Framing dynamics and claimsmaking after the Parkland shooting

ABSTRACT

This paper unpacks how dynamic political and media systems shape the kinds of frames political actors champion, when and how they express support for frames and the implications of both for individual claimsmaking. To do so, we conduct a rigorous qualitative analysis of discourse during a two-week period in which the Florida legislature considered and passed the Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School Public Safety Act after a shooter killed 17 people in Parkland, Florida. We systematically explore how two framing dynamics – competition and amplification – shape what frames political actors champion and the relative effects of these dynamics on individual claimsmaking in 438 letters to the editor and op-eds appearing in mainstream outlets, 4,962 emails sent to Florida Governor Rick Scott, and 1,000 tweets. We find that amplification and competition shape the relative visibility of frames and the frequency with which individuals use these frames in their claimsmaking. Generally speaking, gun control and progressive groups selectively amplified frames associated with the emerging, student-led Never Again Marjory Stoneman Douglas movement and legislative frames that were consistent with their goals. This seems to have increased the visibility of these ideas in mainstream outlets and influenced claimsmaking insofar as individuals drew on amplified frames across the forums relatively frequently. This was not true of frames opposing gun control. Gun rights groups bickered with politicians and among themselves. As a result, gun rights frames were less prevalent in mainstream discourse and in individual claimsmaking.

KEYWORDS:

• Social Movements
• politics
• framing
• claimsmaking
• gun rights
• gun control

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 The bill may be found on The Florida Senate website at https://www.flsenate.gov/Session/Bill/2018/07026.

2 To be considered a frame or a relevant actor a code/actor had to appear at least five times in the data set.

3 If a subject line or more than two sentences of the written text was the same for at least three emails, the lead researcher searched for the text online to see if it was associated with some sort of collective effort.

4 We monitored key words instead of hashtags so that we would capture all the tweets using terms that were either specific to the Parkland case and legislation or to gun control and gun rights debates more generally.

5 We have coded over 6,500 tweets in the sample. Since we coded the 5,682 tweets using gun rights keywords/hashtags, we were able to compare our coding from the random sample to larger data set. They are remarkably similar, which is why we deemed 500 relevant tweets an appropriate sample.

6 A list of citations relative to this section are included in the Supplementary Materials.

7 Table provided in the Supplementary Materials.

8 Additional tables are available in the Supplementary Materials.

9 We also conducted a risk analysis to assess the odds of a frame’s appearance in editorial content. The results did not change. However, given the low frequency of some of the frames in the sample, we present the chi square results here.

10 Individuals also made several novel claims in their emails. The most frequent reminded Scott that they were Florida gun owners (10.6% of emails), who would vote against him in the future if he didn’t veto the bill (16.3% of emails). Table provided in Supplementary Material.

11 The press release can be viewed here: https://twitter.com/thisweekabc/status/967517805741596673

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Deana A. Rohlinger

Deana A. Rohlinger is a Professor of Sociology and Director of Research for the Institute of Politics at Florida State University. She is the author of Abortion Politics, Mass Media, and Social Movements in America (Cambridge University Press, 2015), New Media and Society (New York University Press, 2019) and more than 50 research articles and book chapters on digital media, political participation, and American politics. Deana's current research explores incivility, polarization, and extremism in individual claimsmaking around political controversies, including Supreme Court hearings and school shootings.

Warren Allen

Warren Allen is the Director of Undergraduate Studies in Information Technology and Informatics and Assistant Teaching Professor at Rutgers University. Warren teaches courses in human-computer interaction, social networks, and relational analytics. He conducts research on the role of information technology in our social, civic, and professional lives, and is a public-interest technologist currently working on a platform to support collaborative consumer activism.

Caitria DeLucchi

Caitria DeLucchi earned her Masters in Sociology at Florida State University in 2021.