Frame Diversity and Citizen Competence: Towards a Critical Approach to News Quality

This article identifies two basic models of citizen competence (the ignorant citizen and the rational citizen) in which normative theories of journalism and standards of news quality are grounded. I propose the interpreting citizen as an alternative view of citizen competence. According to this model, the availability of diverse interpretive frames in the public realm, particularly in the news media, is an important precondition for enhancing citizen competence. Given flaws in existing standards for evaluating journalism quality, the news media should be judged in terms of their performance in presenting diverse interpretive frames, rather than in terms of informational goals. Keywords: Citizen CompetenceFramingNews StandardsNews QualityDiversity Part of the argument presented here was originally developed in the author's Ph.D. dissertation, defended at the Department of Communication of the University of California, San Diego. Part of the argument presented here was originally developed in the author's Ph.D. dissertation, defended at the Department of Communication of the University of California, San Diego. Acknowledgements The author thanks the committee members: Daniel Hallin (advisor), Michael Schudson, Ellen Seiter, Akos Rona-Tas, and Samuel Popkin. The author also thanks CSMC's anonymous reviewers and participants of the Seminar on Historical Change and Social Theory at Tulane University, especially Nancy Maveety and Malcolm Willison. Notes Part of the argument presented here was originally developed in the author's Ph.D. dissertation, defended at the Department of Communication of the University of California, San Diego. 1. The Columbia School was heavily influenced by democratic realism, which tends to question the rationality of ordinary citizens and to promote the view that politics should favor the needs of politicians and parties (Bucy & D'Angelo, 2004). 2. I am not suggesting that Lippmann's path-breaking work is irrelevant to contemporary discussions of news and citizen competence. I nevertheless agree with Petersen (Citation2003) that the importance of Lippmann lies more in the questions he raised than in his answers. 3. For a comparison between Lippmann and Dewey, see Peters (1989), Schudson (1998, pp. 211–219), and Bybee (1999). 4. This definition of consistency admittedly remains too general and it is not yet clear how to operationalize it. Kuklinski and Quirk (2001) reviewed studies of public opinion and concluded that they generally failed to present coherent or satisfactory measures of civic performance. To advance in this direction, I present a specific indicator for consistency, which needs to be further developed and clarified. I propose comparing the preferences of groups who have been exposed to competing frames to those of groups who have been exposed to a single interpretive frame. The assumption is that, everything else being constant, the first group will achieve more consistent preferences than the second. 5. As Page (Citation1996) puts it, the two-party system contributes to the illusion that every issue has only two sides and tends to stifle dissent. Several authors argue that the media often restrict debate by organizing it primarily in relation to the narrow range of frames that originate from the two-party system, while “illegitimate” challengers are rarely offered the opportunity to oppose dominant frames (Gamson & Modigliani, 1987; Reese & Danielian, 1994; Tuchman, Citation1978, p. 112). Additional informationNotes on contributorsMauro P. Porto Mauro P. Porto is an assistant professor in the Department of Communication at Tulane University