Frames, Framing, and Reframing: Additional Resources

These references supplement the Knowledge Base Essay, Frames, Framing, and Reframing.

Additional Explanations of the Underlying Concepts:

Online (Web) Sources

Gray, Barbara, Ralph Hanke and Linda L. Putnam. Differential Framing of Environmental Disputes by Stakeholder Groups.
Available at: http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract-id=320364  [Backup Link]
Abstract: This paper contributes to a developing literature on the role of framing in organizational settings and in protracted environmental disputes in particular. The paper identifies four frame types (risk, conflict management, power, and views of nature frames) that can be used to understand how disputants make sense of environmental conflicts and offers predictions about differential use of these four frames by environmental disputants. Our results substantiate some differences in the frames utilized by different stakeholder groups - revealing predicable antagonisms as well as the presence of strange bedfellows. We link frame usage to the intractability of conflict and offer some recommendations for handling these frame-based disputes. Finally, our results suggest that greater insight into environmental conflicts may be derived from understanding the patterns of frames held by disputants rather than concentrating solely on interest-based stakeholder groupings.

Reframing the Debate: The New Silent Majority. 2004.
Available at: http://www.aworldofpossibilities.com/details.cfm?id=156  [Backup Link]

An interview with Lawrence Chickering, Celinda Lake, and George Lakoff. Our differences, amplified by power-driven politicians and conflict-driven media are threatening to divide and conquer us. But, in fact, we may well share more than we realize.

Blanciak, Peter. "Reframing: The Essence of Mediation." , August 2002
Available at: http://www.mediate.com/articles/blanciak.cfm  [Backup Link]

This article explains why, and how mediators reframe conflicts. It also lists a number of techniques that a mediator can use to achieve this aim.

"The Frame: An Introduction." , 1900
Available at: http://www.workingpsychology.com/frintro.html  [Backup Link]

A somewhat detailed discussion of framing.

Conflict Research Consortium Staff. The Image: Knowledge in Life and Society--Book Summary.
Available at: Link
This is a summary of Kenneth Boulding's The Image. The book presents a new unifying concept through which a better understanding of individual behavior and social dynamics may be had. He proposes, in effect, a new theory of knowledge: knowledge as image.

Treating Framing Problems.
Available at: Primary Link  [Backup Link]
This page lists and defines several framing strategies that can be used to determine what a conflict is about and how it is being addressed.

Offline (Print) Sources

Gray, Barbara, Linda L. Putnam and R. Hanke. The Role of Framing in Intractable Conflicts. The Pennsylvania State University; Center for Research in Conflict and Negotiation.

Ury, William L. "Change the Game: Don't Reject...Reframe." In Getting Past No: Negotiating With Difficult People. New York: Bantam Books, January 1, 1993. Pages: 59-85.
This chapter provides advice to people involved in dispute and/or conflict resolution practitioners, on how to go about reframing issues and statements that arise in the course of a negotiation. Ury describes various questions one may ask as well as tactics for effectively reframing contentious points, so that parties have a better chance at reaching agreement. Primary Link

Schon, Donald A. and Martin Rein. Frame Reflection: Toward the Resolution of Intractable Policy Controversies. New York: Basic Books, 1994.
This work focuses on the problem of intractable policy controversies. The work concentrates on the importance of frames and the notion that parties to policy controversies see issues, policies, and policy situations in different and conflicting ways that correspond to certain systems of belief and consequent modes of action. The authors outline a theoretical framework for thinking about these issues and employ multiple case studies to illustrate their innovative approach to solving policy disputes. The approach emphasizes the practice of reframing issues as a way toward resolution. Primary Link

Mayer, Bernard. "Framing a Conflict for Resolution." In The Dynamics of Conflict Resolution: A Practitioner's Guide. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass Publishers, 2000. Pages: 132-139.
This section defines the process of "successive reframing" and outlines a series of principles for effective reframing as well as describing four different levels on which issues may be reframed -- detoxification, definitional, metaphoric, and shifting the conflict paradigm. The section includes clear examples of reframed statements for each level discussed. Primary Link

Putnam, Linda L. and M. Holmer. "Framing, Reframing and Issue Development." In Communication and Negotiation. Edited by Putnam, Linda L. and M. Holmer, eds. Newbury Park: Sage Publications, 1992.
This chapter offers a review and critique of the theoretical approaches that researchers have employed in studying framing in negotiation. The review offers good background information on the concept of framing and the research that has been conducted on it. After reviewing previous literature on the subject, the authors introduce two alternative models of framing and reframing.

Deutsch, Morton and Peter T. Coleman, eds. Process and Outcome Goal Orientations in Conflict Situations: The Importance of Framing. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass Publishers, 2000.
The Handbook of Conflict Resolution: Theory and Practice part three: Personal Differences looks at the article "Processes and Outcome Goal Orientations in Conflict Situations: The Importance of Framing." Primary Link

Alinsky, S.D. Rules for Radicals: A Practical Primer for Realistic Radicals. New York: Random House, 1971.
"First published in 1971, Rules For Radicals is Saul Alinsky's impassioned counsel to young radicals on how to effect constructive social change and know "the difference between being a realistic radical and being a rhetorical one." Written in the midst of radical political developments whose direction Alinsky was one of the first to question, this volume exhibits his style at its best. Like Thomas Paine before him, Alinsky was able to combine, both in his person and his writing, the intensity of political engagement with an absolute insistence on rational political discourse and adherence to the American democratic tradition." -Amazon.com

Boulding, Kenneth E. The Image: Knowledge in Life and Society. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, June 1, 1956.
In The Image Kenneth Boulding presents a new unifying concept through which a better understanding of individual behavior and social dynamics may be had. He proposes, in effect, a new theory of knowledge: knowledge as image. Primary Link

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Examples Illustrating this Topic:

Online (Web) Sources

Frameworks Institute.
Available at: http://www.frameworksinstitute.org/index.shtml  [Backup Link]
This is the home page of the Frame Works Institute, which is an organization dedicated to advancing "the nonprofit sector's communications capacity by identifying, translating and modeling relevant scholarly research for framing the public discourse about social problems. FrameWorks designs, commissions, manages and publishes communications research to prepare nonprofit organizations to expand their constituency base, to build public will, and to further public understanding of specific social issues. In addition to working closely with social policy experts familiar with the specific issue, its work is informed by a team of communications scholars and practitioners who are convened to discuss the research problem, and to work together in outlining potential strategies for advancing remedial policies." The site provides information about the organization itself as well as access to many substantive articles regarding the framing of social issues and conflicts.

Kaufman, Sanda and Janet Smith. "Framing and Reframing in Land Use Change Conflicts." Journal of Architectural & Planning Research: Special issue Managing Conflict in Planning and Design , 1998
Available at: http://urban.csuohio.edu/~sanda/papers/frames98.htm  [Backup Link]

Proposed changes to community land use frequently give rise to protracted disputes. Cognitive psychology, communication, and decision-making research suggests that frames, which filter people's perception of a problem, can affect conflict processes and outcomes. This paper argues that frames may significantly influence public participation in decisions to change a community's physical space.

Framing Problems.
Available at: http://www.colorado.edu/conflict/peace/!overlay-problems.htm  [Backup Link]
This page lists and defines potential problems with defining what the conflict is about and how it is being addressed.

Offline (Print) Sources

Moore, Christopher W. "Defining Issues and Setting an Agenda." In The Mediation Process: Practical Strategies for Resolving Conflict, 2nd Edition. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass Publishers, 1996. Pages: 213-230.
This chapter discusses some of the steps that mediators must carry out in order to move disputants from a competitive to cooperative orientation. One of the key steps in this process is that of identifying issues to be dealt with, and framing and/or reframing them in a way that will allow the parties to move forward toward resolution. A significant portion of this chapter focuses on the concepts framing and reframing and incorporates examples of the method throughout. Primary Link [Backup Link]

Burgess, Guy M., Sanda Kaufman and Robert Gardner. "Just the Facts, Please: Framing and Technical Information." In Environmental Practice. Edited by Gray, Barbara, Roy J. Lewicki and Michael Elliott, eds. Oxford, OH: Oxford University Press, September 2003.
In this article, the authors introduce the concept of framing theory in the context of environmental disputes. They examine the various ways that individuals and stakeholders in environmental policy disputes interpret, relate to, and understand technical and scientific facts. They offer solutions to reframe common relationships to highly technical information in ways that allow greater communication between parties to environmental conflicts.

Making Sense of Intractable Environmental Conflicts: Frames and Cases. Washington, DC: Island Press, 2003.
This edited volume consists of a series of case studies that examine processes used to help resolve environmental conflicts. The work opens with an introductory chapter on how environmental conflicts are framed as well as a discussion of the meaning of the term intractability. The case studies cover natural resource cases, water cases, toxics cases, and growth management cases. The concept and importance of framing are emphasized throughout all of the pieces in the work.

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