The concept of framing consistently offers a way to describe the power of a communicating text” (Entman, RM. 1993).
Robert M Entman stated in his Journal of Communication that “to frame is to select some aspects of aperceived reality and make them more salient in a communicating text.” To put this in more simple terms, framing gives the audience a type of experience when looking at a product or advertisement, rather than just selling the product itself. In the marketing and consumption process, we learn it is not as straightforward as it seems.
For example, when you see an advertisement for a hair product and depicted is a beautiful woman with luscious hair frolicking in a flower garden, you are not only being sold nice hair – you are also being sold the idea that you will feel a certain way when owning this product.
Jordan Greenhall’s concept of ‘thinking vs simulated thinking’ goes deep into the idea that we now communicate with “a vast and often nuanced script of pre-defined signals and ‘appropriate’ responses” that “even resembles thinking” (Greenhall, J. 2018) This is important to the framing concept as we spend so much time having a strict perceived point of view defined by society that we barely think for ourselves and what we want, hence why that hair product looks so appealing.
Jordan Hall. 2019. On Thinking and Simulated Thinking – Deep Code – Medium. [ONLINE] Available at: https://medium.com/deep-code/on-thinking-and-simulated-thinking-5e434e92cf86. [Accessed 13 May 2019].
Entman, R., 1993. Framing: Toward Clarification of a Fractured Paradigm. Journal of Communzcatzon, 1, 51.