Curmudgeonly Advice

The command and control of public attention in nations with the size and complexity of the United States is accomplished—if it is accomplished at all—primarily through mass communication. Americans today are virtually bombarded with news and propaganda about public affairs. This bombardment influences how citizens make sense of politics (framing), how citizens decide what is important in politics (agenda setting), and how citizens evaluate the policies and authorities that politics places before them (priming)—or so at least it is claimed. My remarks here are confined to theorizing and research on framing, which, from where I sit, is most in need of advice. How might Americans go about making sense of what Lippmann (1925, p. 24) once called the “swarming confusion of problems” that constitutes public life? Lippmann understood that a good answer to this question should begin by recognizing that in modern society, ordinary citizens must rely on others for their news of national and world affairs. Such reports inevitably privilege and promote particular points of view. Reporters and editors, but also presidents, members of Congress, corporate publicists, activists, and policy analysts are all engaged in a more or less continuous conversation over the meaning of current events.