Pursuing Political Persuasion: War and Peace Frames in the United States after September 11th

Abstract

Despite the prominence of framing analysis in social movement research, the ways that power-holders and challengers attempt to persuade the general public remain under-theorized. We develop a multidimensional typology of what content producers frequently anticipate will make their frames potent. Moreover, we argue that several contextual factors influence which of these dimensions are emphasized in frames. To assess these propositions, we conducted an analysis of statements issued by President Bush and 10 US peace movement organizations following the September 11th attacks. Both sides touched upon all dimensions. President Bush's statements took advantage of discursive and emotional opportunities in crafting messages supportive of war and repression. Illustrating their strategic nature, PMO statements either appropriated or rejected dominant discourses for any single dimension. While peace groups took advantage of emotional opportunities, oppositional cultures curtailed their use of discursive opportunities. Lacking democratic legitimacy and rational legal authority, peace groups devoted a higher proportion of text to establishing the empirical credibility and the moral authority of their claims. The study advances social movement theory by highlighting the interplay of culture, power, and agency in the production of public collective action frames.

Keywords:

• Social movements
• peace movements
• frame analysis
• political culture
• September 11
• United States of America

Acknowledgements

This research was funded, in part, by a grant from the American Sociological Association's Fund for the Advancement of the Discipline, and by a grant from the National Science Foundation (SES–0423289). We thank Chris Bellas, David Castillo, Denise Dollar, Mekha Rajan, Musa Tuzuner and Douglas McKinzie for their research assistance.

Notes

1. Thematic patterns across collective action frames constitute discourses. Much of our recent work goes beyond the framing literature by focusing both empirically and conceptually upon discourses (e.g. Coy et al., 2008; Woehrle et al., 2008). Within this article, however, we have decided to work within the boundaries of frame analysis in an effort to make its application in future studies more useful.

2. Our definition differs from Ferree's (2003), in that we assume discursive opportunities vary over time, and that at certain moments the general public may be more receptive to oppositional discourses than to dominant discourses.

3. We weighted code frequencies for each peace movement organization using the following formula: (Median # Words for all PMOs/Total Words for Individual PMO) multiplied by (Mean # Words per Paragraph for Individual PMO/Median of PMO Means). We then summed the weighted frequencies to create one value for each code.

4. Texts of specific statements issued by peace movement organizations referenced in this article are available upon request.