The Frame Game

author: Lotte Biesheuvel

When I started my education at the Willem the Kooning Academy, I had never heard of the term social design. But now, as a graduate four years later, I call myself a social designer and researcher. For my graduation thesis and project I asked myself the question: How do I stimulate awareness among news consumers between 18 and 45 years regarding framing in new media?

In previous research I developed an action scheme about how the process of awareness works. The action scheme is based upon the planned behaviour theory of Fishbein and Azjen and different gamification techniques. According to these authors, behaviour exists of three 3 components; perceived behavioural control, propositional attitude, perception of the social norm. These three components form the behavioural intention that leads to behaviour. If you’re able to influence these you can influence behaviour. Regular behaviour can be found in perceived behavioural control, when you do something more often you’re sure you’re capable of doing it. The perception of the social norm has much to do with the communication or the common practice in your environment. Propositional attitude is very mutable and hard to measure but when a person cares a lot about something his or her propositional attitude will be very strong towards that. Based on this, I have divided the process of awareness into five steps.

Step 1 : New perspectives. Access to new and transparent information. Step 2 : Experiencing the value of this information and creating a new frame with this information. This new frame won’t be the same for everyone because everyone has their own unique frame as well. Step 3 : Applying this new frame Step 4 : The reflection on the experience of the application of this new frame. You reflect if this experience is positive or negative and how this can be of further influence on your daily life. Step 5 : The repetition of this application. You apply this to your daily living habits. You get an intrinsic reward because you made a discovery and you have gained more knowledge. This will motivate you to repeat step 1.

In previous projects I discovered new perspectives and reflection are the two most important parts of this process. They have the most impact on awareness.

Designing this action scheme and using it as my tool is not the thing that defines me as a social designer. However, a thing that does define me is the tool's intention to change behaviour in a structural way.

The framing experience

When I started this project, I soon discovered that if I wanted people to experience framing in news media, I should explore the source of framing and comprehend the system of the news media.

The news is omnipresent in our daily lives. We consume it from early morning until the evening, in all kinds of ways, through TV, newspapers, internet, telephones and radio. It determines what we talk about and how we view the world. Still, most people are not aware of the fact that the news isn’t a representation of the truth. That’s nothing new, Mark Twain mentioned this already in 1873: “it has become a sarcastic proverb that a thing must be true if you saw it in a newspaper”. The instant flow of information does not help to challenge people to think about the complexity of the subjects in the news. Twitter, facebook and other media that vent your opinion just encourage immediate explicit opinions.

Framing is a form of priming, a form of unintentional influence. The human brain is a very associative network. For example, a person who perceives the word as "round" will recognise the word "ball" slightly faster. This happens because round and ball are closely associated in memory. For instance, when news media talk about refugees, the words they use have a lot of negative connotations. And so these will be closely associated in memory. And this has a lot of influence on a person's judgemental skills. If the news consumer is aware of framing in news media, she/he will be more critical towards the significance of the news. And she/he might develop a more nuanced opinion about complex issues.

News is subject to framing, because of the many different steps between ‘the event’ and the publication, the different people that are involved in every step and the goals they pursue:' 'It often starts with an eye witness. Within the process towards publication, she/he is the one the closest to the incident but nevertheless, she/he experiences it from her/his own perspective. She/he will probably know some of the background of the incident but most of the time not all of it. She/he will respond to it very intuitively. The reporter, often a local journalist, will investigate the incident, talk to eye witnesses and try to figure out the cause. She/he is in contact with the correspondent. The correspondent usually isn’t anywhere near the incident, she/he could even be working from a neighboring country. Her/his job is to research the background of the incident and put it in a clarifying context. She /he reports to the editorial room of the news service she/he’s working for. The editorial room doesn’t only get information from the correspondent but also from different press agencies and through social media, where an incident can be online long before it has reached the media. This information can also be used in the final publication. Often, the opinion of a social media user is used as the public opinion, which can lead to a new and different perspective. The editorial room has to make decisions concerning the publication by means of other news channels, public opinions and other events occurring that same day. They also have to take into account that they have to sell the story to their readers. The writer of the editorial room has to make sure the story covers the right amount of words and meets the intentions of the editorial room. Also the headline should be catchy and attract the reader's attention. Briefly before the publication, the editor in chief performs a final review to check if the article needs small adjustments in the publication or if it needs to be rewritten. Sometimes there isn’t enough space for the publication due to other important news and the publication needs to be condensed. A lot of information gets lost in this process due to framing. By understanding the process it becomes clear how framing works. It happens consciously and unconsciously. The eye witness, reporter and correspondent are unconsciously framing the incident, their mental representations, simplifications and interpretations influence the way they cover the incident and how they communicate it. The editorial room, the writer and the editor in chief are consciously framing the incident by deliberately simplifying it and manoeuvring it deliberately towards the wishes of the news consumer.

After understanding the way news media work, I was able to simplify these systems. The simplified systems seemed to be a perfect basis for a game. By experiencing the system through a game, the players are able to feel how difficult it is to avoid framing.

When I developed these simplified newsmedia systems into a game, I constantly put my work up to test. As soon as I had a first version of the game, I organised a game night with my friends and asked them to play the game and be as critical as possible on the game system, the subject matter and the playfullnes. I learned that I still had to kill a lot of darlings, especially concerning the design: the players should understand and experience the main issues the game addresses.

Designing a game is something very different from designing a poster, for example. It much more about designing a working system everybody understands but also about designing an experience that’s unique for each individual. So visual aesthetics were none of my concerns in designing the game, until the very end. By collecting the players feedback after each test version, I was able to fine tune the game repeatedly. Creating the project isn’t possible without the cooperation of the target group. And this is another thing that defines me as a social designer.

I developed The Frame Game, a game which offers these new perspectives and reflection. In the game people play a part of the press process and this way they discover how framing works. It’s loosely based on a children's game, where the players whisper a sentence in each others ear and at the last player ends up with a complete different sentence than the start sentence. In The Frame Game, the players each get a different role, from eye witness to editor in chief. The eye witness experiences an incident (a short video), passes this on to the reporter and so on, until the editor in chief presents the publication. Each player has its own information and knows exactly what to do.

After testing the game a couple of times and fine tuning was more a matter of design details, I started collecting the publications. Each group played with the same incident but with different editorial rooms. Interesting enough all the publications were very different in tone of voice, some of them are very accurate regarding the given information where others are very exaggerated. The game itself creates new perspectives and insights for the players, they experience how easily words can be twisted, how interpretations mislead and how editorial rooms make decisions. The reflection that follows is evident because the group always consists of more than 5 players, who will share their feelings on the game and will connect this to the real world. To stimulate this the game, it is played with an incident that is closely connected to recent incidents. The game is played with a video and information about the 1993 Rodney King Riots. Players don't recognise the video as part of the Rodney King Riots, but at the end of the game they can make the connection between this game, the Riots in 1993 and recent events.

Next steps of the Frame Game

The prototype of the Frame Game was very successful and received a lot of recognition. The reactions of the players were very enthusiastic and they said it opened their eyes in certain ways. The research paper got a nomination for the WdKA research prize and the Frame Game won the ‘Drempelprijs’ for best graduation work in the Social Practices.

The Frame Game seems to make a good fit in the social science education at high schools. Currently I’m working with Marieke Veere Vonk as Studio Ace of Hearts (Harten Aas), and we’re testing the Frame Game at high schools. Already we learned that playing the Game in a classroom requires different side conditions such as more extensive explanation. We’re hoping to find a sponsor or a publisher to make the Frame Game available for the public.

We’re also looking for options to give the Frame Game a digital component, which makes it easier to play and allows it to be more directly focused at the present news media environment.