Framing analysis in a transitional media context
The current paper consists of a draft chapter of my pending dissertation, focusing on competing professional identities in the Ethiopian state media. The particular chapter is meant to serve as background analysis of pro-government content on a central media channel in the Ethiopian state media structure, the one and only national television channel Ethiopian Television (ETV). In 2009–10, ETV broadcast a documentary series focusing critically on the private press in the country, followed by a series of response and debate programmes. The overall series, including the talkshow/debate part, consisted of 14 programmes. Broadcast a few months before the national elections in May 2010, the series instigated unfavourable responses from the public, not least from the political opposition.
The purpose of the paper is twofold: First, to offer an analysis of politicized content on ETV, including the preceding production processes, using a framing analysis approach with some application of rhetorical analysis. The analysis draws particularly on Scheufele’s (1999, 2000) frame-building concept, encouraging the consideration of the entire production process in the analysis (thus representing a shift from ‘frame analysis’ to ‘framing analysis’).
Secondly, the paper provides a critique of conventional uses of framing and rhetoric analysis when applied in a transitional media context. Important in this regard is the notion that conventional framing analysis presupposes a liberal media framework, whereby individual journalists are assumed significant influence in the production process. However, in Ethiopia, where the government retains substantial control with journalistic production, two methdological concerns surface in the analysis:
(a) With regard to the frame-building concept, an assessment of the ETV documentary suggests that the impact of journalists and the professional environment is vastly overestimated in conventional approaches to framing analysis. In Ethiopian media production, the authority of the individual journalist is significantly minimized in comparison with structural and organizational factors. This calls for an important reconsideration of professional autonomy and restraints in light of the local media context.
(b) The analysis of the documentary’s rhetoric demonstrates that its role and function as a mediated text must be expounded not in isolation, as is sometimes the case in frame studies, but towards the societal surroundings and the public perception. Even though the concerned ETV documentary series might resemble propagandistic discourse when judged against common criteria, the series simultaneously stirred critical reponses from the public. This observation epitomizes the importance of evaluating the argumentative function of a media text in relation to the conditions of the particular media society in which it operates rather than considering it on the basis of textual analysis alone.
These findings, I argue, indicate that established frame-building methodology entails a conceptual inclination which makes it more compatible with liberal, Western media environments than with the conditions of a transitional media society such as Ethiopia.
The purpose of the paper is twofold: First, to offer an analysis of politicized content on ETV, including the preceding production processes, using a framing analysis approach with some application of rhetorical analysis. The analysis draws particularly on Scheufele’s (1999, 2000) frame-building concept, encouraging the consideration of the entire production process in the analysis (thus representing a shift from ‘frame analysis’ to ‘framing analysis’).
Secondly, the paper provides a critique of conventional uses of framing and rhetoric analysis when applied in a transitional media context. Important in this regard is the notion that conventional framing analysis presupposes a liberal media framework, whereby individual journalists are assumed significant influence in the production process. However, in Ethiopia, where the government retains substantial control with journalistic production, two methdological concerns surface in the analysis:
(a) With regard to the frame-building concept, an assessment of the ETV documentary suggests that the impact of journalists and the professional environment is vastly overestimated in conventional approaches to framing analysis. In Ethiopian media production, the authority of the individual journalist is significantly minimized in comparison with structural and organizational factors. This calls for an important reconsideration of professional autonomy and restraints in light of the local media context.
(b) The analysis of the documentary’s rhetoric demonstrates that its role and function as a mediated text must be expounded not in isolation, as is sometimes the case in frame studies, but towards the societal surroundings and the public perception. Even though the concerned ETV documentary series might resemble propagandistic discourse when judged against common criteria, the series simultaneously stirred critical reponses from the public. This observation epitomizes the importance of evaluating the argumentative function of a media text in relation to the conditions of the particular media society in which it operates rather than considering it on the basis of textual analysis alone.
These findings, I argue, indicate that established frame-building methodology entails a conceptual inclination which makes it more compatible with liberal, Western media environments than with the conditions of a transitional media society such as Ethiopia.
Publisert i Paper presented at master class for PhD students, Nordic Network in Journalism Studies, University of Stockholm, Sweden, 2012
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