Throughout Australia — and the world — there are hordes of PR people, think tanks, politicians and others who spend their days and nights thinking about the holy grail of PR: how to frame issues, events, products and ideas in ways that set the agenda for debate and action.
Framing is PR people’s single most important, and most significant, activity. Framing — with phrases, attitudes or ideologies — sets the frame of reference within which the news report events and statements and how people see things.
At its simplest level it employs the use of words and phrases. Examples are the Bush-Howard phrase “cut and run”, as a way of describing the otherwise sensible policy of getting out of Iraq. Similarly, when Christian fundamentalists stopped referring to their anti-Darwinism as “creationism” and started to call it “intelligent design” they were re-framing their position hoping to change how you thought about it.
But words and phrases are really Framing 101, and if you don’t go beyond them, you end up boring people or opening yourself to ridicule. While there are many big policy things going wrong for Kevin Rudd and Tony Abbott, one of their current elementary mistakes is not moving on from Framing 101.
For the PM, the framing phrase de jour seems to be, “I make no apology”, which apparently is supposed to convey toughness and determination. As it keeps being used to explain backflips and policy timidity, the phrase lacks some effectiveness. For Abbott the phrases do jour are “great big tax” and “too many people”.
Now a proviso is necessary here. When you just start to get absolutely sick of mouthing some political or product message, there is a slight chance that there are a few people out there who are just starting to notice.
The best example of a line that finally got through, was Andrew Peacock’s “as sure as night follows day” line during the interminable coronation (sorry election) campaign Bob Hawke inflicted on Australia. Peacock might not have won, but by the end of the campaign (when — in Mungo McCallum’s long ago description of a Liberal cabinet minister’s lengthy and boring speech — amoebas had evolved into sentient beings while it was going on) it was much closer than everyone expected.
Another struggle over framing was around Malcolm Turnbull’s (no relation) decision to stay on. The Liberals sought to frame it as evidence that they were likely to win the next election. The government tried to frame it as evidence that Turnbull knew they were going to lose. Turnbull was smart enough to not only frame it in terms of a response to pleas to stay and help save the seat, but time it for a period in which it would attract limited attention and leave as many options as possible open.
On the other hand, after a week or so of framing by phrase alone, the commentariat are heartily sick of it and start complaining that you need a new line. The PM is at that stage now and Abbott may get there soon if he can be consistent on anything for a week or so.
In Rudd’s defence, “I make no apology” perhaps makes more sense than the election campaign catch all “working families” — conveying the sense of traditional nuclear families joined in legally sanctioned wedlock. This one was probably a good way of positioning yourself as Howard-lite by excluding three quarters of Australian household formations (gays, lesbians, pensioners, retired, unemployed, single people, etc ). Although how much sense “I make no apology” makes depends on how you regard all the things for which he ought to make apologies.
Abbott’s “great big tax” might get some traction except the public regards all taxes as “great big taxes” and reluctantly pays them. “Too many people” is also interesting because it raises some delightful questions about controls on population growth. Turning back alleged hordes of refugees is probably popular but controlling the population has some wrinkles — one child families, DINKIES, more contraception, abortion (round up the usual suspects) — which might be unpalatable to the public and a Mad Monk.
The alternative is not just a new narrative as the commentariat allege. Moreover, as most modern media coverage is the antithesis of coherent and engrossing narrative, one wonders what they mean by the word.
Rather, the alternatives are some more sophisticated versions of framing. Indeed, the Rudd-Abbott advisers might be well served to suggest they make the leap to Framing 201 and read George Lakoff’s Don’t think of the Elephant (2005) or, better still, leap straight to postgraduate study and Robert M. Entman’s Framing: Towards Clarification of a Fractured Paradigm (Journal of Communications 1992). Both are subjects to be re-visited by Come in Spinner on another occasion whether the advisers do or not.
Very interesting.. thanks for the article.
So… how do we get ordinary Aussie voters, to recognise “framing” when it happens? How do we avoid (and help others avoid) being swept along by the crap that is so often the framing that’s happening?
Are we, or are the majoirty of us, just fools for the picking? Or does some discernment actually take place?
It is a sad indictment of society in general that such ‘activities’ get their own label. It really means that we are, as a rule, easily seduced or repelled by words rather than fact.
Call it advertising, call it propaganda, call it publicity, or call it alerting the public — the use of phrases to sway opinion, rather than giving them information, is, in essence, misrepresentation or at the very least an act of misleading because NOTHING in politics, can actually be reduced to a phrase and still do the topic/policy/event justice.
Noel Turnbull: “Framing is PR people’s single most important, and most significant, activity”! Accordingly, as sure as night follows day, astute Kevin Rudd has launched “the nation’s first national male health policy”! ”It’s a pretty important time that we do that, we’re probably about 110 years late”, he said.
“The Govt would spend $16.7 million to deal with health challenges facing men who die, on average, five years earlier than women, and are more likely to suffer from cardiovascular disease and lung cancer than women”! (Hence the $25 million outlay for the broadband feasibility study).
In conclusion, Rudd’s commitments included $6.9million for a long-term study on the social determinants of male health, $6million to promote the role of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander men in their children’s and families’ lives, and $3 million for the Australian Men’s Sheds Association”!
• Yet strangely enough, Rudd omitted prostate cancer elementary PSA testing from “the national male health policy”! Failing also to inform the forsaken citizens whose working-life-taxes nurtured the system (in the zionist era of universal deceit), that since the mid 2009 major changes curtailed bulk-billing practices.
Affecting ultrasound screening and pathology services that singled-out cancer markers blood testing in contrast to the longstanding, previous widespread practice of the bulk-billing 87% outpatient services. As a result men are charged $42 for PSA test, versus some $130 for the women’s equivalent CA 125 ovarian cancer analysis (which doesn’t have any annual rebate). Perhaps justifiable in accordance with the Rudd govt set priorities in taxpayers revenue distribution? Yet it’s just a commonsense notion: To be well informed by the govt in the authentic democracy!
Actually, prostate cancer afflicted Wayne Swan advocated on 21-03-06 that men over 40 with a family history of prostate cancer and all men over 50 years should undergo a blood test for prostate-specific antigen (PSA). Emotional Mr Swan even pointed-out at the untimely painful death among many thousands whose cancer went undetected at an early stage. Yet currently as a treasurer on Capital Hill, Mr Swan rather to apply the blowtorch within razor-gang-tactics against the old and infirm.
Anyone seeking to ascertain the viability of the conditional PSA tests bulk-billing terms ought to peruse 18-01-10 dated attachment received by me on 22-01-10 within the email dispatched from Canberra as a consequence of my complaint emailed to the Minister for Health on 15-11-09. Incredibly though, respondent claimed that she replied to 18-01-10 dated email, supposedly received on the day of her “prompt response”!
Incorporating Rudd govt’s declaration: “In order to encourage pathology providers to bulk bill, from 1 November 2009, the government introduced new bulk billing incentives for all pathology episodes at a cost of $348 million over four years (alert reader with a bit of luck to post us a link apropos). This will encourage pathologists to maintain their current high rate of bulk billing”.
Noel Turnbull: “When you just start to get absolutely sick of mouthing some political or product message, there is a slight chance that there are a few people out there who are just starting to notice”: The insidious totalitarianism! To avoid its hegemony, we must be aware of the enormous control over every form of mass-media,
zionists possess. Who are the master manipulators of
political power!
Although the print-media is no longer as powerful as it once was, while the broadcasting media are now the most potent factor in shaping general popular attitudes, the owners, editors and journalists of national newspapers still have immense power. In particular, it is the national newspapers which decide the issues on which elections will, and will not be fought.
Press coverage is still the key factor which makes or breaks politicians, and which sets the parameters of “acceptable political thought“. The national newspapers have long been termed the “Fourth Estate“, but even this phrase underestimates their power. It is in truth no exaggeration to say that whoever controls the press, controls the political direction of the usurped nation!