Framing politics

This dissertation supplies a number of research findings that add to a theory of news framing effects, and also to the understanding of the role media effects play in political communication. We show that researchers must think more about what actually constitutes a framing effect, and that a dissociation of framing from other media effects concepts is not necessarily the ideal way to go in creating a more advanced framing theory. We also provide the first contours of a theory of news framing effects over time. Our results initially support the notion of a long-term influence of news frames on political attitudes, but also prompt questions about how stable these effects really are. Future research must continue to determine in what ways and to what extent our daily life is affected by how the news frame politics.