Theorising Media, Power and Politics in Discourse Theory and Framing Studies: Conflict or Co-existence?

The development of digital media has profound consequences for social and political interaction and, therefore, a new radical interactivity also influences the way in which media can be theorised and analysed? (Couldry, 2012, p. 2). As pointed out by Hall (2006) and others, media discourse may either contribute to or challenge the current status quo. Likewise, media framing studies indicate that the media may play an independent political role in terms of raising, shaping and morally judging issues of civic relevance (Entman, 2004). Framing and discourse theory have overlapping as well as different trajectories in empirical studies of mediated political communication. Both perspectives bear upon constructivist and critical thinking concerning the role of media in society (Gitlin 1980) and previous studies of media content have even sometimes conflated the terms discourse and frame/framing (Gamson & Modigliani, 1989). It could be claimed that no significant differences exist between discourse and framing studies of particular news content. However, with this paper we want to explicate how these two widely applied entrances to media analysis theorise media, power and politics differently. We believe that this is a both timely and necessary endeavour considering the radical interactivity that characterizes mediated political communication today. Conceptualisations of power and politics will be addressed in order to compare and examine these two approaches to political media analysis and their theorising of media. Firstly, when examining how media power is conceptualised within framing and discourse studies, traditional approaches to power (Lukes, 1974) may be relevant. A tension appears between current framing studies’ drawing on institutional approaches to media power and discourse studies’ focus on either media counter-power or the media’s role in hegemonic politics. Secondly, the paper argues that each tradition conceptualises politics differently. On the one hand, studies based on media framing draw on an institutional approach to politics where media play a role in supplementing and contesting political power in a (mostly pluralist) democratic setting. On the other hand, approaches drawing on media discourse see ‘the political’ as the possibility for disruptive and subversive forms of politics, which may allow for alternative political agency in an agonistic democratic space (Mouffe, 2005, 2013). In addressing questions of discontinuities in democratic politics, either in the form of the dislocation of politics (Laclau, 1990) or institutional change, digital media may play a (non)subversive or an (un)critical role when it comes to supporting or preventing societal change. Our claim is that framing studies and discourse theory, while apparently displaying a lot of similar traits, provide fundamentally diverging answers to the questions of how and why new developments in the media landscape can nurture political agency in a democratic situation.