Abstract
Intractable multiparty conflict is omnipresent in social life, but how do individuals in this type of dispute make sense of their situation and therefore enact it in a particular way? The current study investigated this question by examining how disputants from different stakeholder groups framed conflict situations in Ohio, Pennsylvania, Minnesota, and Texas that revolved around environmental issues. Qualitative and quantitative analyses of interview transcripts and archival data suggested that, based on their framing similarities, disputants could be grouped together in four clusters, each implying a different framing repertoire. In turn, the analyses indicated that the repertoire differences between these clusters fueled the intractability of each dispute.
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This research project was funded by the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation (#100431; #401588) and the National Science Foundation (#108705).
This research project was funded by the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation (#100431; #401588) and the National Science Foundation (#108705).
Acknowledgements
We kindly thank Marshall Scott Poole for his advice on the statistical analyses used in this study, the members of the Consortium on the Framing of Intractable Environmental Conflict for sharing their ideas, Karen Lee Ashcraft, François Cooren, James Taylor, and Elizabeth Van Every for commenting on earlier drafts of this article (one of which was a top-four paper in the Organizational Communication Division at the 2005 meeting of the International Communication Association in New York), and Mike Allen and three anonymous reviewers for offering helpful suggestions.
Notes
This research project was funded by the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation (#100431; #401588) and the National Science Foundation (#108705).