The following comment was made by Matthew Nisbet, and I’d like to respond to it here, though I’ve also responded by way of comments in a few places:

I appreciate Greg Laden’s encouragement and his intense interest in framing. However, the posts at his blog dismiss literally hundreds of peer-reviewed papers across the fields of communication, political science, and sociology.

Though Greg wants to take us back to Goffman’s work from 1974, over the past three decades, research in the above fields have developed framing as a theory of media influence. For overviews and applications of the literature see the citations we reference in the Policy Forum article:

Price, V., Nir, L., & Capella, J.N. (2005). Framing public discussion of gay civil unions. Public Opinion Quarterly, 69, (2), 179-212.

Gamson, WA. and Modigliani, A. (1989). Media Discourse and Public Opinion on Nuclear Power: A Constructionist Approach. American Journal of Sociology, 95, 1-37.

See also the latest issue of the Journal of Communication, the flagship journal in the field. It’s a special issue devoted to framing and media influence. See especially the following overview:

Scheufele, D. A., & Tewksbury, D. (2007). Framing, agenda-setting, and priming: The evolution of three media effects models. Journal of Communication, 57(1), 9-20.

See also this earlier article by Scheufele, possibly the most heavily cited article in the field over the past decade:
Scheufele, D.A. (1999). Framing as a Theory of Media Effects. Journal of Communication 49 (4): 103-22

As we do in the Policy Forum article, in a recent book chapter, Scheufele applies framing as a theory of media influence to science controversies:

http://www.wellcome.ac.uk/assets/wtx032691.pdf

I appreciate these references, and have actually read a few of them. Indeed, Matt sent me some of them as PDF’s.

I would argue that I have not dismissed “literally hundreds of peer-reviewed papers.” I have, rather, ignored them (except in my most recent post on the topic … in preparation for that I read a couple of them). I ignored this literature in sociology and related disciplines largely because I’m a busy biological anthropologist and I’m engaged in keeping a handle on that set of thousands of peer reviewed papers. In fact, my initial comments were precipitated entirely on the clear fact that Nisbet and Mooney and some of the scholars that they cite themselves ignored a substantial literature on Frame Analysis, doing poor justice to the scholarship one usually expects in a published piece. I have an (only somewhat lame) excuse that Nisbet and Mooney can’t use: I was merely blogging, but they were using up valuable column inches in a major journal. On the other hand, to give them the credit they are due, theirs was not a peer reviewed paper, but rather a commentary, and the overlap between published commentary and blog is considerable. Bloggers should be willing to back up what they say but have freedom to be less formal, and the same more or less applies to published commentary.

But that is about as nasty as I want to get in this discussion: I have said in many places that I appreciate their perspective and I especially appreciate the fact that they have done what was required to get this conversation rolling, and for that I applaud and respect them and their efforts.

But let’s talk about Framing for a minute. I and others have suggested that this phenomenon, this “neo-Framing” that Nisbet and Mooney are talking about, is less like a thoughtful linguistic analysis as we see in the anthropological, Goffmanian version, but rather, more like “Spinning,” like we might see coming from an ad firm. (Look at the sidebar on the right …. you can find links to my other posts on the topic if you really want to spend the rest of the day on this…)

This may be what science needs, and to some extent this must be true, but I want to make a cautionary counterargument.

When I was a kid, we didn’t know for sure if black holes even existed, the structure of DNA was only just about to be discovered, and the Humour Theory was still pretty much in effect in the neurosciences. But McDonald’s had a pretty darn good hamburger for 28 cents. It was a quarter pound of ground beef on a sesame seed bun. Indeed, you could get “A quarter pound of fresh ground beef on a sesame seed bun, an order of fries, and a coke, and get change back for your dollar.” I can still hear that jingle. My friends and I used to walk two miles out of town to the McDonald’s that had opened up on Delaware Avenue in Bethlehem. After the meal, we’d stop at the Tastee Freeze for an ice cream, then we’d go over to the laundromat and recover the coins from the change machine into which we had stuffed an old sock a few days before. (That’s how we funded the trip to McDonald’s and Tastee Freeze …. but I digress.)

Today, we not only know that black holes really exist, but we are about to start making little baby ones in an accelerator in Europe. (Let’s hope the fabric of spacetime survives THAT experiment!) Not only do we know the structure of DNA, but we are starting to pile up Species Genomes as high as the pile of Need-To-Read Peer Reviewed Papers next to my bed. In the brain, we have imaged thought itself.

But at McDonald’s, if you still want your hamburger to be a quarter pound of meat, you’ve got to buy the special version (the Quarter Pounder). Apparently the original hamburger has shrunk, incrementally, over the years, to a much smaller size. The original order of fries is now the “super size” order, and the regular order is a few tablespoons in size. And the burger, the fries, and the coke will not get you change back for your dollar. (And, they’ve put anti-tampering devices in those lovely change machines at the laundry … damn….)

Science has progressed in part because of a continuous ongoing conversation, within the various sub disciplines and between them. Great progress has been made. Evolutionary progress, revolutionary progress. Because of the conversations. McDonald’s has “progressed” as a company because of advertising and marketing, but everything else about McDonald’s has devolved. Even, maybe, devoluted.

Thoughtful exchange, critique and debate on one side vs. marketing and spin on the other.

Conversations vs. Framing.

Get it?

Is a little bit of marketing, of framing ala Nisbet and Mooney, OK, or even necessary, or is it making a deal with the devil? I’ve said several times that I’m so glad they have started this conversation, and applauded them for it. But I’d like to note that while this conversation has been progressing nicely amongst many bloggers and commenters, we can see a little bit of what Framing ala Nisbet and Mooney might look like by looking in particular at Nisbet’s unique contribution.

Remember that block quote above that includes Nisbet’s comment? I have found the same exact comment or something very close to it pasted into, so far, numerous different blogs:

here
here
here
here
here
here
here
here
here
here
here

It seems that every time my name or my posts on framing are mentioned in the blogosphere, Matt goes and cuts/pastes this same exact comment on that blog. (The only exceptions are comments I’ve made over the last day … either the frame campaign is over, or Matt is preoccupied with other things…) Lots of people are making lots of comments on lots of blogs, and while some people may be making the same point more than once, for the most part what we are seeing is a conversation in which people’s thoughts are evolving, developing. It’s like a conversation, because it is a conversation. Except these posts by Matt. They are always the same. He’s got a message, a response, a particular …. what’s the word … oh, yes, SPIN, and that’s his story and he’s sticking to it.

Brilliant, efficient, possibly very effective from a marketing point of view. But it also spam. I think it is absolutely hilarious that if any one of us bloggers chooses to turn in this comment to Akismet as spam, they might all vanish from the blogosphere within a few hours … but again, I digress…

So, while many of us (including Nisbet and Mooney) are involved in a conversation about how to communicate our ideas, Nisbet is simultaneously engaged in what appears to be an exercise in neoFraming. My comment on their paper was critical of their theoretical treatment, of the fact that this “framing” idea was hanging in historico-theoretical space without proper foundation, and had gone adrift from an earlier, much more interesting and useful origin. In other words, they had ignored the literature. Nisbet’s response is to continue to ignore the literature (perhaps) and to go through great pains to make sure that everyone finds out that, in his opinion, I have ignored the literature. That is perfect spin. Recognize the framework of the critique and turn it around on the critic. Brilliant, efficient, possibly very effective from a marketing point of view.

But it is also spin. Others, such as PZ Myers and Larry Moran, have criticized the approach in the Science commentary as appeasement, and a lot of us think it looks like spin and we are suspicious of spin. But this is not just spin, it is spin of the worst kind.

It’s spam spin.

The real opportunity here is to examine this test case to see if it is what we want to do. Nisbet and Mooney wrote a commentary in science. They publicized it perhaps somewhat exaggerating it’s size and significance (one could make that argument or not). They have posted what are effectively positive encomia. Negative comments are not so much pointed to on their site unless they come from the big boys like PZ Myers, in which case the principle that applies is “all publicity is good publicity.” And they’ve got a mass mailing campaign specifically targeted at one of the more intensive critiques (mine) and that campaign uses one or two of the basic principles of spin. If a naive but intelligent reader were to view this debate strictly through their eyes (through their blog?) would they receive an unbiased and factual view of what is going on? In other words, if this was a take on a particular conversation going on in science, would it be represented well with this approach?

Actually, it probably is, because I don’t really think Nisbet and Mooney are really spinning this too much. I think they are involved in the conversation. I make it look bad in the previous paragraph, but I don’t actually think it is that bad. I was just spinning it. To see how it … feels. But there are elements of spin in their approach, perhaps the very elements that some of us do not want to see in future efforts to represent and promote science.

Again, I want to emphasize that I’m glad this commentary was published in Science. I think Nisbet and Mooney are trying to do something important and worthwhile, and I applaud their efforts. But I hope the concerns some of us raise are taken seriously.

I’m simply not sure this is where we want science to go. I still want change back from my dollar, or at least, a really cool collection of tiny black holes and a real conversation.

__________________________________________
Related Posts:

• Why scientists are not as good as creationists …
• Framing Science “Paper Is Deeply Flawed
• Framing Frames in the Service of Science
• Framing Nesbit: Is He Offering Us McScience?
• Can we frame something and see how it goes?
• Science is the BEST!!!
• Why we foam at the mouth
• Atheism is not the problem
• Instead of framing, let’s go camping!