Abstract

Framing as a subject of empirical inquiry in the field of political communication has been attracting growing research interests from the beginning of the 21^st century. As a research programme in the field, contemporary framing studies are concerned basically with the interaction between news construction and societal-level consequences, underscored by a three-stage process: frame building, frame setting and framing consequence. An attempt to consider the patterns of political news framing, which takes cognisance of building and/or setting frames at the journalistic level, without considering the societal-level consequence of audience consumption of the news text leaves a crucial gap in the research process. This paper identifies audience factors as moderating variables as well as agenda setting and priming as mediating variables in contemporary framing research that should consider societal-level consequences. It proposes an integrated research model of framing, which takes the moderating and mediating variables into consideration. It argues for the new research direction on the basis of the reality of the 21^st century and recommends the model as a guide to empirical inquiries and subsequent theory building on framing in political communication and other related fields.

Key Words: Framing, Framing Research, Political Communication, Integrated Model.

*Oluwakemi Oriola is a Lecturer in the Department of Creative Arts, Tai Solarin University of Education, Ijagun, Ijebu Ode, Ogun State, Nigeria

^JCMR Journal  of  Communication and Media Research, Vol. 9, No. 2, October  2017, 120 – 130