There was a perceptible difference between the coverage on the tsunami that hit South-East Asia in December 2004 and the earthquake that hit Pakistan in October 2005. The tsunami received far more extensive coverage in all countries analyzed in both television and print media which in turn affected people's behaviour in terms of private donations.

... the tsunami received ... private donations amounting to $178 million while only $8 million has been collected for the earthquake so far.
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"Here may lie the most important effect of mass communication, its ability to mentally order and organize our world for us. In short, the mass media may not be successful in telling us what to think, but they are stunningly successful in telling us what to think about."
-Shaw & McCombs, 1977

http://www.agendasetting.com/res_theory. php#ASexamples
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Cross posted from:  RFK Action Front

George Lakoff and the Rockridge Institute have done a tremendous job of educating progressives about the importance of framing.  But as I troll through the progressive blogosphere, I notice that even some of the best bloggers (who, out of courtesy, will remain nameless here) make basic framing mistakes.  So as the risk of repeating what may be obvious to many--here is my Progressive Guide to Framing:

1. LEFT and RIGHT refer to baseball pitchers and driving directions not political ideas or policy choices. It seems to me that the biggest framing mistake progressives make is referring to progressive ideas as "left" or "lefty" and Republican or fundamentalist Christian ideas as "right" or "right wing."

Why is this such a disadvantageous frame?

The word "right" of course, has several meanings. For example, "right" can mean "correct" as well as "politically conservative." Only 8 to 15% of the adult population is left handed. Every time you use the terms right and left to refer to politics you are using a Republican frame that implies that Republicans are correct and progressive only represents 8-15% of the population. See the problem?

Peter Levine blogged about consensus today, and it got me thinking about Millennials, their affinity for collaboration, and how this impacts the current political environment.

Pollster.com presents a series of  tag clouds from last night's Democratic Presidential debate in South Carolina. Comparing the tag clouds for the different candidates gives you (some kind of) a measure of the way each of the candidates uses words. I posted the following as my observations:

Obama's tag cloud is almost devoid of words with powerful emotional content. Contrast that with Hillary. Edwards isn't bad, either. This is a weakness for Obama. If his words were not powerful, how will people remember him, unless his personal presentation made up for the weak content.

One of the key aspects of right-wing framing is the use of emotionally loaded language, in particular words that code for powerful images.

Cross-posted from Black Thought Blog

Something that has been pretty disappointing has been the inability of Democrats to frame the cost of the war in Iraq and its effect on the quality of our domestic lives. Sure, some have cited the absolute numbers, and some have made allusions to the alternative uses the money could have been used for, but nobody has really driven this point home.

Not using the cost of the war as a frame for domestic policy discussion is a rather shocking and glaring missed opportunity.

Let alone that the over-extension of our National Guard helped slow the response to Hurricane Katrina, the financial resources used in the Iraq war could have drastically changed the face of the nation domestically.

Crossposted at Progressive American Patriot

For the past six years George W. Bush has had a way with words. He has created an interesting conception of freedom and liberty. Liberals and progressives cringe when he uses these words, because we know what they really represent in the radical conservative lexicon is death, destruction and exploitation. This has led many of us to proclaim what we have never proclaimed before: if this is liberation, we don't want to be liberated!

Cross-posted from Black Thought

Most people, including many African-Americans, see Malcolm X as a simplistic hate-monger. The story of Malcolm X is a very complicated one. Indeed, Malcolm himself is a very complicated man. Before he toured Mecca, hate-mongering could be used to characterize an aspect of what he did, although arguably not the majority of his focus.

That's a longer discussion for a different day.

However, one thing that is certain, is that after his trip to Mecca and his break from the black muslim movement, the way in which he saw the world, and the way in which he tried to speak to Americans and the larger international community, was truly a model that progressives should understand, study, and adopt.

The brilliance of the mind of Malcolm X was his ability drastically re-frame issues and narratives.

Progressives are often smart, have great proposals, are even simply right, but we are bad, at least in America, at drastically re-framing the underlying assumptions of the debate.

We engage with conservatives and others about our proposals and vision for America, but we do so without the necessary re-framing of the issue towards a frame that most supports our point of view. The frame (framing) in which a picture or painting sits (the issue) will drastically affect how that picture (the issue) is seen by those who look at it. Especially by those who are looking at the picture (issue) for the first time.

Malcolm X was simply a master at this type of drastic re-framing. Here's a telling example:

"If violence is wrong in America, violence is wrong abroad. If it's wrong to be violent defending black women and black children and black babies and black men, then it is wrong for America to draft us and teach us how to be violent in defense of her. And if it is right for America to draft us and teach us to be violent in defense of her, then it is right for you and me to do whatever is necessary to defend our own people right here in this country." - Malcolm X

This point is from a debate about non-violence in the context of the civil rights movement. However, it illustrates how effective drastically re-framing a debate can be. It eviscerates not one, but a few underlying assumptions most Americas would come to the table with.The onus gets put back on those advocating for war to explain the internal inconsistencies in their own justifications for war, and it also puts the onus on them to explain their criticism of those who did not support non-violence in the civil rights movement in the U.S..

And it all happens in two sentences.

George Lakoff has been a leading proponent of the importance of framing, but I think Malcolm X's ability to frame leaves Lakoff in the dust.

Progressives bring interesting ideas and approaches to government, but they don't create a foundation of of underlying assumptions or ideology on which to place these policy structures.

I think often progressives have their agenda, but try to message it so that it doesn't sound like what it actually is. Instead, we try to make it come off as un-threatening and centrist as possible hoping that nobody will notice what it really is. We do this "hiding" because we believe that America isn't ready for unabashed progressives, and we need to make it seem centrist to stand a chance of being understood.

So put aside Lakoff for a time, and pick up some of Malcolm's speeches, particularly in the last year of his life.

You may not agree with everything that he says, but you will undeniably see a true master of re-framing at work.

One that all progressives can stand to learn from.