring, 2008; Steidley & Colen, 2017).The media attach meaning to and understanding of a story through two mechanisms (Clemente & Roulet, 2015). On the one hand, they create "common knowledge" by forging connections among what is otherwise a fragmented audience; on the other, they provide legitimacy by creating confidence in an audience that what is presented "is worthy of being told" (see also Bitekine & Haack, 2015). This is particularly the case with the mainstream "quality press"3 that are seen to have an authority and reliability that other media—in particular, social media—lack (European Broadcasting Union, 2018; van der Meer & Verhoeven, 2013).Roulet and Clemente (2018) have criticized much existing research for treating the media as a "homogenous ensemble" suggesting that we need work that examines media organizations as individual actors. This is evidenced by considering how the media engage with similar issues in different ways with the ideology of media owners, editors, and journalists often influencing content. Fryberg et al. (2012), for example, showed how the political ideology of newspapers framed the way they reported on an Arizona anti-immigration bill. It has also been suggested that journalists impose their own cognitive frames on the stories that they write (D'Angelo & Kuypers, 2010; Engesser & Brüggemann, 2016; Gamson & Modigliani, 1989). However, Vossen, van Gorp, and Schulpen (2018) found only a weak correlation between journalists' frames and the framing of their stories. Potentially more significant are editors, able to exert influence based on to whom they give a voice and how they subsequently position attributed comments (Patriotta, Gond, & Schultz, 2011). These actions are carried out in the understanding that each media organization not only serves to connect its followers but must also comply with demands from, among others, suppliers, customers, and regulators (Roulet & Clemente, 2018).While pressure on media organizations to accede to the wishes of key stakeholders can be pronounced, Vaara, Tienari, and Laurila (2006: 804) showed, in their work on a merger between Finnish and Swedish pulp and paper firms, that journalists' "use of specific legitimating strategies is not likely to be fully intentional or conscious." Thus, the behaviors of media actors are, at least in part, shaped by the norms and values of the organizations in which they work (Bitekine & Haack, 2015). Further, media actors' understanding of issues is also an outcome of the evolving public discourse that they help to construct (Gamson & Modigliani, 1989). As such, the ways in which issues are framed by media actors will vary according to internal and external norms and expectations. However, we have little insight into how these evolving pressures influence, and are influenced by, changes in framing over time.An important aspect of the way in which the media frame issues is through their use of images, particularly during times of crises. Boltanski (1999) characterized this as "moral spectatorship" with the media presenting from a distance "images of unbearable suffering and inhumanity" (Mortensen & Trenz, 2016: 345; see also Courpasson, 2016). It is also logical to assume that photographs will directly influence media actors, but how this process works and the duration of any such influence remain open questions.The impact of photographs is driven by several distinct characteristics. First, whereas verbal text is consumed sequentially, images appear immediately in full and are processed very quickly to allow an audience to potentially receive a mass of historical, cultural, political, ideological, and other contextual information (Doelker, 2002; Meamber, 2014; Meyer, Jancsary, Höllerer, & Boxenbaum, 2018). Further, this material can also be simultaneously consumed by otherwise disconnected individuals.Second, photographs become inserted into a set of relationships within an ideology (Burgin, 1992; Hariman & Lucaites, 2007), often being successively reconstituted according to varied political and public interests. This is particularly true when photographs become viewed as "iconic" as a consequence of their frequent appearances in the media, representation of a significant event, and propensity for social impact (Perlmutter, 1998; Prøitz, 2018). This was famously illustrated in the photograph of naked nine-year-old Phan Thi Kim Phúc running in terror from a napalm attack that came for some to personify the injustice of the Vietnam War. In this respect, we can see that what is depicted in a photograph is not neutral but socially and culturally located within a system of representation.Third, images have the potential to both communicate and activate emotions (Doelker, 2002; Meyer, Höllerer, Jancsary, & Van Leeuwen, 2013). In fact, it has been theorized that images can create a powerful emotional impact that precedes active awareness. In this way, audiences can become affectively, aesthetically, and corporeally engaged in a way that surpasses purely cognitive processing of an image's content (Konstantinidou, 2008; Meyer et al., 2018). It is thus apparent that photographs can trigger emotional responses but that we are at a nascent stage of understanding how such responses influence framing (Jones, Meyer, Jancsary, & Höllerer, 2017). This lack of insight is even more marked when considering the impact of photographs and emotions on media actors.In summary, it is apparent that, despite a significant body of work on frames and framing, there remain notable gaps in our understanding. First, we lack insight into how and why the composition of frames changes over time. Second, while it has recently become apparent that emotions can play an important role in providing the energy to initiate change in social settings, the ways in which emotions may catalyze framing change has not been developed. Third, while we know that mediated images can have an emotional impact on those who see them, the ways in which photographs—or indeed other artifacts—can create an emotional response that influences how media firms may alter their framing of a contentious issue remain unknown. Our paper develops theory across these areas.METHODSResearch SettingOur interest is in the impact of a disruptive event—the publication of the photograph of Alan Kurdi lying dead on a Turkish beach—on the framing of the European migration crisis by the U.K. media. What is important in this context is that frames, as all social phenomena, are understood in their historical context. Therefore, our first task was to uncover the ways in which migration has been represented over time in the United Kingdom. Particularly important in this process is the role of the state in characterizing groups in particular ways—a process in which policy acts as central framing mechanism by which the ontological status of whole populations can be constructed (see, e.g., Butler, 2009).Historical representation of migration in the United KingdomWe conducted a search of policy documents, media reporting, and academic writing to uncover the ways in which migration has been represented in the United Kingdom. Two themes clearly emerged: one presented migrants as relocating to increase their economic resources, and thus as a potential threat to the way of life of U.K. citizens; the other positioned them as desperate people in need of a refuge to escape a threat. We briefly discuss each of these framings in turn.Our assessment revealed a long history of politicians and others espousing a need to control access of potential immigrants to the United Kingdom, going back to the 1905 Aliens Act as the first legislative attempt at modern-day immigration control (Pellew, 1989). The debate during the passage of the Aliens Act through the House of Lords centered on the ways in which new arrivals, primarily from Eastern Europe, were taking housing and jobs from British nationals, and driving down wages (Hansard, 1905). Subsequently, the 1919 Aliens Restriction Act, passed in the context of mass unemployment following World War I, was designed to exert stringent controls on who could enter and work in the United Kingdom. The Act was reviewed annually until 1971 when it was replaced by the Immigration Act, again designed primarily to control the entrance of economic migrants to the United Kingdom (Adams, 2015). The Parliamentary and public debates that accompanied these pieces of legislation described migrants as threatening the employment of local people and placing unsustainable strains on public services—most notably, health, education, and housing. More recently, then Home Secretary Theresa May's ambition in 2012 to create a "really hostile environment for illegal immigrants" (Kirkup & Winnett, 2012) and the 2016 Referendum in which a majority voted for the United Kingdom to leave the European Union both reflected a desire among many U.K. citizens to reduce the inflow of migrants.By contrast, there is also an established tradition of the United Kingdom offering a safe haven to those facing trouble in their home countries. These range from the 100,000 Huguenots fleeing religious oppression in France in 1572 (Wilson, 2014) to the tens of thousands of Jews escaping persecution, first from regimes in Eastern Europe in the late 19th and early 20th centuries and then from Nazi Germany in the 1930s (Knox, 1997). Further, following Kristallnacht in 1938, Parliament passed a bill that allowed children, most of whom were Jewish, to be relocated to the United Kingdom from Germany, Austria, Poland, and Czechoslovakia through the "Kindertransport" program. Hundreds of people volunteered to act as foster parents in a process that resulted in an influx of approximately 10,000 children (Trueman, 2015). Prior to this, refugees from the Greco-Turkish war arrived in the 1920s, while, in May 1937, more than 4,000 Basque children entered the United Kingdom to escape the Spanish Civil War (Sim, 2015). The United Kingdom also adopted the 1951 Refugee Convention and 1967 Protocol agreeing to take in and protect those persecuted in their home countries. Recently, refugees escaping war and oppression in Vietnam, Uganda, and Kosovo, among others, have also been welcomed to the United Kingdom (Sim, 2015). Thus, there is a tradition of U.K. policy making and public action assisting displaced people.The European migration crisis and Alan KurdiIn 2015, armed conflicts in several countries, particularly those in Syria, Afghanistan, and Iraq, led to a sharp increase in people fleeing their home countries and searching for shelter in Europe. According to figures from the International Organization for Migration (2015), a total of 1,046,599 displaced people arrived in Europe in 2015, up from 280,000 the previous year (BBC, 2016). The vast majority of these—1,011,712 in 2015—arrived by sea (International Organization for Migration, 2015); thousands more died on the journey. According to data from the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR, 2015: 8), in April 2015 alone, 1,308 people lost their lives trying to cross the Mediterranean Sea (see Kingsley, 2016, for more details).Among these travelers was three-year-old Alan Kurdi. Shortly after leaving Bodrum, Turkey, on September 2, 2015, destined for the Greek island of Kos, the small, overcrowded dinghy carrying Alan and his family capsized. Most of the people in the boat died, including Alan, his older brother Ghalib, and his mother Rehana; Alan's father, Abdullah, survived. The picture of Alan Kurdi washed up on a Bodrum beach (see Figure 1) and another of him being carried away by a police officer were taken by Turkish photojournalist Nilüfer Demir and quickly spread across the globe. Demonstrating the level of interest in the United Kingdom, 24% of the global total of photographs of Alan Kurdi shared on Twitter emanated from U.K. accounts (Vis, 2015); further, the United Kingdom was among the top five countries in numbers of people who searched for "Alan Kurdi" on Google in the 24 hours after the story broke (Rogers, 2015).FIGURE 1 Alan KurdiCredit: Photograph provided by, and used with permission of, DHA (Doğan Haber Ajansi—Dogan News Agency).The photograph rapidly triggered reactions worldwide (see Mortensen, 2017). Charitable donations for refugee organizations soared (e.g., Merrill, 2015; Slovic, Västfjäll, Erlandsson, & Gregory, 2017), artists created sand sculptures of him (Gunter, 2015), and artwork was produced based on the photograph, often showing Alan as an angel. More than 140,000 people signed a U.K. petition asking Parliament to "accept more asylum seekers and increase support for refugee migrants in the UK" (The Guardian, September 3, 2015). Irish musician Bob Geldof, politicians Yvette Cooper and Nicola Sturgeon, and more than 2,000 U.K. citizens offered to house refugees in their homes (Daily Star, September 7, 2015). Two days after the photograph appeared, Prime Minister David Cameron "bowed to mounting public and political pressure, saying Britain would accept thousands more Syrian refugees" (Financial Times, September 5, 2015). At the same time, the nature of the debate on migration changed markedly.Data SourcesIn order to capture the changes in the U.K. media's framing of the European migration crisis, we drew on two sources of data: newspaper articles and semi-structured interviews. The methods that we employed developed as we moved back and forth between data collection and analysis in order to understand the ways in which frames are constructed and changed.Newspaper articlesWe analyzed newspaper articles from the 10 U.K. national newspapers with sales of more than 100,000 daily copies (see Sweney, 2016). These comprised the right-favoring The Sun, Daily Mail, The Daily Telegraph, Daily Star, Daily Express, The Times, The Financial Times; the left-leaning The Guardian and Daily Mirror; and the centerist The Independent (for insight into the ideological leanings of these newspapers, see Cushion, Kilby, Thomas, Morani, & Sambrook, 2018; Smith, 2017). Newspapers constitute a valuable source of data for studying framing because they "are forums in which stakeholders provide, directly or indirectly, accounts and rationales for their positions during controversies" (Patriotta et al., 2011: 1813). The media constitute "the court of public opinion" (Habermas, Lennox, & Lennox, 1974) and can "both influence and reflect societal values" (Lamin & Zaheer, 2012: 56).Following protocols established elsewhere (Bansal & Clelland, 2004; Lamin & Zaheer, 2012), we conducted a keyword search on LexisNexis to identify relevant articles in each newspaper. The following keywords were used: migration OR immigration OR migrant OR refugee OR asylum. In order to uncover the framing before the release of the image, articles in the time period of May 8 to September 2, 2015, were analyzed. We chose to start data collection one day after the U.K. General Election, held on May 7, 2015, in order to avoid articles that might be distorted by election campaign activities. For analysis after the release of the image, we selected the time period September 3, 2015, to September 2, 2016. This represents 118 days before and 366 days after the publication, allowing us to assess the effects of the image over an extended period. This generated 1,032 articles prior to the release of the image, and 3,826 articles afterward. We only included articles in our analyses in which the keywords were present in the article headline. In addition to allowing us to capture the most relevant articles, this also constituted an effective data reduction technique that allowed us to handle the massive amount of data available. Litrico and David (2017) and Höllerer, Jancsary, and Grafström (2018
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