Recategorizing political frames: A systematic review of metaphorical framing in experiments on political communication

Framing theory is one of the most important theories in communication. One of the key debates today is about the tendency of scholars to mostly study issue-specific frames instead of generic frames. As a new approach to this debate, we propose a recategorization of frames. Following the proposition that metaphor is an important reasoning device in political communication, we examined the presence of metaphorical framing in recent political framing experiments. The main results show that almost one in three experiments involves metaphorical framing, and one in six frames is metaphorical, irrespective of frame type. By showing reasonable presence of metaphorical framing, this study demonstrates that the challenge of issue-specific prevalence may not be as problematic as previously suggested.