Culture framing

I feel that in today’s world more than ever, our cultural awareness and knowledge is increasingly being put into a “framed” viewpoint or perspective. What I mean by this is that the way news, popular culture, and virtually every type of media in our current society is presented to us in a very processed and concentrated way. In other words, I think that what we are shown and told has already been stripped down and manipulated by what the “people in power” want us to know.

Personally, I think that public information, news, etc. is framed in every day of our lives. That’s not to say that framing is inherently bad; there are many things I am thankful I don’t know and am better off not knowing. That being said, there has to be a reason why certain information is presented to us in an “abridged” form, and although I have a few ideas as to why this may be, I’m not going to act all high and mighty and pretend like I know when I don't. What I can say about the societal impact of framing is that it definitely impacts how we live our lives, including simple day to day activities. An example of this might be a local news story about a possible shortage of bread in the town's groceries, and so people may run out and stock up on it heavily thinking that it is going to run out soon. However, the truth, obviously, is that there is a possibility, and there is no 100% proof that the shortage will really happen.

Our class discussion today was interesting because it touched on some different points about the concept of framing, though not all of them can relate to the previous example. However, the way framing was used in Matthew Shepard’s murder case just goes to show how much of an impact it can have on the public’s view of a big news story or something of the like.