Interpreting Images of Fracking: How Visual Frames and Standing Attitudes Shape Perceptions of Environmental Risk and Economic Benefit

ABSTRACT

The news media’s increased reliance on visual communication to illustrate complex processes and promote learning stresses the importance of investigating how visual content impacts the understanding of scientific issues. In this paper, we investigate how members of the public interpret and make sense of differentially framed images of hydraulic fracturing (fracking) depicting environmental risk, economic benefit, or issue protest. For the analysis, a repeated measures online experiment was conducted with 250 participants to evaluate 40 photographs of fracking operations and consequences. Quantitative coding and thematic analysis of open-ended responses to the images reveal that standing attitudes, operationalized as support, opposition, or indecision about fracking, segments viewers into distinct groups and shapes interpretations of environmental risk and economic benefit. Issue opponents are more likely to indicate concern for the environment regardless of frame shown, whereas undecideds and supporters cite the impact on human health more frequently, largely in relation to job site safety. Supporters also see the least ambiguity, and most economic gains, in images about the controversial production practice.

KEYWORDS:

• Visual framing
• hydraulic fracturing (fracking)
• environmental risk
• theme analysis
• polysemy
• message interpretation
• standing attitudes

Acknowledgments

The authors would like to thank Andy King, Melanie Sarge, and Matthew vanDyke for their assistance with image selection and study fielding, and Riley Davis for his assistance with coding.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

ORCID

Amber Krause http://orcid.org/0000-0002-3542-0342

Erik P. Bucy http://orcid.org/0000-0003-4925-2244

Notes

1. A focus group study of different stakeholder groups in the north of England (e.g., mothers, ex-miners, local historians, environmentalists, land holders) found that participants often resisted the framing of informational materials about fracking presented for discussion.

Claims of consummate knowledge and mastery were challenged; legitimate policy was seen not to rest solely on expert knowledge; fracking was seen frequently as a technology that could create more problems than solutions; and, fracking was presented as simply one possible innovation trajectory that could be pursued more or less rigorously or possibly not at all. (Williams et al., 2017, p. 98)

2. Since the center of a scale can also mean a conflicted or moderate attitude, rather than indecision, we examined our thematic findings for confirmatory post hoc evidence that undecideds expressed more uncertainty and ambiguity in their responses to the images than either opponents or supporters. In five out of six cases, respondents in the “undecided” category expressed more ambiguity and uncertainty in their responses than opponents or supporters both individually by frame and across all frames combined (see Figures 4–6). Thus, we are confident that the label “undecided” is descriptive of this attitude group.

3. Another common response to the images was what we originally identified as a “descriptive” account, where participants simply wrote down a literal description of the image they had just seen. Such accounts constituted 18.9% (n = 322) of all responses in our initial analysis. Because these purely descriptive responses did not represent a form of interpretation about image meaning, they did not constitute a theme and were therefore excluded from the analysis. Following Hall’s (1980) typology, responses that were highly consistent with the frame presented (e.g., environmental destruction, economic competitiveness) were given dominant interpretations by viewers, whereas interpretations that constitute our six other themes represented negotiated or oppositional readings of the images presented.