Abstract
One nagging problem for news theory in mass-communication studies is how to convincingly link one influential factor to another.In this paper, I examine frame-building-process studies to address this problem.Tuchman's work on the news-production process has been cited as a conceptualizing media frame.But "news as frame"used by her suggests "a frame of a window"that consists of several routine procedures.This is not the meaning of "frame"that postulated by frame-building-process studies.Gitlin provides a good account of this linkage problem, using the theory of hegemony.According to him, news production in modern capitalism is a hegemonic process in which larger-scale social conflict is imported, reproduced through the routinized strategy of neutralization and "radical"oppositional movement is openly suppressed.This is the basic mechanism of frame building.Furthermore, he argues that reporters "consciously"modify their own audience image, news sense, and world view when they are pulled into cognitive world generated by their source's world view.This congnitive vulnerability on flexibility of journalisto is a clue for understanding the transformation of the media frame.In conclusion, his excellent frame-building theory suggests that future study of news theory needs the logic of synthesization.
