Analyzing Frame Analysis

A Critical Review of Framing Studies in Social Movement Research

Teun A. van Dijk

Address
Pompeu Fabra University
Dept. of Translation and Language Sciences
138, Roc Boronat
08018 Barcelona, Spain
E-mail: vandijk@discourses.org
Internet: www.discourses.org
Phone: (0034) 661.336.192

Biographical Note
Teun A. van Dijk was professor of Discourse Studies at the University of Amsterdam until his retirement
in 2004, and since 1999 professor of Discourse Studies at Pompeu Fabra University, Barcelona. During
the writing of this article, he was Visiting Professor at the Institute of Social and Political Studies (IESP)
of the State University of Rio de Janeiro (UERJ). After his earlier work on generative poetics, text
grammar and the psychology of discourse processing, his work since the 1980s takes a more critical turn,
and focuses on the relations between discourse and racism, news, power, ideology, context and
knowledge, areas in which he published several articles and books. He was founding Editor of the
international journals Poetics and Text (now Text & Talk), and is currently founding Editor of Discourse
& Society, Discourse Studies, Discourse & Communication and the online journal Discurso & Sociedad
(www.dissoc.org). Teun A. van Dijk holds three honorary doctorates and has extensively lectured world-
wide, especially in Latin America, where he founded, in 1995, with Adriana Bolivar, the Latinamerican
Association of Discourse Studies (ALED). For detail, see his website www.discourses.org. E-mail:
vandijk@discourses.org.

Acknowledgements
I am indebted to Bert Klandermans and his research group for critical commentary on an earlier, much
longer version of this article, and to Kevin Gillan for suggestions about the overall format of the article.

Version 4.0. December 2, 2016

Analyzing Frame Analysis 1

Analyzing Frame Analysis
A Critical Review of Framing Studies in Social Movement Research

Abstract
This critical review of three decades of studies of frames and framing in Social Movement research first
offers a brief history of the notion of ‘frame’ in various disciplines, and then discusses empirical studies
of frame alignment, frame disputes, frame resonance and master frames, among other notions. It is found
that the very notion of discursive of cognitive frames remains very vague in these studies, and what are
actually studied are for instance, beliefs, attitudes, goals, ideologies or values, especially how they are
expressed in discourse. Also a study of the relations between frames and culture, identity and discourse
shows that the notions of frames and framing are theoretically and methodologically inadequate and of
very little, if any, use in empirical studies. It is recommended the cultural paradigm of SM research
should rather engage in more explicit and systematic studies of more specific aspects of discourse and
cognition, and drop the notion of frame altogether.

Keywords: frame, framing, social movements, discourse, discourse analysis, cognition, social
movements.

Introduction

More than 30 years have passed since the first framing studies in social movement
research were published. The notions of frame and framing have become very popular
in these three decades, especially in the ‘cultural’ approach to social movements. This
paper offers a critical review of some of these studies. It does so especially from the
perspective of contemporary studies of discourse and cognition, because these are
precisely among the most important notions that define the cultural approach in social
movement research.
The review will show that generally the notions of ‘frame’ and ‘framing’, as used
in this research paradigm, are very vague and ill-defined theoretically and therefore also
methodologically inadequate. In most studies they serve as a fuzzy term to refer to a
large variety of discursive and cognitive phenomena that have been studied, in several
disciplines, with much more precise concepts and methods.
It is concluded that given the limited theoretical and methodological value of the
notions of frame and framing, cultural social movement research should abandon using
these notions, and make use of more precise theoretical and methodological concepts of
the phenomena it is studying, e.g., as they are offered in neighboring disciplines.

Analyzing Frame Analysis 2

Corpus of articles reviewed

For this review, 129 articles have been reviewed. The main selection criterion was that
articles should have the words frame or framing in their titles and study social
movements. Most of these studies are in sociology, and some in political science. The
words frame(s) or framing occur 18,248 times in these articles. Articles on framing in
media studies are not reviewed here, and need separate critical review (among a vast
number of studies, see, e.g., Entman, 2004; Johnson-Cartee, 2005; Iyengar, 1992).
The relevance of discourse in social movement studies of framing is obvious from
the fact that 94 of 129 articles feature the word ‘discourse’ – with a total frequency of
1885 occurrences (in 39 articles the word ‘discourse’ appears more than 10 times).
Because of space limitations, these discourse analytical approaches in social movement
research will be reviewed in a separate article. The same is true for the use of ideology
and other sociocognitive notions used in social movement research (the word ‘ideology’
is used 1898 times in 109 of 129 articles on social movements). These discourse and
ideology articles will only be briefly mentioned in this review.

Theoretical framework: Multidisciplinary Discourse Studies

Since most framing studies use some kind of discourse as their empirical data, this
critical review is written against the background of contemporary discourse studies, as it
has been developing since the 1960s (for detail, see, e.g., *Angermüller, Maingueneau
& Wodak, 2014; *Gee & Handford, 2012; *Tannen, Hamilton & Schiffrin, 2015; *Van
Dijk, 2011). More specifically, the criticism presupposes the theoretical and analytical
framework of Van Dijk’s sociocognitive approach to discourse and its relations to
racism, power, ideology, context and knowledge. This framework is particularly
relevant for the critical review of framing research, because it precisely focuses on the
two crucial notions used in framing research in the cultural paradigm: discourse and
cognition (see, e.g., Van Dijk, 1977, 1993, 1998, 2008a, 2008b, 2009, 2014). A more
focused use and explanation of this theoretical framework is relevant in the more
focused critical review of extant discourse analytical approaches in social movement
research briefly referred to below. In his article, this framework only serves as a general
background for the criticism of framing studies.

Analyzing Frame Analysis 3

A brief history of the notion of ‘frame’

As we shall see in more detail below, SM research generally attributes its concept of
‘frame’ to Irving Goffman’s book Frame Analysis (*Goffman, 1974). The notion,
however, has been used before in several disciplines. This history and uses, partly
referred to by Goffman himself, may be summarized as follows.

 Goffman refers to William James, who in a chapter “The Perception of Reality”, published in 1869,
deals with the question under what circumstances people think things are real, using the notion of
‘world’ (such as the world of science or myth) – much later used, as “possible world” in formal
semantics.
 Goffman also refers to the work on the “common-sense world” and “multiple realities” by Alfred
Schutz, defined as “provinces of meaning”. Schutz crucially emphasized the socially constructed
nature of reality, which will later be a major point of departure in SM framing research: “it is our
experience rather the objective world which constitutes reality” (*Schutz, 1962: 4). For Schutz, it is in
this sociocultural world in which “communication of our fellow men becomes possible” (p.4). This is
relevant for our argument below, because it links the common-sense world, with its interpretation as
well as with communication and hence discourse.
 One of the definitions of framing is in terms of defining the situation. Not surprisingly, Goffman also
refers to the classical definition of *Thomas (1966/1928) about the reality of social situations (and
their consequences) if people define them as real – though he adds that these consequences may well
be very mundane, and hardly noticed by social actors.
 The link with contemporary micro-sociology, ethnomethodology and conversation analysis is
established by Goffman’s reference to the work on multiple realities by *Garfinkel (1967), who
stresses that the meaningfulness of everyday activity “in a seemingly unlimited number of situations”
(p. 5) is reducible to a small set of rules and practices. Deviation from such rules would thus explain
how the intelligibility of deviant acts is undermined – a concern that inspires much of the theory and
the analyses of the many forms differently “keyed” actions and situations in the rest of Goffman’s
book.
 More specifically Goffman (and others) attribute the notion of frame to Gregory *Bateson
(1955/1972), who uses the notion as a definition of the communicative or interactive situation or
‘key’, as when animals know whether some action should be interpreted as serious or as ‘play’. Thus,
frames for Bateson are interpretation schemas, which has become the standard definition of the terms
in SM framing research.
 Goffman’s book was published in a year (1974) in which also other influential studies were published
such as the first study on conversation by *Sacks, Schegloff & Jefferson (1974) on turn-taking,
initiating the vast field of Conversation Analysis, for which also Goffman himself was a major
inspiration (indeed, Schegloff did his PhD with Goffman).
 Two years later, *Fillmore (1976), published his seminal paper “Frame Semantics and the Nature of
Language,” which would give rise to a broad research paradigm (Frame Semantics) on frames as a
basis especially for the study of word meanings, and later more generally research in the field of
cognitive linguistics (*Croft & Cruse, 2004; *Evans & Green, 2006; *Littlemore & Taylor, 2014).
Like Goffman, Fillmore was interested in framing as “the appeal, in perceiving, thinking, and
communicating, to structured ways of interpreting experiences”.
 Fillmore refers to the notions of ‘frame’, ‘schema’ and ‘scenario’ as they have been introduced, more
or less at the same time, in Artificial Intelligence, for instance in an influential article by *Minsky
(1975), published the year before, in order to account for our structured knowledge of the world. This
work was itself inspired by Quillian’s work, in the 1960s, on the representation of conceptual
information (*Quillian, 1963). Minsky’s classical example is that our knowledge of tables, in the
form of a frame, allows us to know that tables have legs even when we don’t see them.
 The notion of “schema” more generally characterizes the cognitive revolution of the 1960s and 1970s
(see, e.g., *Neisser, 1967), inspired especially by *Bartlett (1932)’s famous early studies of
remembering of the beginning of the century but only published in 1932.

Analyzing Frame Analysis 4

 A year after Fillmore’s paper, Schank & Abelson published their seminal book on scripts, another
contribution in AI to our understanding of the structures of knowledge – and their role in automatic
and natural discourse production and understanding (*Schank & Abelson, 1977).
 My own book Text and Context (*Van Dijk, 1977) introduced the notion of knowledge frames in
systematic analyses of discourse, e.g., to define local and global coherence, the relation between
discourse and the world, as well as the notion of context. Beyond the obvious influence of psychology
and AI, this book also was inspired by model theories in logic, e.g., as a basis of formal semantics,
and thus prepared the way for the introduction of mental model theory as a basis for discourse
processing (*Van Dijk & Kintsch, 1983; see also *Johnson-Laird, 1983). We shall come back to the
crucial notion of mental models below.
 In a collection of studies by her students and colleagues, discourse analyst *Tannen (1993) explicitly
refers to ‘frame analysis’ in terms of structures of ‘expectations’ is text and talk, based on different
kinds of knowledge structures. After a detailed summary of earlier studies of frames and related
notions (schema, script, etc.) she reports on her own study of framing, as part of the well-known “pear
stories” film shown to subjects from various countries (see *Chafe, 1980), of which Tannen analyzes
the Greek data.

We see that especially in the 1970s there were developments in several disciplines of
the humanities and social sciences to account for the ways language and the world was
discursively and cognitively represented in terms of schemas, frames, models or scripts.
Especially in various areas of cognitive science, these notions also have been
formulated in (more) explicit terms.

Goffman’s frames

Since SM research to frames is indebted especially to Goffman, and – regrettably – less

to the other studies and disciplines dealing with frames mentioned above, let us also
summarize some of Goffman’s ideas. He formulates the aim of Frame Analysis (1974)
as follows:

(…) to try to isolate some of the basic frameworks of understanding in our society for making sense
out of events and to analyze the special vulnerabilities to which these frames of reference are subject
(p. 10).

Rather surprisingly, given his fundamental interest in framing, both in this book, as well
as in his other books, Goffman is quite succinct when it comes to the theory of the
structures or rules defining such frames. He distinguishes, first of all between natural
and social frames. The first are used to understand natural events, such as the weather,
and the second to understand events and actions (“guided doings”) in which human
beings are somehow involved (as would be the weather forecast), and subjected to
standards of social appraisal (e.g., of honesty or efficiency), on the one hand, or the
constraints of nature, on the other hand – thus also giving rise to two kinds of situations:

Analyzing Frame Analysis 5

manipulations of the natural world, or interactions in the social world. These “primary
frameworks” allow the users to “locate, perceive, identify, and label a seemingly infinite
number of concrete occurrences” defined in its terms. Primary frameworks vary by their
degree of organization. Some are neatly organized by entities, postulates and rules but
most others appear not to have an articulated shape (p. 21). In the same situation,
several frameworks may be applied, as when a waving hand can be interpreted as a
greeting or as a summons to approach. Frames for Goffman, however, are not only the
rules or premises that govern an activity, that is, as a form of cognitive control, but also
may be described as the very organization of the activity itself, because the actors fit
their actions to the understanding of the activity (p. 247). We shall see later that this
ambiguity of the conception of frames and framings, viz. between mind and action, is
quite characteristic also of the use of frame theory and analysis in the study of social
movements.
At this point, Goffman hardly becomes more specific about the organization of
these primary frameworks. Crucial is to distinguish, at this point, the definition of a
frame as an individual, subjective interpretation of a social situation (which Van Dijk
defines as a mental situation ‘model,’ see references above), on the one hand, or the
socially and culturally shared system of knowledge or rules applied in the understanding
of social situations, on the other hand. Goffman explicitly opts for the second definition
when he associates primary frameworks with social groups and their culture, e.g. in
terms of “principal classes of schemata, the relations of these classes” (p. 27). In this
case he refers to belief systems or “cosmology” – notions about “cognitive resources”,
he says, which scholars of social life prefer to leave to others. Indeed, we’ll find below
that this is indeed the case in much of the studies of frames in the sociology of social
movements.
In the rest of this book, instead of elaborating a more explicit theory of frames,
Goffman gives a vast number of examples of how in the real world and in language
events may be interpreted in different ways depending on their ‘keying’ or ‘framing’,
e.g., as play or serious. He is especially interested in the many (re) transformations
involved, as in fabrications, errors, malfunctions, illusions, and ambiguities in everyday
situations. Especially in his frame analysis of talk, he stresses that all talk (and
storytelling, etc) is a form of performance, as on the stage. He concludes:

Analyzing Frame Analysis 6

 Realms of beings other than the ordinary provide natural experiments in which a property of
ordinary activity is displayed or contrasted in a clarified and clarifying way. The design in
accordance with which everyday experience is put together can be seen as a special variation on
general themes, as ways of doing things that can be done in other ways. Seeing these differences
(and similarities) means seeing (p. 564).

We see that although SM research attributes the notion of frame mainly (though not
only) to Goffman, this indebtedness is quite superficial, and in fact limited to a notion of
frame as an interpretation schema of social reality. The huge variety of special (illusion,
play, etc.) frames studied by Goffman have hardly any influence on later framing
studies on social movements.

Frame analysis in social movement research

A decade after the publication of Goffman’s seminal book, sociologists in the field of
social movement research continued the same phenomenological tradition of symbolic
interactionism and related approaches by studying collective action in terms of frames,
and as interpretations and definitions of the social situations. Despite considerable
theoretical and methodological differences, as well as disputes about the nature or
relevance of these notions, frames and framings were generally adopted as fundamental
notions accounting for the role of interpretations of the experiences of the participants
of social movements.

Frame alignment

In one of the first and most cited studies on frames in SM research, *Snow, Rochford,
Worden & Benford (1986) introduced the notion of frame alignment processes as a
property of micromobilization and participation, linking social psychological
dimensions with structural aspects of resource mobilization, the dominant approach to
social movements in the 1980s (*McCarthy & Zald, 1977; *Jenkins, 1983). Since this
article has inspired much later research, let us examine it in some detail.
The authors distinguish between frame bridging, amplification, extension and
transformation, notions extensively used in other framing research in the next decades.
Frame alignment is found to be a major condition of individual participation
(micromobilization) in social movements. Such alignment is defined as the linkage of

Analyzing Frame Analysis 7

individual and social movement “interpretive orientations”, such as individual interests,
values and beliefs on the one hand with activities, goals and ideologies of movements,
on the other hand (p. 464). The definition of frame is borrowed from Goffman:
“schemata of interpretation … to locate, perceive, identify and label occurrences”. They
make such events and occurrences meaningful and organize experience and guide
action.
The notion of frame in the study of social movements in this paper is motivated
by the criticism of earlier approaches using the notion of grievances, with the argument
that grievances as such are not the relevant cause of collective action, but how such
grievances are interpreted by social actors.
The theoretical task to be conceptually made explicit is specify as what exactly
such grievances are interpreted, and especially how such an interpretive process takes
place. This would require detailed cognitive analysis of frames, an analysis not provided
by the authors, nor by the authors of most studies of frames, despite the fact that
contemporary cognitive science offered many concepts to do so.
Such a more detailed cognitive analysis would also be required to describe the
congruence relating personal frames with SM frames: one would need a cognitive
definition of this relationship, but such a definition presupposes an explicit cognitive
description of frames in the first place. The same is true for the definition of the various
kinds of frame alignment, such as extension, amplification and transformation.
Moreover, what is also ignored here and elsewhere is the important role of context
in such processes, because the same experience no doubt is interpreted (‘framed’) in a
different way by different social actors in different social situations.
As we shall see also below for most other studies, the main problem with the
introduction and application of the notion of frame, borrowed from Goffman, is not only
that it is not made explicit in terms of mental representations but that it glosses over,
many very different notions that hardly can all be summarized as forms of
‘interpretation frameworks’, such as beliefs, ideologies, goals, interests, values or
activities. Each of these notions need specific theoretical analysis in their own right, and
vaguely ‘summarizing’ them as ‘frames’ does not contribute to our insight in the
interpretative aspects of social movements. In sum, one would expect a detailed account
of the cognitive (and discursive) processes of how people go about understanding,

Analyzing Frame Analysis 8

comparing, negotiating, accepting, rejecting, etc. the beliefs, goals, ideologies, etc. of
social movements in relation to their own.

The authors criticize that earlier network approaches ignore

what transpires when constituents and bystanders or adherents get together. Since a good portion
of the time devoted to many SMO activities is spent in small encounters, an examination of the
nature of those encounters and the interactional processes involved would tell us much about how
SMOs and their constituents go about the business of persuading others, effecting switches in
frame, and so on (p. 468).

Now, that would indeed be a relevant sociological tasks, but that is precisely what the
authors do not provide. They give some brief examples of participant talk, but they do
not actually analyze such talk, despite the existence of more than a decade of
Conversation Analysis in sociology itself, or of interpersonal persuasion research in
social psychology, or of the study of argumentation and other structures in discourse
studies.
What is problematic at the theoretical level, unfortunately cannot be resolved at
the empirical, analytical level. For instance, an example of frame bridging is described
in terms of the use of direct mailing of different conservative Social Movement
Organizations (SMOs) in the USA – which is rather a form of discursive organizational
activity, and hardly a form of frame or frame bridging in the first place.
In another illustration, based on Benford’s research (see below), the Texas peace
movement tried to mobilize supporters by emphasizing democratic values of free
speech, besides very general values such as justice and cooperation. In other words,
what happens here is the use of persuasive, mobilizing discourse focusing on or
emphasizing general values, shared by the whole community, instead of the more
specific and possibly less supported ideological values or goals of the peace movement.
Again, in order to describe and analyze what happens in these processes of mobilization
is better described in terms of the structures of persuasive discourse and of ideological
values, and not in the much vaguer terms of frames of frame bridging.
The same is true for the example (based on Snow’s own research) of the appeals
of Salvation Army persuading local residents opposing a center for homeless men, a
resistance that can be accounted for in the more specific terms of prejudices and
ideologies. Also here, the notion of frame is much too general and vague to describe the
cognitive and social processes involved here. In fact, in these and most of the other

Analyzing Frame Analysis 9

examples of this article the notion of frame disappears from the analysis – showing that
it is analytically superfluous.
In a review of 25 years of frame and frame-alignment research since the
publication of this article, *Snow, Benford, McCammon, Hewitt & Fitzgerald (2014),
unfortunately fail to repair the theoretical vagueness of the earlier paper of 1986. One of
the authors, Holly McCammon, admits that some aspects of the original theory, such as
the specification of the actual processes or the relations with other notions, such as
ideologies and schemas should be developed in future research.

Other studies of frame-alignment

After this early theoretical article of *Snow, Rochford, Worden & Benford (1986) the
notion of frame-alignment has been used in many SM studies, of which some will
briefly be mentioned here, without further analysis, because they show the same
theoretical and methodological limitations. This does not mean that these studies are not
interesting as sociological studies of social movements, but generally not because of the
use of the notions of frame or framing, but rather because of the analysis of activities,
organization and mobilization. Our main focus, in the review of these and other SM
articles on framing, is to show what other notions are actually used, instead of frames,
in order to describe a social movement and its activities, and why therefore the notion of
frame is superfluous in these studies and/or glosses over more specific phenomena.
Instead of discussing the other papers on frame alignment individually, and repeat
the same critique again and again, we summarize these studies in a simple schema (see
Table 1), in which we mention the overall topic, and what aspect of social movements is
described without further specific analysis, and hence glossed over, as frames.

Author(s) Year Topic/Data ‘Frame’ notions

Berbrier 1998a White separatists in USA hate-free emotions, collective
identity
Cornfield & 1998 Changes in legislative agenda of changing goals
Fletcher American Federation of Labor
Markovits 2009 Nationalist movements in values
Uzbekistan and Tajikistan
Marichal 2009 Interviews about diversity argumentation structures, values
politics at U.S. universities (social, justice excellence), context
(audience)
Ketelaars, 2014 Supporters in Belgium, the definition of political problem vs.
Walgrave & Netherlands and the UK: definition of solution.
Wouters

Analyzing Frame Analysis 10

 alignment not a condition of
participation
Coley 2015 Personal narratives of narrative structures (plots,
communist-led labor strike experiences, protagonists, etc.)
Ravishankar 2015 Conflict avoidance in Indian belief transformations, cultural
offshore companies differences

Table 1. Frame alignment studies and the notions glossed over as frames

Frame disputes

In an extensive and influential case study of the Texas peace movement, briefly
mentioned above, *Benford (1993) examines internal disputes between radical, liberal
and moderate factions of the movement, based on 2100 hours of fieldwork, nearly 1000
pages of field notes, dozens of interviews with core activists and 132 informal
interviews with rank and file members. We see that his study is based on a vast corpus
of text and talk, but such discourse is not analyzed in terms of contemporary discourse
analysis, but in terms of traditional content analytical ‘coding’ of the various discourse
genres collectively defined as a ‘dispute’. Such a dispute not only is expressed in
various structures of text, talk and interaction, but also represented in different kinds of
social cognition, such as knowledge, attitudes and ideologies (Benford here uses the
notion of “ideological contours”), two complex levels of analysis here subsumed under
the notion of frame.
The frame disputes studied pertain to what generally in SM framing studies have
been called diagnostic, prognostic and resonance frames. Diagnostic frames are defined
in terms of the identification of a problem or the attribution of blame or causality (p.
686). A further cognitive analysis of the structures or kinds of mental representations of
these frames, however, is not provided. Thus, a dispute may arise about the emphasis to
give to which of various causes of a problem, e.g., the nuclear threat itself, its possible
causes, or more generally on other important social problems, such as poverty.
We see that the dispute is not so much about the frame (the definition of the
situation), but on the discourse about the social situation: what to emphasize or not –
which are semantic or a rhetorical aspects of discourse. Unfortunately, and typically,
the actual frames are not but vaguely characterized in the article, only the frequencies of
types of disputes between the three factions, as well as some discourse examples

Analyzing Frame Analysis 11

expressing the dispute. Consider, Benford’s informal characterization of the radical
“perspective:”

From the radical perspective, the nuclear threat was but a symptom of global systemic problems
exacerbated to a large extent by the U.S. and its pursuit of hegemony as well as a manifestation of
greedy defense contractors, multinational corporations, and unscrupulous politicians. Radical
SMOs called for fundamental structural changes, such as a basic redistribution of resources
globally, changes they contended would make war obsolete. Hence, this radical wing identified
and articulated links between various social problems - poverty, oppression, militarization, and
environmental misuse. Finally, these SMOs supported the use of, and occasionally employed,
unruly tactics, including civil disobedience and other forms of nonviolent direct action. (p.681)

Notice first of all that this characterization of the frame (here described with the equally
vague and undefined notion of “perspective”) is informally derived from the
interpretation of many different discourse genres of the (members of the) radical
faction, produced in different communicative situations, also involving different
audiences, different goals, etc. The actual dispute does not take place in terms of this
reconstructed frame but in terms of the actual discourses of the faction. Secondly, as a
sociocognitive representation, the “Nuclear Threat” is a socially shared attitude of the
radical faction of the peace movement, in this case based on a more general anti-
imperialist ideology, and related to other attitudes (e.g. about poverty, oppression, etc.).
Each of these should then be structurally analyzed, e.g., in terms of causes of the
problem attributed to participants with different identities and roles (such as the U.S.,
politicians, defense contractors, corporations), and their properties (unscrupulous) their
actions and their goals (hegemony), and the ways these should be opposed (civil
disobedience, etc.). Since most of the disputes are found to involve the “ideological
wings” of the movement (p. 685), we actually need a more specific ideology analysis,
and not a frame analysis, to describe and explain the data.
Similarly, to describe the extension of the concerns of the movement beyond
nuclear disarmament, for instance to feminist issues and anti-gay rights, the author more
specifically uses more specific notions such as goals and values (p. 688) and no longer
uses the notion of frame.
Although most of the disputes in the Texas peace movement are about the various
aspects of the ‘definition of the situation’, there were also disputes about how “reality
should be presented so as to maximize mobilization”. In this case, we don’t only need a
specification of underlying forms of social cognition, but a detailed analysis of
discourse structures, such as the expression of overall topics, actor descriptions,

Analyzing Frame Analysis 12

argumentation and other persuasion strategies, including the use of specific words
instead of others, metaphors, stories and so on. The credibility of the speakers plays an
important role here, and such a parameter requires an analysis of the pragmatic structure
of the communicative situation, specifying social properties (identities, roles, relations,
status, power, etc.) of the participants, as represented in the context models of the
participants (see Van Dijk, 2008a, 2009).

Frame variation

*Snow, Vliegenthart & Corrigal-Brown (2007), in a vast comparative study of the

media coverage in various countries of the 2005 French Riots, deal with frame
variation. Instead of detailed discourse analysis of this coverage, also here traditional
content analysis is used to deal with so many data. Framing is informally defined as in
most earlier studies of Snow and others, namely as ‘interpretive’ process (which would
be a mental process). As elsewhere, the hardly helpful metaphor of the picture frame is
used (as well as the metaphor of being in and out of focus), how events are defined, e.g.,
in terms of their causes or how they can be controlled. However, in this case, the
framing is obviously discursive, because the data are newspaper articles, and the aim is
to show, by comparative international research, how news (discourse) frames may vary
– a type of variation little studied before.
The authors do so by examining four types of frame variation in the coverage:
ideology (here of country government and newspaper), sociopolitical context (e.g.,
unemployment in the country, or distance from the country), attribution (who is
blamed), time (frames change after some time). These conditions of variation,
unfortunately, are not theoretically analyzed, but informally postulated (or derived from
the informal analysis of the news items).
One of the problems of this study, as well as of many other framing studies in SM
research, is the lack of a more sophisticated multidisciplinary theory for a social
constructionist approach. Thus, the crucial point here, overlooked by the authors, are the
relevant dimensions of news production (see, e.g., Van Dijk, 1988). The variable
conditions mentioned are only relevant when they are known and defined, that is,
cognitively mediated, as such by the actual journalists. The ideology of a government
cannot possibly be a direct condition of discursively expressed frame variation, unless

Analyzing Frame Analysis 13

such an ideology is adopted by the newspaper and journalist. Similarly, sociopolitical
context of whatever type is relevant only when known to the journalists of these
newspapers. Instead, frame variation is described in terms of how content of the news
articles is coded, such as the diagnostic nature of the riots in terms of “riff-raff”,
ethnicity of actors, or over-reaction of the authorities, or their prognostic aspects, in
terms of law and order, action program, better housing or limit immigration, and the
source (e.g., politicians) of these framings, as well as their salience in the coverage. The
results show that ideology and proximity hardly influence framing, time obviously is of
influence (for instance on the crystallization of a frame), whereas the influence of the
actors/speakers defining the events are crucial, especially in terms of their attribution.
Unfortunately, the method of this study, quantitative content analysis and coding
of content, doesn’t show how exactly in the news articles the events are described, and
how exactly news actors/speakers comment about them. That is, we never come to see
how exactly journalistic mental models of the riots (informally characterized as
‘frames’) are expressed in the news text. We only get to know how many newspaper, in
what country, and of what ideological orientation define or blame the riots in terms of
riff-raff, ethnicity or government actions or ideology, among other causes – as coded by
the researchers. Structurally this means a (content analytical, coded) definition of higher
level semantic macrostructures of the articles, and not of the detailed, local way events
are described or explained. Precisely that local variation of the news discourse in
different newspapers in different countries would be interesting to study, as an
expression of possible ‘frame variation’. Theoretically, such an analysis would also
need to be described in terms of the ideologically and contextually controlled mental
models of the events of the journalists as well as their sources. Content analytically
based frame variation gives a very general picture of variation, but glosses over the
more detailed discursive and cognitive processes involved in variation of newspaper
coverage.
Other studies of frame variation, such as those of *Krogman (1966) on
environmental controversies, and of *McCammon (2012) on demands of women in the
jury movements in the early 20th century, also would be more explicit if instead of the
notion of frame, more precise notions such as attitudes, rhetorical strategies, gender
ideologies and argumentation structures were further specified.

Analyzing Frame Analysis 14

Mobilization frames

Among many other functions, frames are developed to mobilize adherents, as was the
aim of frame bridging in the Snow et al 1986 article reviewed above. Thus, well-known
Italian SM researcher Mario *Diani (1996) studied the relation between such frames and
the political opportunity structure in Italy, especially with respect to the regional
populism of the Northern League, a right-wing movement. The study of this movement
is especially interesting because most studies deal with left-wing, progressive
movements.
Diani combines a more classical approach of the study of political opportunities
(political alignments, formal channels of access, allies and inter-elite conflict), on the
one hand, with the more “constructionist” approach in terms of different kinds of
mobilization frame, which may vary as a function of political conditions, such as
“realignment frames”, “inclusion frames”, “revitalization frames” and “antisystem
frames,” on the other hand (p. 1056).
As usual these frames are not spelled out in detail, but informally described in
terms of the discourses that articulate them. These are fundamentally different things,
also because discourses as forms of social interaction are always adapted to the
communicative contexts: the ‘same’ frame may be expressed in very different
discourses in different situations. Thus, realignment frames “emphasize the need to
restructure political systems”. Inclusion frames are defined as rhetorical devices
emphasizing the aspirations of new political actors, and antisystem frames are
characterized by a mobilizing “message” that challenges the fundamental traits of the
political system. Revitalization frames are merely described as “reflecting the fact” that
systems must be revitalized from within.
Most of these definitions are brief informal characterizations of the (main) content
of mobilizing discourse, and not as detailed cognitive or discursive representations. As
is the case for many authors who use many different notions to informally ‘define’
frames, the author explicitly claims “I view frames here as abstract forms of political
rhetoric rather than as belief systems anchored to specific contents” (p. 1058). Yet of the
discourses only the general rhetorical aspect of emphasis is mentioned, but such
emphasis might be made by main topics, argumentation, the lexicon, metaphors or
various forms of semantic and rhetorical enhancements. Although frames are thus

Analyzing Frame Analysis 15

vaguely associated with discourse structure (emphasis), no detailed discourse analysis
of concrete examples is provided beyond informal comments on the main “themes” of
populist League discourse, such as their identity and their enemies.
The success of the League was thus explained in terms of the consistence of their
mobilization message with a widespread anti-system master frame (see below). But in
this case, the master frame obviously cannot be formulated in terms of discourse
structures, but would need a more cognitive formulation in terms of shared attitudes and
ideologies.
As is the case for most framing studies on social movements, also this interesting
article offers a political explanation of the success of the Northern League, not only in
terms of the political situation in Italy, but especially in terms of theoretical concepts
(such as inclusion, anti-system) found in the themes (rhetorical emphasis) of the
discourses of the League. But instead of offering a detailed discourse analysis (beyond
referring to earlier content analysis), this explanation is formulated in terms of frames,
whose contents or structures are not spelled out, nor the ways they are related to what is
actually studied: discourse. Substitute the term of “frame” by that of “discourse” and the
study would more concretely deal what it actually studies. No additional theoretical or
empirical insight is provided by the use of the notion of frame.

Master frames

Another popular notion introduced in the SM literature on frames is that of master

frames, that is, a more generic frame that can be used by various SMOs in different
“protest cycles” and a broader context (*Snow & Benford, 1992).
A distinction between microlevel vs. macrolevel (or master) frames, may be
theoretically sound, and reflects other ideas in sociology (between micro and
macrosociology, see *Alexander, 1987) or discourse studies (see the multidisciplinary
book on macrostructures in discourse, action and cognition: *Van Dijk, 1980), as well
as many other theories in different disciplines. But, as is the case for frames, we would
also need an explicit theory of master frames (e.g., in discursive or cognitive terms) and
how micro and macroframes are related. Unfortunately, this is not the case in any study
of master frames. In our review of some studies on master frames we’ll see that the
notion of master frame is another vague concept that is used to describe many different

Analyzing Frame Analysis 16

discursive or cognitive structures, such as general values (justice), ideologies or goals,
among others.
In their foundational article on master frames *Snow & Benford (1992) first of all
repeat their general theory of frame, e.g., as active, process derived “signifying work” of
movement actors engaged in reality construction (p. 136), and hence as an “interpretive
framework (…) that simplifies and condenses the world out there” (p. 137). With this
summary of the theory of frames and framing, master frames are defined as having the
same functions as frames “but only on larger scale” (p. 138). They do not characterize
single SMOs, but SMOs more generically. They are like paradigms instead of specific
theories. They are “analogous to linguistic codes in that they provide a grammar that
punctuates and syntactically connects patterns or happenings in the world”. (p. 138) – a
comparison that obviously does not make any sense at all, in any of the terms (codes,
grammar, syntax) used. If making a linguistic comparison at all, they should be defined
as overall semantic macrostructures or topics in relation to the local meanings
(microstructures) of words and sentences of discourse (Van Dijk, 1980).
Unlike more specific frames of specific movements, such master frames are so
general and flexible that several movements can use the same frame. For instance, the
successful Civil Rights frame of the 1960 in the USA was later adopted also by the
women’s movement and the gay movement, among others. Other such general master
frames, would be, for instance, an injustice, oppositional or imperial master frame.
In master frames also the attributional aspect is more general, for instance in terms
of unjust external structural arrangements, and not a specific enemy or opponent of a
specific SMO, as is the case for the use of the Civil Rights master frame by many
different SMOs. Again, a comparison is made with a linguistic notion, namely
Bernstein’s distinction between restricted and elaborated codes – which is also hardly
illuminating because this sociolinguistic distinction of class-based language use has
little to do with the more specific or generic types of master frames, such as that
between that of Civil Rights on the one hand or the Nuclear Freeze frame on the other
hand (incidentally, Nuclear Freeze is rather a frame than a master frame, because it is
only used by the Nuclear Freeze movement, and hence hardly generic). Master Frames
are more flexible, more inclusive and therefore have more appeal and influence, because
they have greater “narrative fidelity” because their ideas are more central, and “ring
true’ with extant beliefs, myths and folktales. Despite these comparisons and other

Analyzing Frame Analysis 17

characterizations, we still don’t know what, for instance, the Civil Rights master frame
looks like – and how it is related to general attitudes, ideologies or values.
Finally, the theory of master frames is applied to the notion of cycles of protest,
by a series of propositions. For instance, a new innovative master frame may stimulate
the activity of an SMO, as was the case of the Nuclear Freeze master frame for the
peace movement, or if a master frames fails, this may explain why mass mobilization is
not successful. Movements early in a cycle of protest are often progenitors of master
frames. The concrete illustrations associated with these and other propositions about the
role of master frames are enlightening, but since no explicit theory of their nature and
structure are provided, the propositions remain general ideas for research, but do not
prove how master frames are related to cycles of protest and their more specific frames,
goals, values, ideologies or activities.
In a more recent encyclopedia article, *Benford (2013) explains that the notion of
master frame was coined in order to account for cycles of protest in the absence of a
Political Opportunity Structure (POS): “A master frame refers to a generic type of
collective action frame that is wider in scope and influence than run-of-the-mill social
movement frames.”
Obviously, if the notion of frame is vague, the notion of master frame must be
even vaguer, because it must apply to several social movements and sociopolitical
situations. It may thus be defined in terms of overall norms or values (such as injustice),
ideologies (imperialism) or overall goals (market choice).
There are many studies of master frames. Some of them, and the actual notions
studied, are summarized in Table 2.

Author(s) Year Topic/Data/Movement (Master) Framed notions

Gerhards & 1992 Protest campaigns in Berlin ideologies (imperialism, US
Rucht against Reagan and IMF hegemony)
Noonan 1995 Dictatorship and women’s ideology (feminism), goals (return to
movement in Chile democracy), (maternal group) interests
Swart 1995 Secessionist movement in political value (self-determination)
Ireland
Babb 1996 History of U.S. Labor scientific theories and paradigms
Movement
Carroll & 1996a Anti-hegemonic functions of Oppositional political goals
Ratner Canadian SMs
Carroll & 1996b networking defined and common viewpoints (attitudes,
Ratner overlapping membership of ideologies); identities
activists of Canadian SMs

Analyzing Frame Analysis 18

 Mooney & Hunt 1996 Agrarian mobilization in U.S. ideologies
Applerouth 1999 Debate of Christian coalition on rhetoric
school curriculum in New York
Noakes 2000 Communist threat Hollywood anti-communist ideology; speech act
of accusation in legal discourse; red-
scare attitude about subversion
Hull 2001 Civil right, non-elite actors and social values (tolerance, acceptance)
debates on same-sex marriage
Stanbridge 2002 Secessionist movement in the political value of self-determination
Åland islands
Pedriana 2006 Women’s movement of 1960s symbols and categories of equal
employment laws
Hall & White 2008 Home rule vs. scientific criteria values, argumentation structures
in congressional hearings on
salmon policies
Karagiannis Pan-Islamism, human rights and ideologies, values
anti-globalization of Hizballa
movement
Markowitz 2009 Nationalist movements in ideologies
Uzbekistan and Tajikistan.
Daub 2010 Interviews Canadian union value (environmental justice); (anti-
members on climate change Kyoto) rhetoric.
Chakravarty & 2012 Anti-witch-hunt and micro- goals (of women development)
Chaudhuri credit movements
Sciubba 2014 Movements of older people in values, goals.
different countries

Table 2. Studies of master-frames and the framed notions used

Similarly, in their review also *Hall & White (2008) show how master frames have
been informally characterized (‘defined’ would suggest precise definitions) with such
variable notions as meta-cultural themes of economic growth (*Skillington, 1997), a
society’s dominant cultural elements (*McCaffrey & Keys 2000), or discursive field
(*Fiss & Hirsch 2005), scientific rationality (*Mercer 2002; *Roth et al. 2003), social
justice (*Edwards 2006), and local knowledge (*Brown 1992; *Harrison et al. 1998).
These various characterizations again suggest that frames and hence also master frames
are not a specific conceptual or discursive structure, but a very general label for many
very different properties of discourse and cognition, such as themes, ideologies, norms,
values, goals or even contexts or opportunity structures (such as discursive fields) of
SMs.

Other notions of frame analysis

Similar critical analysis may be provided for the many other frame-related notions in
SM research, such as frame-resonance, framing effects, counter-framing, among others

Analyzing Frame Analysis 19

(see, e.g., Babb, 1997; *Berbrier, 1998; *Connolly, 2005; Holland, 2014; *Ivakhiv,
2010, *Kubal, 1998; *McCammon’s, 2004, 2007, 2012; and *Schrock, Holden & Reid
(2004). As explained above for frames in general, also a study of frame resonance
would require a detailed cognitive analysis comparing various kinds of beliefs (models,
attitudes, ideologies, values, goals) of SMs with those of adherents. Despite the
interesting sociological contributions of these studies, this is not due to the use of the
notion of frame, but rather in terms of the other notions (beliefs, etc.) dealt with in the
analyses.

Frames and related notions

We have seen that framing studies actually study many different kinds of discourse
structure and mental representations, phenomena for which there are more explicit
theoretical frameworks. Fortunately, some of these other notions have been dealt with in
other SM studies, as is the case for culture (Snow, Tan & Owens, 2013), identity
(Snow, 2013), and especially ideology – for instance in a debate between Snow,
Johnston and others (*Oliver & Johnston, 2005; *Snow, 2004; *Snow & Benford,
2005). Unfortunately, few of these studies are based on research on these notions in
neighboring disciplines.
One of the major criticisms formulated above is that most framing studies study
discourse data without using contemporary methods of discourse studies. Fortunately,
some scholars in SM research have explicitly advocated and practiced such discourse
research, some also referring to (some) research in discourse studies (see, e.g., *Caiani
& Della Porta, 2011; Dani, 1996; *Gerhards & Rucht, 1992; Johnston, 1995, 2002,
2005, 2013, 2014; *Johnston & Klandermans,1995a; *Johnston & Noakes, 2005;
*Meyer, 1995; *Polletta, 1998, 2006; *Polletta, Chen, Gardner & Motes, 2011;
Steinberg, 1998, 1999a, 1999b; Vicari, 2010 – among others). These and other
discourse approaches to framing will be reviewed in another study, complementing this
review.

Analyzing Frame Analysis 20

Conclusions

Our detailed critical review of many frame and framing studies in social movement
research confirms and elaborates many of the observations and conclusions made above.
Summarizing these conclusions, we found the following:

1. The main contribution of framing studies in SM research is the aim to focus on the
discursive and cognitive aspects of social movements. Causes of contention are
not problematic social situations, but how these are interpreted (‘framed’) and
discursively expressed and communicated by social movements and their members.
2. Despite this cognitive and discursive turn in SM research, papers on frames are
hardly inspired by advances in other disciplines on discourse and cognition.
3. The notions of ‘frame’ and ‘framing’ are seldom precisely defined, whether in
discursive or cognitive terms. Rather they gloss over the phenomena actually
studied in empirical research, such as topics, rhetoric, arguments or narrative
structures of discourse, or beliefs, mental models, attitudes, knowledge or
ideologies, goals or values as mental representations. Existing theories of these
notions in other disciplines are seldom applied, so that descriptions remain
informal.
4. Since the notion of frame, as used in SM research, has never been made explicit in
cognitive or in discursive terms, and hence also cannot be applied in empirical
research, it is recommended that the term be abolished, and that both theory and
practice of SM research will be formulated in terms of the more specific notions
that have been glossed over by the notion of frame.

REFERENCES

Alexander, J. C. (Ed.). (1987). The Micro-macro link. Berkeley: University of California Press.
Angermuller, J., Maingueneau, D., & Wodak, R. (Eds.). (2014). The discourse studies reader. Main
currents in theory and analysis. Amsterdam Philadelphia: John Benjamins Publishing Company.
Appelrouth, S. A. (1999). Shifting Frames and Rhetorics: A Case-Study of the Christian-Coalition-of-
New-York. Social Science Journal, 36(2), 329-339.
Babb, F. E. (1997). Negotiating Spaces: Gender, Economy, and Cultural Politics in Post-Sandinista
Nicaragua. Identities-Global Studies in Culture and Power, 4(1), 45-70.
Bartlett, F. C. (1932). Remembering. A study in experimental and social psychology. New York
Cambridge, Eng.: The Macmillan company The University press.

Analyzing Frame Analysis 21

Bateson, G. (1955). A theory of play and fantasy. American Psychological Association Psychiatric
Research Reports, II. Reprinted in Steps to an ecology of mind. (pp. 177-193). New York:
Chandler. 1972.
Benford, R. D. (1993). Frame Disputes Within the Nuclear Disarmament Movement. Social Forces,
71(3), 677-701.
Benford, R. D. (2013). Master Frame. The Wiley-Blackwell Encyclopedia of Social and Political
Movements, Edited by David A. Snow, Donatella della Porta, Bert Klandermans, and Doug
McAdam. Chichester: Wiley.
Berbrier, M. (1998a). Half the Battle: Cultural Resonance, Framing Processes, and Ethnic Affectations in
Contemporary White Separatist Rhetoric. Social Problems, 45(4), 431-450.
Berbrier, M. (1998b). White Supremacists and the (Pan-)Ethnic Imperative: On European-Americans and
White Student Unions. Sociological Inquiry, 68(4), 498-516.
Brown, P. (1992). Popular epidemiology and toxic waste contamination: Lay and professional ways of
knowing. Journal of Health and Social Behaviour 33, 267-281.
Caiani, M., & Della Porta, D. (2011). The elitist populism of the extreme right: A frame analysis of
extreme right-wing discourses in Italy and Germany. Acta Politica, 46(2), 180-202.
Carroll, W. K., & Ratner, R. S. (1996a). Master Frames and Counter-Hegemony: Political Sensibilities in
Contemporary Social-Movements. Canadian Review of Sociology and Anthropology-Revue
Canadienne de Sociologie et D Anthropologie, 33(4), 407-435.
Carroll, W. K., & Ratner, R. S. (1996b). Master Framing and Cross-Movement Networking in
Contemporary Social-Movements. Sociological Quarterly, 37(4), 601-625.
Chafe, W. L. (Ed.). (1980). The pear stories. Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum.
Chakravarty, A., & Chaudhuri, S. (2012). Strategic Framing Work(s): how Microcredit Loans Facilitate
Anti-Witch-Hunt Movements. Mobilization, 17(2), 175-194.
Coley, J. (2015). Narrative and Frame Alignment in Social Movements: Labor Problem Novels and the
1929 Gastonia Strike. Social Movement Studies, 14(1), 58-74.
Connolly, W. E. (2005). The evangelical-capitalist resonance machine. Political Theory, 33(6), 869-886.
Cornfield, D. B., & Fletcher, B. (1998). Institutional Constraints on Social-Movement Frame Extension:
Shifts in the Legislative Agenda of the American-Federation-of-Labor, 1881-1955. Social Forces,
76(4), 1305-1321.
Croft, W., & Cruse, D. A. (2004). Cognitive Linguistics. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Daub, S. J. (2010). Negotiating Sustainability: Climate Change Framing in the Communications, Energy
and Paperworkers Union. Symbolic Interaction, 33(1), 115-140.
Della Porta, D. (2015). Social movements in times of austerity. Bringing capitalism back into protest
analysis. Cambridge, UK Malden, MA: Polity.
Diani, M. (1996). Linking mobilization frames and political opportunities: Insights from regional
populism in Italy. American Sociological Review, 61(6), 1053-1069.
Druckman, J. N. (2001). The implications of framing effects for citizen competence. Political Behavior,
23(3), 225-256.
Edwards, N. 2006. Meetings on contamination: Framing harmlessness. Humanity and Society 30, 7-23.
Entman, R. M. (2004). Projections of power. Framing news, public opinion, and U.S. foreign policy.
Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Evans, V., & Green, M. (2006). Cognitive Linguistics. An Introduction. Ediburgh: Edinburgh University
Press.
Fillmore, C. (1976). Frame Semantics and the Nature of Language. Berkeley: University of California.
Fiss, P.C., and P.M. Hirsch. 2005. The discourse of globalization: Framing and sensemaking of an
emerging concept. American Sociological Review 70, 29-52.
Franzosi, R. (2004). From words to numbers. Narrative, data, and social science. Cambridge, UK New
York: Cambridge University Press.
Gee, J. P., & Handford, M. (Eds.). (2012). The Routledge handbook of discourse analysis. London New
York: Routledge.
Gallo-Cruz, S. (2012). Negotiating the Lines of Contention: Counterframing and Boundary Work in the
School of the Americas Debate. Sociological Forum, 27(1), 21-45.
Gamson, W. A. (1988). Political Discourse and Collective Action. International Social Movement
Research, 1, 219-244.
Gamson, W. A. (1992). Talking politics. Cambridge England New York, NY, USA: Cambridge
University Press.
Garfinkel, H. (1967). Studies in ethnomethodology. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall, Inc.
Gerhards, J. (1995). Framing dimensions and framing strategies: Contrasting ideal- and real-type frames.
Social Science Information, 34(2), 225-248.

Analyzing Frame Analysis 22

Gerhards, J., & Rucht, D. (1992). Mesomobilization: Organizing and Framing in 2 Protest Campaigns in
West-Germany. American Journal of Sociology, 98(3), 555-595.
Goffman, E. (1974). Frame analysis. An essay on the organization of experience. New York: Harper &
Row.
Hall, T. E., & White, D. D. (2008). Representing recovery: Science and local control in the framing of US
Pacific Northwest salmon policy. Human Ecology Review, 15(1), 32-45.
Harrison, C.M., J. Burgess, and J. Clark. 1998. Discounted knowledges: Farmers’ and residents’
understandings of nature conservation goal sand policies. Journal of Environmental Management
54, 305-320.
Holland, J. (2014). Narrative fidelity to the Little red Book in the framing efforts of the red Guard
Movement: a theoretical model for foundational documents. Discourse & Society, 25(3), 383-401.
Hull, K. (2001). The political limits of the rights frame: the case of same-sex marriage in Hawaii.
Sociological Perspectives, 44(2), 207-232.
Ivakhiv, A. (2010). From Frames to Resonance Machines: The Neuropolitics of Environmental
Communication. Environmental Communication-a Journal of Nature and Culture, 4(1), 109-121.
Iyengar, S. (1991). Is anyone responsible? How television frames political issues. Chicago: University of
Chicago Press.
Jenkins, J. C. (1983). Resource Mobilization Theory and the Study of Social Movements. Annual Review
of Sociology, 9, 527-553.
Johnson-Cartee, K. S. (2005). News narratives and news framing. Constructing political reality. Lanham:
Rowman & Littlefield Publishers.
Johnson-Laird, P. N. (1983). Mental models. Towards a cognitive science of language, inference, and
consciousness. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press.
Johnston, H. (1995). A Methodology for Frame Analysis: From Discourse to Cognitive Schemata. In
Hank Johnston and Bert Klandermans (Eds.), Social Movements and Culture, (pp. 217-246).
Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.
Johnston, H. (2005). Comparative Frame Analysis. In Johnston, H., & J. A. Noakes (Eds.). Frames of
Protest. Social Movements and the Framing Perspective. (pp. 237-260). Lanham: Rowman &
Littlefield.
Johnston, H. (2013). Discourse Analysis and Social Movements. In The Encyclopedia of Social and
Political Movements, David A. Snow, Donatella della Porta, Bert Klandermans, and Doug
McAdam, (Eds.). (pp. 364-367). Malden, MA: John Wiley & Sons.
Johnston, H. (2014). What is a Social Movement? Cambridge, UK: Polity Press.
Johnston, H., & Klandermans, B. (1995). Social movements and culture. Minneapolis, Minn.: University
of Minnesota Press.
Johnston, H., & Noakes, J. A. (Eds.). (2005). Frames of protest. Social movements and the framing
perspective. Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc.
Karagiannis, E. (2009). Secularism in Context: The Relations between the Greek State and the Church of
Greece in Crisis. Archives Europeennes de Sociologie, 50(1), 133-167.
Ketelaars, P., Walgrave, S., & Wouters, R. (2014). Degrees of frame alignment: Comparing organisers'
and participants' frames in 29 demonstrations in three countries. International Sociology, 29(6),
504-524.
Krogman, N. T. (1996). Frame Disputes in Environmental Controversies: The Case of Wetland
Regulations in Louisiana. Sociological Spectrum, 16(4), 371-400.
Kubal, T. (1998). The presentation of political self: Cultural resonance and the construction of collective
action frames. Sociological Quarterly, 39(4), 539-554.
Labov, W., & Waletzky, J. (1967). Narrative analysis. Oral versions of personal experience. In J. Helm,
(Ed.), Essays on the verbal and visual arts. (pp. 12-44). Seattle: University of Washington Press,
Littlemore, J., & Taylor, J. R. (Eds.). (2014). The Bloomsbury companion to cognitive linguistics.
London New York: Bloomsbury.
Marichal, J. (2009). Frame evolution: A new approach to understanding changes in diversity reforms at
public universities in the United States. Social Science Journal, 46(1), 171-191.
Markowitz, L. (2009). How master frames mislead: the division and eclipse of nationalist movements in
Uzbekistan and Tajikistan. Ethnic and Racial Studies, 32(4), 716-738.
McCaffrey, D., & Keys, J. (2000). Competitive framing processes in the abortion debate: Polarization-
vilification, frame saving, and frame debunking. Sociological Quarterly, 41(1), 41-61.
McCammon, H. J. (2012). Explaining Frame Variation: More Moderate and Radical Demands for
Women's Citizenship in the U.S. Women's Jury Movements. Social Problems, 59(1), 43-69.
McCammon, H., Hewitt, L., & Smith, S. (2004). "No weapon save argument": Strategic frame
amplification in the us woman suffrage movements. Sociological Quarterly, 45(3), 529-556.

Analyzing Frame Analysis 23

McCarthy, J. D., & Zald, M. N. (1977). Resource Mobilization and Social Movements. A Partial Theory.
American Journal of Sociology, 82(6), 1212-1241.
Mercer, D. (2002). Scientific method discourses in the construction of “EMF science”: Interests,
resources and rhetoric in submissions to a public inquiry. Social Studies of Science 32, 205-233.
Meyer, D. S. (1995). Framing National-Security - Elite Public Discourse on Nuclear-Weapons During the
Cold-War. Political Communication, 12(2), 173-192.
Minsky, M. (1975). A framework for representing knowledge. In P. Winston (Ed.), The psychology of
computer vision. New York: McGraw Hill.
Mooney, P. H., & Hunt, S. A. (1996). A Repertoire of Interpretations: Master Frames and Ideological
Continuity in Us Agrarian Mobilization. Sociological Quarterly, 37(1), 177-197.
Noakes, J. (2000). Official frames in social movement theory: the FBI, Huac, and the communist threat in
Hollywood. Sociological Quarterly, 41(4), 657-680.
Neisser, U. (1967). Cognitive psychology. New York: Appleton-Century-Crofts.
Noonan, R. K. (1995). Women Against the State: Political Opportunities and Collective Action Frames in
Chiles Transition to Democracy. Sociological Forum, 10(1), 81-111.
Oliver, P. E., & Johnston, H. (2005). What a Good Idea! Ideologies and Frames in Social Movement
Research. In H. Johnston & J. A. Noakes (Eds.), Frames of Protest. Social Movements and the
Framing Perspective. (pp. 185-204). Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield.
Pedriana, N. (2006). From protective to equal treatment: Legal framing processes and transformation of
the women's movement in the 1960s. American Journal of Sociology, 111(6), 1718-1761.
Polletta, F. (2006). It was like a fever. Storytelling in protest and politics. Chicago: University of Chicago
Press.
Polletta, F., Chen, P. C. B., Gardner, B. G., & Motes, A. (2011). The Sociology of Storytelling. Annual
Review of Sociology, vol 37, 37, 109-130.
Quillian, R. A. (1963). Notation for representing conceptual information: An application to semantics and
mechanical English para- phrasing. SP-1395, System Development Corporation, Santa Monica.
Ravishankar, M. (2015). The realignment of offshoring frame disputes (Ofd): an ethnographic 'cultural'
analysis. European Journal of Information Systems, 24(3), 234-246.
Rohlinger, D. A. (2002). Framing the Abortion Debate: Organizational Resources, Media Strategies, and
Movement-Countermovement Dynamics. Sociological Quarterly, 43(4), 479-507.
Roth, A.L., Dunsby, J., & Bero, L. A. (2003). Framing processes in public commentary on US federal
tobacco control regulation. Social Studies of Science 33, 7-44
Sacks, H., Schegloff, E. A., & Jefferson, G. (1974). A simplest systematics for the organization of turn-
taking in conversation. Language, 50(4), 696-735.
Schank, R. C., & Abelson, R. (1977). Scripts, plans, goal, and understanding. Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence
Erlbaum Associates.
Schrock, D., Holden, D., & Reid, L. (2004). Creating emotional resonance: Interpersonal emotion work
and motivational framing in a transgender community. Social Problems, 51(1), 61-81.
Sciubba, J. (2014). Framing and Power in Aging Advocacy. Social Movement Studies, 13(4), 465-481.
Schutz, A. (1962). Collected papers. --. The Hague: M. Nijhoff.
Skillington, T. (1997). Politics and the Struggle to Define: A Discourse Analysis of the Framing
Strategies of Competing Actors in a New Participatory Forum. British Journal of Sociology, 48(3),
493-513.
Snow, D. A. (Ed.). (2013). The Wiley-Blackwell encyclopedia of social and political movements.
Malden, MA: Wiley.
Snow, D. A., & Benford, R.D. (1992). Master frames and cycles of protest. In: Morris, A.D., and Mueller,
C.M. (Eds.), Frontiers in Social Movement Theory. (pp. 133–155). Yale University Press, New
Haven, CT.
Snow, D. A., & Benford, R. D. (2005). Clarifying the Relation between Framing and Ideology. In H.
Johnston, & J. A. Noakes (Eds.), Frames of Protest: Social Movements and the Framing
Perspective. (pp. 205-212). Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield.
Snow, D., Benford, R., McCammon, H., Hewitt, L., & Fitzgerald, S. (2014). The Emergence,
Development, and Future of the Framing Perspective: 25+Years Since "Frame Alignment".
Mobilization, 19(1), 23-45. Snow, Rochford, Worden & Benford (1986) NOT FOUND
Snow, D. A., Rochford, E. B., Worden, S. K., & Benford, R. D. (1986). Frame Alignment Processes,
Micromobilization, and Movement Participation. American Sociological Review, 51(4), 464-481.
Snow, D., Tan, A., & Owens, P. (2013). Social Movements, Framing Processes, and Cultural
Revitalization and Fabrication. Mobilization, 18(3), 225-242.
Snow, D. A., Vliegenthart, R., & Corrigall-Brown, C. (2007). Framing the French riots: A comparative
study of frame variation. Social Forces, 86(2), 385-415.

Analyzing Frame Analysis 24

Stanbridge, K. (2002). Master Frames, Political Opportunities, and Self-Determination: The Aland
Islands in the Post-WWI Period. Sociological Quarterly, 43(4), 527-552.
Swart, W. J. (1995). The League of Nations and the Irish Question: Master Frames, Cycles of Protest, and
Master Frame Alignment. Sociological Quarterly, 36(3), 465-481.
Steinberg, M. W. (1998). Tilting the frame: Considerations on collective action framing from a discursive
turn. Theory and Society, 27(6), 845-872.
Steinberg, M. W. (1999). The talk and back talk of collective action: A dialogue analysis of repertoires of
discourse among nineteenth-century English cotton spinners. American Journal of Sociology, 105
(3), 736-780.
Tannen, D., Hamilton, H. E., & Schiffrin, D. (Eds.). (2015). The handbook of discourse analysis. 2nd
Edition. Malden, MA: John Wiley & Sons, Inc.
Thomas, W. I. (1966). Situational analysis: The behavior pattern and the situation. (1928). In M. Janovitz
(Ed.), W. I. Thomas on social organization and social personality. Chicago: Chicago University
Press.
Van Dijk, T. A. (1977). Text and context. Explorations in the semantics and pragmatics of discourse.
London New York: Longman.
Van Dijk, T. A. (1980). Macrostructures. An interdisciplinary study of global structures in discourse,
interaction, and cognition. Hillsdale, N.J.: L. Erlbaum Associates.
Van Dijk, T. A. (1988). News as discourse. Hillsdale, NJ: L. Erlbaum Associates.
Van Dijk, T. A. (1991). Racism and the press. London: Routledge.
Van Dijk, T. A. (1993). Elite discourse and racism. Newbury Park, Calif.: Sage Publications.
Van Dijk, T. A. (1998). Ideology: A multidisciplinary approach. London, England UK: Sage
Publications.
Van Dijk, T. A. (2008a). Discourse and context. A sociocognitive approach. Cambridge, UK New York:
Cambridge University Press.
Van Dijk, T. A. (2008b). Discourse and power. Basingstoke England New York: Palgrave Macmillan.
Van Dijk, T. A. (2009). Society and discourse. How social contexts influence text and talk. Cambridge
New York: Cambridge University Press.
Van Dijk, T. A. (2014). Discourse and knowledge. A sociocognitive approach. New York: Cambridge
University Press.
Van Dijk, T. A. (2015). Critical Discourse Studies: A Sociocognitive Approach. In Ruth Wodak &
Michael Meyer (Eds.), Methods of Critical Discourse Studies. Third Edition. (pp. 62-85). London:
Sage.
Van Dijk, T. A. (Ed.). (2011). Discourse Studies. A multidisciplinary introduction. New, one-volume
edition. London: Sage.
Vicari, S. (2010). Measuring collective action frames: a linguistic approach to frame analysis. Poetics,
38(5), 504-525.

Analyzing Frame Analysis 25