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Framing Theory: How The News Shapes The Way We Think

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Pictured is Constance who was the women who lived in the house prior

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Different angles used throughout the series/episode

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FX's American Horror Story capped off its freshman season Wednesday with an epic finale that laid rest to several theories and opened the door to quite a few new mysteries. Would Ben survive? What happened to the babies? What will Season 2 look like?

Here, The Hollywood Reporter responds to the big burning questions that were revealed in the season finale, titled "Afterbirth."
STORY: 'American Horror Story' Finale Preview: What Happens After 'Birth'
1. Will Ben survive? No. Just as Ben is finally ready to leave the house with what he thinks is his son, Hayden and the ghosts from the "Home Invasion" episode attack him, taking a rope to his neck to hang him from the chandelier, where he dies -- joining Vivien and Violet in Murder House purgatory.

2. What happened to the stillborn baby that Charles delivered and handed to Nora? Was it a stillborn baby? Nope! Turns out that the baby wasn't stillborn after all -- it survived momentarily before perishing in Nora's arms, thus joining the swelling ranks of the undead inside Murder House. In a touching moment, Vivien hears the baby's screams and finds out that her other child -- Ben's baby -- survived and that the Harmons will be happy, together, forever. Let's just hope the house has an endless supply of diapers.
STORY: 'American Horror Story': 5 Things Learned From 'Birth'
3. Who's the daddy? Ben and Tate each fathered one of the babies, but was the child delivered stillborn Ben's? Is the child growing at an alarming rate Tate's? Yes and yes. After jumping ahead three years, the baby Constance kidnapped (aka Little Michael) -- to raise as her own -- kills his babysitter and is alarmingly happy about it, sitting in a rocking chair, smiling, with blood on his hands. "Now what am I going to do with you," Constance says. That's what we're wondering, too, Constance. Will the baby grow up to be Dexter? Crossover, anyone?

4. Speaking of growing at an alarming rate, what's with that anyway? What kind of "demon baby" is it? Apparently the killing kind, see No. 3.

5. Will Ben realize that the surviving baby (assuming the stillborn baby is dead, that is) isn't his? Yes. In the beginning of the episode, when Ben is contemplating suicide, he reveals to his ghostly wife that he knows the living twin isn't the baby he fathered. Later, as the Harmons decorate their Christmas tree, Ben meets his son for the first time and says, "I didn't think it was possible for me, Vivien, but I'm happy." It's like he knows this is his son. Is this the final message of the series, which co-creator Ryan Murphy has lamented for months is about marriage and infidelity? That cheating only wrecks the family? That there are no winners in infidelity?
STORY: 'American Horror Story': Connie Britton, Dylan McDermott Tease 'Birth'
6. Why do all the ghosts of the house -- Nora, Hayden, Chad and Pat -- have baby fever? Who knows! Did we miss something in the 90-minute finale that explained why everyone in that house wanted to get their undead hands on Viv's babies? Theories? Why was it so important to get the Ramos family, the (temporary) new owners of Murder House -- out of the place once the Harmons realized they wanted to have a baby?

7. What's it going to take for Ben to finally get his ass out of the house? Visions of his dead wife and daughter. Ben ignores a stern plea from Constance to take the baby and never set foot in the house again, while Vivien decides to ignore her own advice and reveal herself to Ben in an effort to save his life. Ultimately, after blaming Constance for all the tragedies that have befallen his family, it was her he should have listened to.

8. Why does Rubber Man return and who's wearing the suit now that Vivien and Violet know it was Tate who originally wore it? Surely the buff promo photo isn't Tate, right? It's Ben in the Rubber Man suit this time. After realizing that the Ramos family who move in are planning to have a baby of their own, Vivien, Ben and Moira rally the good ghosts in the joint to scare the living daylights out of them -- and essentially re-enact the torment that the Harmons experienced in the pilot.

9. How do you get rid of the undead? Billie Dean's "c roatoan" ritual from 1590 didn't exactly work when Violet attempted to banish Chad and Pat from the property. Unclear. But we do know how the house will get rid of new, living residents.

10. How will Moira play a role? She has a history with Constance after being trapped in the house at her hands and is still loyal to the home. Will she want a house of happy ghosts and play a role in deciding who gets to play mommy? She played a big one when she helps Vivien lead the charge to spare the Ramos family when she tells Viv: "Some spirits in the house are angry and vengeful and eager to inflict their fate on others. But many of us are innocent, kind and blameless victims at the hands of another and we don't want to see more suffering in this house." Who knows if Vivien and Ben would have been able to get the new family out of the house were it not for Moira. In a rewarding twist, Moira becomes the godmother to the ghost baby.
STORY: 'American Horror Story': Did You See Violet's Reveal Coming?
11. Who will finally retain custody of the baby when all is said and done? Constance will raise the baby Tate fathered, while Nora initially took custody of the little one Ben fathered. After Nora realizes she isn't the mothering kind, Vivien and Ben ultimately raise the baby, reuniting the damaged family.

12. What will Tate do to make nice with Violet after she realized that her ghostly boyfriend raped her mother and fathered her brother? How will he respond to news of the atrocities he committed that landed him in the house to begin with? Seek therapy and wait forever. A jealous Tate attempts to murder Gabe, the young Ramos son who (briefly) takes up residence in the room that used to be his -- and Violet's -- but can't bring himself to do it now that he's aware of his violent past. In a bid to save Gabe's life, Violet reveals herself to Tate as she bids him goodbye with a kiss and vanishes. A lonely Tate continues his quest for redemption, and turns to Ben, who says he can't absolve him of any of the atrocities he's committed. "I'll wait, forever if I have to," he says.

13. Judging from the promo clip for the episode, why is Constance keeping the baby locked up in a closet with the same shattered mirror that she'd use to torment Adelaide? To retain custody of Michael. The Feds, still suspicious of Constance for her role in Travis' disappearance and proximity to all the bizarre events of the Murder House, pay her a visit. In an effort to explain what happened to Ben and the missing baby, Constance feeds the cops a wild story about Violet -- who it turns out nobody realizes is dead -- and that the troubled teen must have taken the baby and fled. As soon as they leave, however, Constance retrieves little Michael from the closet as she continues to raise him as her own.

14. Will Ben blame Constance for the loss of his wife and daughter? Will Constance survive Ben's wrath? What will the house's growing army of undead do to Constance? Is she immune from the house's dark pull? Yes, yes, nothing and yes! Ben really enjoys blaming others for everything, doesn't he? The psychiatrist first blames Constance, connecting that it was her who disguised her voice when she sent Tate his way for therapy. Ben then claims she destroyed his life. Constance has the line, perhaps of the season, when she retorts: "You are paying for your own sins, Dr. Harmon." In the end, Constance is the one left with Tate's son next door and, as she tells the Feds, "returning to that house is difficult for me ... after what I saw." She'd be smart to heed her own advice and never set foot back in the house.

15. Can Violet and Vivien change the energy of the house? Will all the ghosts remain? Yes and yes. See No. 10.
STORY: 'American Horror Story': Kate Mara Answers Burning Questions About Hayden
16. Is that a baby Tate in the promo photo with Constance or is this "demon baby" really aging quickly? It isn't Tate, but his demon baby -- three years later. The series jumps three years into the future to reveal what's become of the baby that lived. Constance explains that the baby is the son of a distant cousin who died in a car crash. In one of the SAG and Golden Globe-nominated Jessica Lange's best monologues, she says that all of her losses that came before prepared her for the child. "A remarkable boy destined for greatness, in need of a remarkable mother, someone forged in the fires of adversity who can guide him with firmness and with love." Could Season 2 jump further ahead and see Michael moving into Murder House?

17. Who painted "RUN" in what appears to be blood on the walls? What's frightening enough to get an already dead Vivien to run screaming through the house? While it isn't definitive, our money is on Vivien as she and the friendly ghosts tormented the new lady of the house Stacey Ramos in an effort to get her to run (screaming) from the property.

18. Will Charles and Nora's sewn together child Thaddeus, aka the Infantada, rear its fanged head in a bid for a normal mother? Unless we missed it during all the insanity, no. Although it appears Beau paid Stacey a visit when he dropped in from the attic.

As for the big burning question of what Season 2 will look like, that remains a mystery. What are your theories? Did you like the finale? Hit the comments and sound off below.
RELATED:
'American Horror Story': There Will Be a Payoff
American Horror Story

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'American Horror Story' Finale: Burning Questions Answered

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FX's American Horror Story capped off its freshman season Wednesday with an epic finale that laid rest to several theories and opened the door to quite a few new mysteries. Would Ben survive? What happened to the babies? What will Season 2 look like?

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Synopsis:The first season of Ryan Murphy's

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Content analysis on Drama television programming

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Content Analysis of Television Drama Programs

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Content Analysis of Television Drama Programs

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This article comes from Den of Geek UK.

American Horror Story: Murder House marked horror's first foray into serialized television. While shows like The Twilight Zone and Freddy's Nightmares gave their audiences fresh stories each week, and The X-Files and its ilk had followed a case-of-the-week format with little in the way of connective tissue between episodes and seasons, was the first horror-centric show to take a long-form approach to storytelling.

The format wasn't the only groundbreaking aspect of the show. Series co-creator Ryan Murphy crafted a truly unique signature style, lying somewhere in tone between and The Rocky Horror Picture Show, with dashes of slasher and lashes of lipstick added to the mix: pulpy event TV with avant garde sensibilities.

Everything about American Horror Story, as it was then and as it is now, screams out Murphy: from the hip, slick, blood-soaked aesthetics; to the raison d'etre of doggedly exploring off-mainstream messages; to the wildly veering tone that spikes up and down like the reading on a heart patient's EKG as they're being shocked back to life while riding upside down on the world's fastest rollercoaster. One minute there's singing, the next there's aliens, the next someone's carotid artery's being hacked open like a blood-filled garden hose. Even when it doesn't all quite work - and occasionally it doesn't - it's always arresting and engaging: a feast for the eyes and the adrenal gland, if not always for the brain.

The ingredients of that Murphy-written recipe were never in better proportion, and the end-result never more delicious, than in Murder House, the show's maiden season. The season that set the standard back in 2011 is still the standard to beat.

That's not to say that the subsequent seasons are bad. Far from it. Each new season arrives with the same level of excitement and palpable anxiety as receiving a Secret Santa from a particularly wicked - and possibly certifiably insane - friend. What's going to be inside this time? A chocolate foot? An actual human foot? It's just that, as welcome a feature on the TV landscape as the show undoubtedly remains, AHS has never quite managed to best itself. Some seasons of the show have come close to it. Very close.

And others... Well. Others haven't.

Seasons three to five form what can be charitably described as the show's Wilderness Years. Here we have a smorgasbord of intriguing delicacies - some of them succulent, some of them putrid - in toto more like tapas at the Mad Hatter's tea party than a satiating Sunday dinner. Each of them lacks a strong narrative structure and coherent thematic threads, without which grounding influences AHS descends into a series of visceral vignettes and mini-music videos crushed together into a discordant, multi-colored scream.

AHS: Coven, the witchy season, split the fans, with many unable to adjust to the show's change of direction from a horror with occasional flashes of camp, to a swishy, slashy, flashy, sassy, tongue-in-cheek romp with occasional flashes of horror. Imagine Buffy the Vampire Slayer meets meets Mommie Dearest meets Return of the Living Dead, and then add a sprig of Texas Chainsaw Massacre for good measure.

may be a bit of a fluff and a fumble overall, but it's still tremendously fun to watch, with a typically terrific cast, bolstered by the addition of Angela Bassett and Kathy Bates as series regulars. The bonkers action includes sax-loving ghosts, disembodied racist zombie heads, voodoo magic, and Stevie Nicks playing herself as a witch. Admittedly, that all sounds great written down, but in execution - even with the crazy amped all the way up to 11 - 's battle between witches and warlocks, witches and witches, men and women, and mothers and daughters ultimately falls far short of the greatness exhibited by the show's maiden and sophomore seasons.

AHS: Freak Show followed. It's an almost unforgivable misfire of a season given that it embodies and reflects, perhaps like no other season except , the central themes of the series as a whole: alienation, the dangers of "othering," and the struggles of the expelled and the disaffected. This season should have been a victory lap for , the joining of all the dots - a dark and detailed exploration of the hopes, dreams, and despair of people pushed to the fringes of society, and society's fascination with, and revulsion of, them in turn - but, alas, no. is largely a dull, confused, and flabby affair that can't even be rescued by the performances of Jessica Lange (her last outing as series lead) and Sarah Paulson (playing conjoined sisters Bette and Dot).

Frustratingly, though, despite being one of the weakest seasons to date, gives the series its most chilling and compelling villain to date in the haunted and homicidal Twisty the Clown. It also delivers perhaps its single best episode (certainly its most touching), the Pepper-centric "Orphans," a heart-breaking tale that brings full circle with (it's now taken for granted that the American Horror Story seasons and characters exist within the same universe and are all connected, but was the first season to make it explicit).

AHS: Hotel, season five, is the true clunker of the bunch, an oil slick of thick, shiny sleekness beneath which is smothered all sense and substance. Wholly superficial, it has a hairdo where a heart should be. Nothing sums this up more than the casting of Lady Gaga in Jessica Lange's stead, drawing an implicit comparison between the two that was never going to work in Gaga's favor. Her central role made the season feel simultaneously flashier and flatter.

Everything about 's tawdry tale of vamps and vampires, lost souls and larcenists, druggies and drag-artists, blood-suckers and serial murders, shrieks shallowness, gloss and garishness is sort of outlandish. There are highlights, namely Evan Peters' scenery-chewing turn as callous killer James March, and Denis O'Hare's series' best performance as the droll and soulful Liz Taylor, but ultimately, little of what happens in is memorable.

Things improved considerably with AHS: Roanoke, a season that marked something of a turning point for the franchise. Murphy and his team knew that if the show was to endure they would have to do more than simply serve up their usual broth of blood, gloss, frocks, and shocks (flavorsome though it was). Radical change was needed. A new direction, a fresh hook (several fresh hooks, in fact, ideally with screaming people attached to them). It was high time to take some fresh risks with the established format. Ergo, more new blood was injected into the cast, and the quest to substitute Lange was discontinued (you should never try to replace the irreplaceable: replace everything else instead).

dials back on the color and the camp in favor of dark, drab, and dread. While the show revisits a haunted house setting, the action this time is framed by the devices of reality TV and the found-footage horror sub-genre. The meta, show-within-a-show-within-a-show schtick allows for heavy-handed satire, blood-curdling terror, some inventive and effective scares, and ink-black humor. Watching the "real" people who are the subjects of the show-within-a-show sharing screen (and scream) time with the "actors" who portrayed them in that show is a genuine joy. , while not troubling the top spot, is a broad success, even if Bates' accent is... not.

Season eight's Apocalypse is ostensibly a sequel to both and Murder House, and works precisely because it's a craven act of nostalgia; a conscious attempt to recapture and rekindle some of the earlier seasons' tone and zeitgeist. Apocalypse showcases the best of the series' excesses, but tempers them with discipline to deliver an intriguing, coherent story with fun, blood, death, and delight by the world-ending megaton. It's nice to see Lange again, too.

AHS: Cult is the real late-era gem, though. It's also the franchise's biggest risk to date, eschewing the supernatural in favor of chronicling the horror within the dark heart of man. Peters does terrific and chilling work this season as the unhinged and charismatic Kai Anderson. Part-slasher, part-excoriating topical satire, takes shots at both left and right, man and woman, wolves and sheep, and with a deft hand shows how the damaged, disillusioned, and disenfranchised in society can be curdled by populist sentiment and emboldened by dangerous rhetoric. This season could just as comfortably have been subtitled . It's savage, uncompromising, and hits perhaps a little too close to home at times, but that's what's so great about it. A worthy entry to the series, and almost a contender for the best.

Not quite though. Most of the "best of" and "seasons ranked" lists littering the internet place either Murder House or at the top spot. Rightly so. Nine years and eight seasons later, they're still the jewels in the blood-stained crown. The debate around which is better is similar to the one that still rages in fan circles between the purists, who favor the simple, self-contained structure of the first movie, and the vanguard for the avant garde, who favor the bolder, darker, and infinitely more bonkers setup of the second. Interestingly, and perhaps apropos of nothing, Hellraiser and Hellraiser II take place in a haunted house and an asylum respectively.

Like Hellraiser II, takes the format established by its forerunner and douses it in madness and mescaline, hurling psychotic Santas, serial killers, sadistic surgeons (another similarity between the two works), satanic sisters, anachronistic sing-songs, madmen, maniacs, and aliens into the canon. Just about everything that could possibly be imagined by God or man is brought to the screen in, including the kitchen sink - if by kitchen sink you mean Anne Frank, Nazis, ghosts, and men-beasts horribly disfigured by secret medical experiments. But do you know what? It works. There's a coherence to it all, despite the veritable royal buffet of tropes, genres, and characters. There's a tangible through-line, and a definite emotional arc, not to mention the series' most sympathetic and relatable character to date, Paulson's doggedly determined - and savagely unlucky - journalist, Lana Winters.

While and Murder House are almost equals in terms of innovation and quality, the trail-blazing progenitor pips it.

In accounting for Murder House's supremacy, of course, you first have to adjust for novelty. After all, the TV landscape has changed a lot since the series debuted. These days anthology series abound, from Murphy's own American Crime Story saga, to , to the unexpectedly beautiful and dream-like Haunting of Hill House, but in 2011 AHS was plowing virgin ground. Viewers at the time (myself included) didn't realize they'd been watching an anthology series until after the end of the first season, which only served to magnify the intensity of the many shocks and twists along the way, especially the rolling death count that culminated in pretty much every character except next-door-neighbor Constance (Lange) being dead by the time the end credits rolled.

No discussion of Murder House, or indeed AHS in general, can unfold without due tribute paid to Lange, the series' lynchpin for the four seasons she starred in, and the long shadow cast across the four that followed. Lange is an incredible actor, elegant, vulnerable, layered, and commanding, a performer who oozes style, class, and charm. She steals every scene she's in.

Everything about Lange radiates Old Hollywood; she has a grace and a presence that's largely absent from the Tinsel Town of today, qualities which help her chime perfectly with AHS' themes of a world decayed and forgotten, of people being ensared by circumstance, or washed away in the wake of seismic change. Lange is brilliant as Constance: funny, brutal, horrid, twisted, villainous, sympathetic, deeply human: her sadness and regret are palpable.

Of course there's more to Murder House than just novelty and Lange. Among many other things it's perfectly paced; by turns effectively creepy, sexy, and scary; packs so much in without ever feeling over-crowded; has a great cast; deals with controversial subjects (like suicide and school shootings) in a harrowing yet sensitive way; and has a neat and definite resolution.

It was the first of its kind, and it was the best of its kind.

AHS: 1984 has a lot to live up to. Let's see if ninth time's the charm.

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American Horror Story: How the Show Has Changed Since Murder House

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This article comes from Den of Geek UK. American Horror Story: Murder House marked horror's first foray into serialized television. While shows like The Twilight Zone and Freddy's Nightmares gave their audiences fresh stories each week, and The X-Files and its ilk had followed a case-of-the-week format with little in the way of connective tissue between episodes and seasons, was the first horror-centric show to take a long-form approach to storytelling.

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Whereas shot sizes direct who and what we see, camera angles affect how we perceive it. Is a character going to appear dominant and tall? Or short and weak? A strong weapon in the cinematographer's arsenal is the ability to position the camera in relation to the subject or scenery.

Eyelevel Angle

An eyelevel angle is the one in which the camera is placed at the subject's height, so if the actor is looking at the lens, he wouldn't have to look up or down. Eyelevel shots are incredibly common because they are neutral. They often have no dramatic power whatsoever, thus they are ideal for romantic comedies and news casting.

Low Angle

Low angles are captured from a camera placed below the actor's eyes, looking up at them. Low angles make characters look dominant, aggressive, or ominous.

High Angle

In a high angle, the camera is above the subject, looking down. This position makes characters look weak, submissive, or frightened. They are also good POVs of an adult looking at a child:

Dutch Tilt

Also called canted angle, a Dutch tilt has the camera leaning sideways, transforming the horizon into a slope. A Dutch tilt changes horizontal and vertical lines into diagonals and creates a more dynamic composition. Though rare, canted angles can be employed with great artistic effect to disorient and disturb the viewer.

Point-of-View (POV)

As the name suggests, point-of-view shots are angles in which the camera incorporates a character's eyes. POVs are usually preceded by a of the character's eyes.

Needless to say, cinematographers will choose different angles for different scenes within the same movie depending of the scene goal or purpose. When analyzing the camera angles used in a movie, it is wise to note how different angles are used in each scene.

Sometimes different angles will be chosen to emphasize different elements in the screen. For example, if an airplane flying overhead is of importance to the story, then filmmakers may choose to use a low-angle shot to show the sky and the plane.

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An eyelevel angle is the one in which the camera is placed at the subject's height, so if the actor is looking at the lens, he wouldn't have to look up or down. Eyelevel shots are incredibly common because they are neutral.

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The concept of framing is related to the agenda-setting tradition but expands the research by focusing on the essence of the issues at hand rather than on a particular topic. The basis of framing theory is that the media focuses attention on certain events and then places them within a field of meaning. Framing is an important topic since it can have a big influence and therefore the concept of framing expanded to organizations as well.

In essence, framing theory suggests that how something is presented to the audience (called "the frame") influences the choices people make about how to process that information. Frames are abstractions that work to organize or structure message meaning. The most common use of frames is in terms of the frame the news or media place on the information they convey. They are thought to influence the perception of the news by the audience, in this way it could be construed as a form of second level agenda-setting - they not only tell the audience what to think about (agenda-setting theory), but also how to think about that issue (second level agenda setting, framing theory).

The theory was first put forth by Goffman, under the title of Frame Analysis (link to PDF of article). He put forth that people interpret what is going on around their world through their primary framework. This framework is regarded as primary as it is taken for granted by the user. Its usefulness as a framework does not depend on other frameworks.

Goffman states that there are two distinctions within primary frameworks: natural + social. Both play the role of helping individuals interpret data. So that their experiences can be understood in a wider social context. The difference between the two is functional.

Natural frameworks identify events as physical occurrences taking natural quote literally and not attributing any social forces to the causation of events. Social frameworks view events as socially driven occurrences, due to the whims, goals, and manipulations on the part of other social players (people). Social frameworks are built on the natural frameworks. These frameworks and the frames that they create in our communication greatly influence how data is interpreted, processed, and communicated. Goffman's underlying assumption is that individuals are capable users of these frameworks on a day to day basis. Whether they are aware of them or not.

Framing techniques per Fairhurst and Sarr (1996):

Metaphor: To frame a conceptual idea through comparison to something else.

Stories (myths, legends): To frame a topic via narrative in a vivid and memorable way.

Tradition (rituals, ceremonies): Cultural mores that imbue significance in the mundane, closely tied to artifacts.

Slogan, jargon, catchphrase: To frame an object with a catchy phrase to make it more memorable and relate-able.

Artifact: Objects with intrinsic symbolic value - a visual/cultural phenomenon that holds more meaning than the object it self.

Contrast: To describe an object in terms of what it is not.

Spin: to present a concept in such a ways as to convey a value judgement (positive or negative) that might not be immediately apparent; to create an inherent bias by definition.

Framing is in many ways tied very closely to Agenda Setting theory. Both focus on how media draws the public's eye to specific topics - in this way they set the agenda. But Framing takes this a step further in the way in which the news is presented creates a frame for that information. This is usually a conscious choice by journalists - in this case a frame refers to the way media as gatekeepers organize and present the ideas, events, and topics they cover.

Framing is the way a communication source defines and constructs a any piece of communicated information. Framing is an unavoidable part of human communication - we all bring our own frames to our communications.

Sources + further reading:

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The concept of framing is related to the agenda-setting tradition but expands the research by focusing on the essence of the issues at hand rather than on a particular topic. The basis of framing theory is that the media focuses attention on certain events and then places them within a field of meaning.

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Political ads provide valuable lessons in framing. In one ad, President Obama touts his job creation record, citing over 4 million jobs added to the economy since he took office. In another ad, Governor Mitt Romney criticizes President Obama's job creation by pointing out that unemployment is still hovering around 8 percent and the economy still lacks 261,000 jobs that were lost during the president's tenure. Both ads rely on the same set of facts. However, one ad frames the numbers in a positive manner, while the other frames it negatively.

Framing, as a theory of mass communication, refers to how the media packages and presents information to the public. According to the theory, the media highlights certain events and then places them within a particular context to encourage or discourage certain interpretations. In this way, the media exercises a selective influence over how people view reality. Anthropologist Gregory Bateson is credited with first positing the theory in 1972. Framing is sometimes referred to as second-level agenda setting because of its close relation to Agenda-Setting Theory.

Assumptions

The following concepts are associated with framing:

1. Journalists select the topics they will present and decide how they will be presented. This determines the issues audiences think about and how they think about them.

2. Audiences interpret information through their own frames. Audiences' frames may overlap or contradict the media's frames.

3. Frames are reinforced every time they are evoked, whether positively or negatively.

4. Frame building is a systematic process that occurs over time.

Framing occurs in the media mostly because of time and resource constraints on what can be reported. Journalists must choose which events to cover and which to ignore. They must also decide which facts, values and perspectives will be mentioned or given prominence. This means journalists apply their own interpretive frames when packaging news. Reporters are also influenced by social norms, pressure from interest groups, journalistic routines and their own ideological or political orientations. As a result, some definitions, evaluations and recommendations contained within news reports are promoted over others. This affects audiences by limiting how they perceive and interpret events.

What are Frames?

Frames are systems of pre-conceived ideas used to organize and interpret new information. They function as heuristics, or "rules of thumb," that allow people to quickly process news. In psychology, frames are also known as scripts or schemata.

Frames are mostly cultural in origin; people develop them at a very early age. Nearly every word of one's language evokes a frame. For instance, the word "war" in English conjures up images of death, blood, gunfire, bombs, explosions, planes, tanks and ranks of marching soldiers. Therefore, when someone refers to "war," these images provide a shared point of reference between the speaker and the listener. Even the word "communication" has a frame. Its elements include a messenger, a message, a recipient, a medium and a context. Common frames used by the media include "war on terror," "battle with cancer" and "job outsourcing."

How Frames Work

Rather than selecting a frame to process information when confronted with news, people instead view the world through their frames and make new information fit into them. Information that contradicts a frame is usually written off as an exception to the rule or distorted to fit the frame. As a result, people are most likely to notice information that fits into their frames and ignore facts that do not.

Journalists or politicians who want to introduce a new frame to audiences must, therefore, reference culturally popular ideas and develop novel phrases that link existing frames in a compelling way. A professor at UC Berkeley, for example, points to the appearance of the words "tax relief" during George W. Bush's administration. In the frame evoked by the word "relief," there exists several ideas: a crime or accident that has occurred to inflict suffering, a perpetrator of the crime, a victim, a reliever of the suffering and the method of relief. By using this frame in conjunction with taxes, taxes become associated with crime, or the cause of suffering. As a result, those who promote "tax relief" are seen as heroes, or the relievers of suffering. Those who call for increased taxation, however necessary it may be, are viewed as criminals.

What makes frames so powerful is how easily they are evoked and, therefore, reinforced. To reference the "war" frame, one only has to mention an idea contained within that frame, such as "tanks." Negating a frame-such as stating, "There's no such thing as war"-only reinforces that frame by calling up the images associated with it. The only way to combat a frame is to reframe an issue in another, more powerful way.

Framing's Effects

Framing affects audiences in startling ways. Aside from restricting the information by which people judge events, framing can motivate people to make riskier decisions than they otherwise would. Researchers have found that when problems are expressed negatively, to imply a loss, people tend to choose the riskiest option for solving the problem. Problems framed positively result in safer decisions.

Framing can also cause audiences to deflect responsibility for solving social and political problems away from elected leaders. In his studies of framing, communications professor Shanto Iyengar identified two types of media news coverage: episodic and thematic. Episodic coverage treats issues as individual events, while thematic coverage links events together in a type of case-study format. When audiences are exposed to episodic news frames, they fail to make logical connections between the issues being covered-such as crime and poverty-and elected leaders or economic realities. Iyengar found that when reporting on poverty in particular, the media is more than twice as likely to frame the issue episodically than thematically. As a result, audiences place responsibility for poverty on the poor and hesitate to support government efforts to solve the problem.

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Political ads provide valuable lessons in framing. In one ad, President Obama touts his job creation record, citing over 4 million jobs added to the economy since he took office. In another ad, Governor Mitt Romney criticizes President Obama's job creation by pointing out that unemployment is still hovering around 8 percent and the economy still lacks 261,000 jobs that were lost during the president's tenure.

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After the short film A Still Sunrise debuted at the Cannes Film Festival in May, its lead actor, Jamie Lee-Hill, sent a tweet about it, appending the hashtag '#elevatedhorror'. "Why use that particular term?" someone asked in response. Lee-Hill replied: "Because it's actually an intelligent drama with symbolism within the film."

They hate horror so much they have to frame its hits as something else - Anne Billson

Did Lee-Hill mean that standard horror movies aren't intelligent dramas and that they don't have symbolism within them? If so, he was asking to be hunted down by a zombie-like pack of vengeful horror fans. But he isn't alone in drawing a distinction between 'horror' and so-called 'elevated horror'. John Krasinski, the co-writer and director of A Quiet Place, told an interviewer that his own terrifying hit wasn't inspired by horror movies, per se, but by "these amazing, elevated horror movies", by which he meant the recent run of films that have garnered a lot more critical acclaim than monster movies usually do.
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Obvious examples are Jennifer Kent's motherhood mind-bender The Babadook (2014); Robert Eggers' colonial chiller The Witch (2015); David Robert Mitchell's ingeniously simple It Follows (2015); Julia DuCournau's French cannibal coming-of-ager Raw (2016); and Jordan Peele's Oscar-nominated anti-racism blast, Get Out (2017). The next addition to this roster, Hereditary, starring Toni Colette, is released this week.

More thoughtful and experimental than the average scary movie, these films have prompted journalists to brand them not just 'elevated horror' but 'post-horror', 'smart horror', 'horror-adjacent' - anything but horror. But horror devotees aren't happy about what they see as a patronising and reductive snub of the genre they adore. Anne Billson, a novelist and critic, summed up those fans' feelings in a tweet: "Whenever a horror movie makes a splash... there is invariably an article calling it 'smart' or 'elevated' or 'art house' horror. They hate horror SO MUCH they have to frame its hits as something else." In another tweet, April Wolfe, a writer and film-maker, went further: "Gonna freak... out if people don't stop using the phrase 'elevated horror'! It's just horror. It's OK to say it's horror! ... I don't say 'elevated dramas' to distinguish which dramas I like and don't like."

Maybe they're right. Maybe these elevated horror films are simply horror films that happen to have been well-received, and the term 'elevated horror' shouldn't be applied to any film that isn't set in a lift or on a mountaintop. But a quick internet search reveals that it wasn't coined in response to the likes of The Babadook and The Witch. 'Elevated horror' appeared on a message board in 2010; and in 2012 someone else referred to the term as a "hot new expression bandied about by Hollywood executives". What it articulates is the film industry's perennial ambivalence towards horror - the genre it can't live with, but can't live without.
Scary-low price tags
"There are no clear-cut formulas for making money in the film business," says Simon Rumley, the cult director of The Living and the Dead, Red White and Blue, and Fashionista, "but one thing has become certain: horror still has the capacity to be the most profitable genre in the industry when you balance money invested (ie not much) against money returned (ie sometimes a lot). No A-listers are necessary. A grass-roots campaign with an effervescent and vocal community can kick-start a film's online presence. Why spend $150m (£112m) when you can spend $3m (£2.25m)?"

Horror movies, then, are one of the safest ways for financiers to get a return on their investment. But this very cheapness (along with, let's face it, all the blood and guts) is also why they are perceived as a slightly embarrassing, bargain-basement alternative to mainstream drama. And the genre's off-putting image wasn't improved in the mid-2000s when the highest-profile horror franchises, Saw and Hostel, were so proudly gruesome. Yes, they made money - a colossal $975m (£729m) in the case of the Saw series - but they also made people nauseous. You can understand why they might not appeal to a producer with an Oscar- or Bafta-shaped space in their trophy cabinet.

Rumley remembers the time well. "I pitched a film to a UK executive and she practically guffawed, somewhere between patronising me and feeling sorry for me: 'We don't do horror!'" Rumley has since taken to describing his films as "extreme drama" instead. Meanwhile, Dan Berlinka, a Bafta-winning television writer and horror aficionado, admits that when he was pitching a TV horror series recently, he opted for the term "thriller-chiller". And this cultural cringe isn't new, according to Tim Snelson, a film historian and the author of Phantom Ladies: Hollywood Horror and The Home Front. "Cycles of smart and classy horror films have been triggered across cinema's history, particularly when simultaneous critical and commercial successes like Rebecca (1940) or The Exorcist (1973) have alerted the industry and audiences to their enduring appeal," says Snelson. "But Hollywood has historically used 'chillers', 'shockers', 'mysteries', 'psychological films'... all sorts of terms to distinguish their prestige productions from horror's negative connotations."
Exorcising the stigma
If these connotations have become less negative lately, it's largely down to two independent companies, Blumhouse (Get Out, Split, The Purge) and A24 (Hereditary, The Witch), both of which champion idea-based rather than gore-based horror. Not everyone is a fan of these films, however. In February 2016, Bret Easton Ellis, the author of American Psycho, tweeted: "Indie Arthouse Horror is becoming my least favourite new genre: It Follows, Goodnight Mommy, The Babadook, The Witch." Fair enough. But by grouping these films under one heading, Ellis seems to be acknowledging that they aren't simply horror movies that have made a splash, as Billson contends. They are distinctive enough to merit a genre of their own.

The trouble is that such modifiers as 'elevated' and 'smart' imply that other horror films are intrinsically inferior, so you can see why the genre's fans are riled. "When The Exorcist came out," says Berlinka, "everyone knew it was classy, but no one was questioning whether or not it was a horror film. It was clearly a horror film. You'd find it in the horror section of every video shop. Back then, you could praise one horror film without feeling the need to slag off all the others at the same time."

On the other hand, Berlinka concedes that his own discomfort with 'elevated horror' - both the films themselves and their condescending epithet - doesn't begin and end with his annoyance at 'snooty' critics. On one level, he just doesn't want his niche, underground obsession to become respectable. "Horror fans are like music fans who complain that their favourite indie band isn't popular, but then get upset when it is. We like the slightly forbidden nature of horror. We like the fact that it's often crude and exploitative and appeals to our worst instincts. And, at heart, that's why we get so touchy about 'elevated horror'. We don't want our horror to be elevated. Stop elevating it!"

What's happening, it seems, is that these new films aren't just forcing horror newbies to revise their preconceptions about the genre, they're forcing horror fans to do the same. But whichever side you're on, it can't be a bad thing that so many high quality horror movies are being made. And, in the long-term, it's likely that the 'elevated horror' tag will fade, and such celebrated works as Get Out and A Quiet Place will take their place alongside Microwave Massacre and Friday 13th in every horror encyclopedia.

"The horror label allows not just for schlock and low-budget bloody mayhem, but also for the intelligent, the transgressive and the impossible to categorise," says Rumley. "I could argue that 1932's Freaks is an extreme drama, or that David Lynch's Eraserhead is art house horror, or that Jodorowsky's Santa Sangre is art house foreign horror. The Shining? Definitely art house. Rosemary's Baby? Definitely elevated. Shin'ya Tsukamoto's Tetsuo The Iron Man? How about foreign-art house-elevated? But the reality is that all the above films can be united under one banner. They're disturbing and they actually challenge an audience to think. In one way or another, they're all horror."

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After the short film A Still Sunrise debuted at the Cannes Film Festival in May, its lead actor, Jamie Lee-Hill, sent a tweet about it, appending the hashtag '#elevatedhorror'. "Why use that particular term?" someone asked in response. Lee-Hill replied: "Because it's actually an intelligent drama with symbolism within the film."

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In this picture we see a figure next to Ben which is a ghost adding it the genre of horror. The  constant change in fictional and real keeps viewers figuring out the true perspective

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This picture shows the two perspectives of the maid Moira. In which Vivien would see her older and Ben young.

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American Horror Story the series uses framing theory to give perspective to viewers on the twisted horror drama.