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I got you! Source is at the end. So, framing "is the process by which a communication source, such as a news organization or a political leader, public relations officer, political advertising consultant, or news consumer, defines and constructs a political issue or public controversy". Framing is actually considered by some scholars a second level effect of agenda setting, which "influences what media consumers think about and the public agenda via accessibility heuristics." In terms of news media, you have agenda setting and framing. There are an infinite amount of events of that happen in the world, or public issues worth caring about and reporting on a subset of those events and public issues, merely bringing awareness of those things to news audience's attention, is agenda setting. So, having identified an event or public issue to report on, then you can imagine there are different perspectives, each emphasizing some facts and figures or elements of how they understand the event or public issue and de-emphasizing others. Framing is that act of choosing which facts and figures matter and which do not. Okay, now, priming "leverages heuristics with a certain context to guide evaluations. That is, people can't know everything about everything, so they take from mediated news a particular context and evaluate the actors and issues within according to that context." In other words, given a frame about an issue, when confronted with that issue in the future, people will draw upon previous frames to evaluate the actors within the narrative according to the chosen frame. There's a systematic way to approach understanding framing. Robert Entman's Theory of Framing provided that system. It asserts that frame provide a problem definition, a causal diagnosis, a moral evaluation, and suggest remedies or ways to fix the problem. Problem Definition: What are the cost or benefits of the event or issue? Causal Diagnosis: What forces creating the problem? Moral Evaluation: Are the agents causing the problem doing good or bad? In what way? Remedy Proposals: Suggest ways to fix a problem based on how likely they are to fix it. I am interested in this topic from a critical political perspective. So, I'll use a story from Fox News as an example. This is one of my favorites towards the beginning of the Iran war. Iranian Sleeper Cells May Be Hiding 'In Plain Sight' Waiting to Target Rural US Areas, Terrorism Expert Warns So, if you read that article, what's the problem? How is the problem defined? A counterterrorism expert says that Iranian sleeper cells may be hiding "in plain sight," waiting to strike rural areas in America. Following strikes by the U.S. military on several Iranian nuclear sites on June 22, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) issued a National Terrorism Advisory System Bulletin, stating there's a heightened risk for Iranian-backed or domestic terrorism. The problem is that Iranian sleeper cells may be activated. What's the causal diagnosis? It's the potential Iranian leadership retaliation for the US strikes on Iranian nuclear sites. Also, because it's Fox News, they threw in Gilliam said the Biden administration's border policies enabled Iranian illegal immigrants to come into the U.S. with impunity, creating the conditions for sleeper cells to exist. The moral evaluation? I mean, you can look at the language being used to characterize the sleeper cells: Hiding in plain sight Retaliatory violence Terror cells Sleeper cells Iranian illegal immigrants The article draws a direct relationship between the October 7th attack on Israel that had nothing to do with Iran to claim "that a similar attack could happen". Moral evaluation is obviously bad. So what's the remedy? Following the U.S. attack on Iran's nuclear facilities, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) has tamped up enforcement efforts targeted at Iranian illegal immigrants. Since June 18, over 130 Iranian nationals have been arrested, multiple federal sources told Fox News, adding that 670 Iranians are in ICE custody. ICE is the solution. So, the agenda setting is bringing to our attention the potential for Iranian sleeper cells attacks, and the framing suggests that these cells are bad and a threat to Americans, especially rural Americans. Now, having read this and if you accepted this frame that instills fear of Iranian in you, imagine you read a story about how ICE is going door to door looking for Iranians. Well, if Iranians are bad, then ICE's actions might seem reasonable to you. So the fame of Iranians as threats to Americans leads to future evaluation of the actors—ICE and Iranians—in that similar context. That's priming. But like...imagine if Iran were to write a story about its own sleeper cells (which, btw, do not exist. This story is heavy on the "possibility" and "likelihood" and "could". The threat is imaginary). Given the same hard facts—Iranians in America, the US strikes, Iranian leadership's vengeful desires—do you think they'd frame it similarly? Probably not. And, do you think Iranian Americans would accept this framing of their demographic? Also probably not. But the hard facts exist nonetheless...the framing of the story, however, leads us to a specific conclusion about the relationship between Iranians and America. Source: News Narratives and News Framing—Constructing Political Reality (I cannot recommend this book enough if you want to improve your news media literacy)