A Framing Analysis Research Project: Update (UPDATED)

Chris,

Isn't the trickiness involved in your example about abortion precisely what you'd want to study? Part of the difference in political commitment is a function of differences in representation that reflect different belief systems. That a conception of the concept ABORTION includes MURDER and UNBORN CHILD is part of what it is to be against abortion for lots of people. Right? Or maybe I'm misunderstanding what you're trying to do...

Will, unborn child vs. fetus is part of what I want to study, yes. In fact, I was thinking about it today, and it might be better, when there's conflict like that, to include both.

Part of why I want concepts at different levels is because I worry that we won't be able to get a full picture of the representation for abortion (for example) by asking people about abortion only. We'll also need representations of particular concepts associated with abortion, because you're going to talk about the issue at different levels, and you'll need frames for different levels. But you're right, when there's a conflict about what to call something, that conflict is part of what we're interested in, so we shouldn't leave it out.

Actually, you know what, now that I've gotten a couple answers in email, it's pretty clear that what I'm getting is exactly what I would want from the actual task. I'm going to update the post.

Freedom
Capitalism
Health Care
Social Security
Terrorism
Freedom of Religion
Separation of Church and State
Welfare
Crime
Corporate Greed
Outsourcing
Immigration
Globalization
Global Warming
Energy Independence
Nuclear Threat
Preemptive War

Is that the kind of thing you were looking for? Do you want conservative/liberal versions of these concepts?

Dave, no, that's perfect. Thank you.

Might I suggest using the top 5 cornerstone issues of liberals and conservatives, and if there's overlap see if some obviously populist things are left out to fill it?

For ex(not researched, a proper look at party platforms and etc is needed, and I'll try to use categories that have the preffered connotations of the 2 sides):
C;
_Security(war, terror, crime and punishment),
_Family(ss. marriage, education, family friendly policies),
_Abortion,
_Work ethic(welfare, taxation, fiscal responsibility)
_Faith(place of religion in public issues)

D;
_Rights equality(ss. marriage, pro-choice, no religion in public systems)
_Social justice(criminal rehabilitaion over punish, welfare)
_Equal access(quotas and affrim action, permissive immigration, higher minimum wage)
_Humanistic altruism(environmentalism, more sending programs)
_Conflict avoidance(anti-war, willing to make offers to stop nuke devel by iran, n.k)

Populist non-partisan;
_Power structure agnst(like anti-free trade and anti-corporate vs. all's fair that is legal)
_Green environmentalism(minimize human impacts on earth)
_Protectionism(anti-immigration, anti-outsourcing)

And then conflate the less defined or less important ones until you reach 10, and neutralise the base of each category from obvious biases. My list here was just a quick work and shouldn't be taken as anything but an example of a method for category selection.

I'm a new visitor to this blog btw, interesting subjects you cover.

Civil liberties
The Rights of citizens
Habeus Corpus
Cruel & Unusual punishment
Torturing prisoners
Giving up liberty for safety
Giving up safety for liberty

Hah! You know what, xenos, in the context of Lakoff, "family" is perfect. I think I'll include it in the list, even if it's not overtly political. It will be nice to be able to say, "This is what the content of conservative/liberal representations of FAMILY really looks like."

Be very careful not to allow the framing of politics in the media to determine what the actual issues are. I think you'd be best off taking the discussions in some suitably comprehensive political philosophy book as the core issues, and adding some ancillary cross-bearing issues in terms of hot button topics.

One thing to be very aware of is that political issues form an n-dimensional manifold, one dimension for each live topic. It's important each dimension be independent, at least conceptually if not practically. For instance, laissez faire economics may also be linked to small government, but treat them as independent and not surrogates for each other. The results may surprise you.

Your final analysis should be in terms of euclidean distances between the coordinates of each individual - you should be able to cluster them over an n-dimensional space in terms of Hamming Distances, and then use a cluster analysis package to find the relevant groups. A lot of bioinformatics tools already do this for large data sets.

- work
- economy
- authority
- success
- nature

I bet liberals and conservatives have VERY different ideas what those words mean.

Hum... Though it is nowhere said, should I assume this is US-oriented? (Remember that a lot of SB-readers are non-USians.) If yes, then skip this comment. If not, then I would mention
- Immigration
- Pluralism
- Laicity
- Globalization
- Intervention
- Autonomy
(since I'm now in Europe)

and
- Development
- Globalization
- Free market
- Equality
(since I come from Southamerica).

Hey Dileffante, you're right, I sometimes forget that people from all over the world read this (I sometimes forget that anyone reads this). I think the first study will focus on U.S. issues, but it might be interesting to look at differences between countries, too, so I think I'm going to set up an international version as well. So any suggestions you have about issues that people outside the U.S. are worried about will be useful.