Thinking inside the frame: A framing analysis of the humanities in Danish print news media

Abstract

The humanities, the natural and social sciences all represent advanced and systematic knowledge production—and they all receive public funding for doing so. However, although the field of public understanding of science has been well established for decades, similar research attention has not been directed at the humanities. The purpose of this study is to argue the case for further research of public understanding of the humanities and to take a first step in that direction by presenting a study of the framing of the humanities in Danish print news media. Different framings of the humanities are analyzed. Despite the differences in the issue-specific frames, the generic framing of the humanities shared by most articles is as follows: 75% explicitly frame the humanities as deficit, while the remaining 25% are more neutral. Consequently, if newspapers constitute the only source of information concerning the humanities, newsreaders may not be much wiser in understanding what the humanities might be—but they will know that whatever the humanities is, it is broken and useless.

Keywords

humanities human sciences media frames print media science-as-news science-as-popularization

Get full access to this article

View all access options for this article.

References

Albæk

Christiansen

Togeby

(2003) Experts in the mass media: Researchers as sources in Danish daily newspapers, 1961–2001. Journalism & Mass Communication Quarterly 80(4): 937–948.

Arnoldi

(2005) (Medieskabt) ekspertise i medierne [(Media constructed) expertise in news media.]. Dansk Sociologi 3(16): 9–24.

Bate

(2011) The Public Value of the Humanities. London: Bloomsbury Academic.

Beecher

(1989) Academic Tribes and Territories: Intellectual Enquiry and the Cultures of Disciplines. Milton Keynes: Society for Research into Higher Education.

Belfiore

(2013) The “rhetoric of gloom” v. the discourse of impact in the humanities: Stuck in a deadlock. In: Belfiore

Upchurch

(eds) Humanities in the Twenty-First Century: Beyond Utility and Markets. Basingstoke: Palgrave McMillan, pp. 17–43.

Belfiore

(2015) “Impact,” “value” and “bad economics”: Making sense of the problem of value in the arts and humanities. Arts and Humanities in Higher Education 14(1): 95–110.

Benford

Snow

(2000) Framing processes and social movements: An overview and assessment. Annual Review of Sociology 26: 611–639.

Benneworth

(2015) Tracing how arts and humanities research translates, circulates and consolidates in society. How have scholars been reacting to diverse impact and public value agendas? Arts and Humanities in Higher Education 14(1): 45–60.

Bod

(2013) A New History of the Humanities: The Search for Principles and Patterns from Antiquity to the Present. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

10.

Breckler

(2012) What everyone needs to know about psychology, 12 March. Available at: http://www.apa.org/science/about/psa/2012/03/about-psychology.aspx/

11.

Brewer

Sigelman

(2002) Political scientists as color commentators: Framing and expert commentary in media campaign coverage. The Harvard International Journal of Press/Politics 7(1): 23–35.

12.

Bryant

Miron

(2004) Theory and research in mass communication. Journal of Communication 54(4): 662–704.

13.

Butler

(2014) Ordinary, incredulous. In: Peter

Jewett

(eds) The Humanities and Public Life. New York: Fordham University Press, pp. 15–37.

14.

Candlin

Crichton

(2011) Discourses of Deficit. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan.

15.

Cassidy

(2014) Communicating the social sciences: A specific challenge? In: Bucchi

Trench

(eds) Routledge Handbook of Public Communication of Science and Technology, 2nd edn. Hoboken, NJ: Taylor and Francis, pp. 186–197.

16.

Collini

(2012) What Are Universities for? London: Penguin.

17.

D’Angelo

(2002) News framing as a multi-paradigmatic research program: A response to Entman. Journal of Communication 52(4): 870–888.

18.

Davies

Atun

Fille

Monterola

(2011) Finding frames: Comparing two methods of frame analyses. Communication Methods and Measures 5(4): 329–351.

19.

De Vreese

(2005) News framing: Theory and typology. Information Design Journal + Document Design 13(1): 51–62.

20.

Engel

(2013) Frame spillover: Media framing and public opinion of a multifaceted LGTB rights agenda. Law and Social Inquiry 38(2): 403–441.

21.

Entman

(1993) Framing: Toward clarification of a fractured paradigm. Journal of Communication 43(3): 51–58.

22.

Entman

Rojecki

(1993) Freezing out the public: Elite and media framing of the U.S. anti-nuclear movement. Political Communication 10: 155–173.

23.

Eriksen

Møller

(1990) Svære ord og lette [Difficult and easy words]. Copenhagen: Statens Informationstjeneste.

24.

Gamson

Modigliani

(1989) Media discourse and public opinion on nuclear power: A constructionist approach. American Journal of Sociology 95(1): 1–37.

25.

Goffman

(1986 [1974]) Frame Analysis: An Essay on the Organization of Experience. Boston, MA: Northeastern University Press.

26.

Grove

(2015). Social sciences and humanities faculties “to close” in Japan after ministerial intervention. Times Higher Education, 14 September. Available at: https://www.timeshighereducation.com/news/social-sciences-and-humanities-faculties-close-japan-after-ministerial-intervention/

27.

Halevi

Bar-Ilan

(2013) Trends in arts & humanities funding 2004-2012. Research Trends 32: 7–10.

28.

Hazelkorn

(2015) Making an impact: New directions for arts and humanities research. Arts and Humanities in Higher Education 14(1): 25–44.

29.

Hijmans

Pleijter

Wester

(2003) Covering scientific research in Dutch newspapers. Science Communication 25(2): 153–176.

30.

Holborow

(2012) What is neoliberalism? Discourse, ideology and the real world. In: Block

Gray

Holborow

(eds) Neoliberalism and Applied Linguistics. Abingdon: Routledge, pp. 14–32.

31.

Kohring

Matthes

(2002) The face(t) of biotech in the nineties: How the German press framed modern biotechnology. Public Understanding of Science 11(2): 143–154.

32.

Matthes

Kohring

(2008) The content analysis of media frames: Toward improving reliability and validity. Journal of Communication 58(2): 258–279.

33.

Morgan

(2010). Fears made flesh: Only STEM teaching grants spared CSR scythe. Times Higher Education, 20 October. Available at: https://www.timeshighereducation.com/news/fears-made-flesh-only-stem-teaching-grants-spared-csr-scythe/413956.article/

34.

Nelson

Oxley

Clawson

(1997) Towards a psychology of framing effects. Political Behaviour 9(19): 221–246.

35.

Nussbaum

(2010) Not for Profit: Why Democracy Needs the Humanities: With a New Afterword by the Author. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.

36.

O’Brien

(2015) Cultural value, measurement and policymaking. Arts and Humanities in Higher Education 14(1): 79–94.

37.

Olmos-Penuela

Benneworth

Castro-Martinez

(2014) Are “STEM from Mars and SSH from Venus?”: Challenging disciplinary stereotypes of research’s social value. Science and Public Policy 41(3): 384–400.

38.

Olmos-Penuela

Benneworth

Castro-Martinez

(2015) Are sciences essential and humanities elective? Disentangling competing claims for humanities’ research public value. Arts and Humanities in Higher Education 14(1): 61–78.

39.

Pitman

Berman

(2009) On what benefit and to whom? Linking Australian humanities research to its “end users.” Journal of Higher Education Policy and Management 31(4): 315–326.

40.

Rudd

(2015) Awareness of humanities, arts and social science (HASS) research is related to patterns of citizens community and cultural engagement. Social Science 4(2): 313–338.

41.

Sala

(2013) One, two, or three cultures? Humanities versus the natural and social sciences in modern Germany. Journal of the Knowledge Economy 4(1): 83–97.

42.

Schafer

(2012) Taking stock: A meta-analysis of studies on the media’s coverage of science. Public Understanding of Science 12(6): 650–663.

43.

Scheufele

(1999) Framing as theory of media effects. Journal of Communication 42(1): 103–122.

44.

Small

(2013) The Value of the Humanities. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

45.

Smith

(2014) Why it’s time for a humanities festival, 15 May. Available at: http://beinghumanfestival.org/time-festival-humanities/

46.

Smith

(1997) The history of the human sciences. In: Smith

(ed.) The Norton History of the Human Sciences. New York: W.W. Norton & Company, pp. 3–34.

47.

Snow

(1959/1993) The Two Cultures. London: Cambridge University Press.

48.

Summ

Volpers

(2016) What’s science? Where’s science? Science journalism in German print media. Public Understanding of Science 25(7): 775–790.

49.

Trowler

(2012) Tribes and Territories in the 21st-Century: Rethinking the Significance of Disciplines in Higher Education. London: Routledge.

50.

Van Zoonen

Vliegenthart

(2011) Power to the frame: Bringing sociology back to frame analysis. European Journal of Communication 26(2): 101–115.

51.

Vestergaard

Nielsen

(2015) From the preserves of the educated elite to virtually everywhere: A content analysis of Danish science news in 1999 and 2012. Public Understanding of Science. 26(2): 220–234. DOI: 10.1177/0963662515603272.

52.

Weiss

Singer

(1988) Reporting of Social Science in the National Media. New York: Russell Sage Foundation.

53.

Wien

(2014) Commentators on daily news or communicators of scholarly achievements? The role of researchers in Danish news media. Journalism 15(4): 427–445.

54.

Wilder

(2012) Rhetorical Strategies and Genre Conventions in Literary Studies. Teaching and Writing in the Disciplines. Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press.