■ Abstract The recent proliferation of scholarship on collective action frames and framing processes in relation to social movements indicates that framing processes have come to be regarded, alongside resource mobilization and political opportunity processes, as a central dynamic in understanding the character and course of social movements. This review examines the analytic utility of the framing literature for un- derstanding social movement dynamics. We first review how collective action frames have been conceptualized, including their characteristic and variable features. We then examine the literature related to framing dynamics and processes. Next we review the literature regarding various contextual factors that constrain and facilitate framing processes. We conclude with an elaboration of the consequences of framing processes for other movement processes and outcomes. We seek throughout to provide clarifi- cation of the linkages between framing concepts/processes and other conceptual and theoretical formulations relevant to social movements, such as schemas and ideology.

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Framing Processes and Social Movements: An Overview and Assessment

This article provides a critique of recent developments in research examining media frames and their influence. We contend that a number of trends in framing research have neglected the relationship between media frames and broader issues of political and social power. This neglect is a product of a number of factors, including conceptual problems in the definition of frames, the inattention to frames sponsorship, the failure to examine framing contests within wider political and social contexts, and the reduction of framing to a form of media effects. We conclude that framing research needs to be linked to the political and social questions regarding power central to the media hegemony thesis, and illustrate this focus by exploring how framing research can contribute to an understanding of the interaction between social movements and the news media. Examinations of the production, character, and influence of news stories represent an enduring focus of media scholarship. A variety of approaches, including gatekeeping, agenda setting, organizational studies of news work, and analyses of news bias, have explored either the gathering of news or journalism’s political role. In recent decades, a rapidly expanding research literature on news frames has sought to provide a comprehensive perspective on the production, reception, and influence of news texts. This article provides a critique of recent developments in research examining media frames and their influence. We contend that a number of trends in framing research have neglected the relationship between media frames and broader issues of political and social power. This neglect is a product of conceptual problems in the definition of frames, the inattention to frame sponsorship, the failure to examine framing contests within wider political and social contexts, and the reduction of framing to a form of media effects. In keeping with early sociological research on framing (Gitlin, 1980; Tuchman, 1978), we suggest that framing processes need to be examined within the contexts of the distribution of political and social power. We, therefore, call for the integration of framing research with the

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The Neglect of Power in Recent Framing Research

Framing Processes, Ideology, and Discursive Fields

Constructivist theorists view norms as shared understandings that reflect `legitimate social purpose'. Because the focus is on the ideational building blocks that undergird a community's shared und...

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Persuasion, Frames and Norm Construction

This article offers a critique of framing perspectives on collective action discourse and an alternative dialogic approach. The argument set forth is that the latter sees collective action discourse as a joint product of actors' agency and discourse dynamics, including its multivocal nature. Such discourse is a joint product of challengers' rational actions and the constraints of the discursive field. Challengers seek to appropriate and subvert the dominant discourses that legitimate power, creating discursive repertoires. To illustrate this, the contentious actions of English cotton spinners in the 1820s and 1830s are analyzed. The spinners produced a discursive repertoire drawing on mill owners' dominant discourses.

The Talk and Back Talk of Collective Action: A Dialogic Analysis of Repertoires of Discourse among Nineteenth‐Century English Cotton Spinners

In his essay introducing Part III, Mayer Zald seeks to refine our understanding of the concept of“framing processes” by identifying five topics that have often been confounded or otherwise blurred in previous discussions of the concept. These five topics are (1) the cultural tool kits available to activists for framing purposes, (2) the strategic framing efforts of movement groups, (3) the frame contests that arise between the movement and other collective actors, (4) the role of the media in shaping these frame contests, and (5) the cultural impact of the movement in modifying the available“tool kit.” In this chapter I hope to advance our understanding of topics 2–4 in this list. Specifically, I aim to do four things: (1) review the existing work on“strategic framing efforts,” (2) critique what I see as the“ideational bias” in our understanding of framing processes, (3) discuss the framing function of movement tactics, and (4) conclude by using the concrete case of the American civil rights movement to illustrate the way in which tactics were consciously used to“frame” action and thereby attract media attention and shape public opinion in ways that led to a decisive victory in the movement's“frame contest” with federal officials and Southern segregationists. FRAMING AND FRAME ALIGNMENT PROCESSES Among the most provocative and potentially useful of the works on the cultural dimensions of social movements have been the writings of David Snow and various of his colleagues (Snow et al., 1986; Snow and Benford, 1988, 1992) on the role of“framing” or“frame alignment processes” in the emergence and development of collective action.

Doug McAdam

Papers

Comparative Perspectives on Social Movements: The framing function of movement tactics: Strategic dramaturgy in the American civil rights movement