Examing the role of problem definition and framing in the policy process. Issue Identification, defining, redefining, and framing; all affect the way we perceive reality and the proper response. This presentation is an examination of establishing meaning through emphasis, level of analysis, measurement, and interconnections; of establishing causation through multiple-simultaneous, sequential, and component; of establishing ownership through control, and responsibility; of the rhetoric of salience though, causality, severity, incidence, novelty, proximity, crises, afflicted populations, instrumental or expressive, and solution framing (availability and acceptability)

1. Issue Identification, Definition,
Redefinition, and Framing
Michael-Paul James

2. Problem Definition
● Defining and redefining a problem informs what we identify as public issues as
well as the conversational context and projected outcome.
○ The description affects issues salience in government
○ The description is linked the to the solution devised.
● Issue Identification, defining, redefining, and framing; all affect the way we
perceive reality and the proper response.
● “To frame is to select some aspects of a perceived reality and make them more
salient in a communication text, in such as way as to promote a particular
problem definition, causal interpretation, moral evaluation, and/or treatment
recommendation,”- (Entman, 1993, 52)

3. The Power and Components of Defining
● Introducing the Issue: First Impressions (Schattschneider, 1960)
○ Who defines the problem gains advantage, because the audience seldom witnesses the evolution,
only the emergence already defined and framed. Thus, the definer determines the first
impression. (Schattschneider, 1960).
● Setting the Course: Informing Norms (Petracca, 1992)
○ Controls the type of discourse around the issue.
○ The political institution the issue is likely to enter.
○ Strengthening or weakening a probably outcome.
● Modes of Transference: Creating Alternate Realities (Elder and Cobb, 1983)
○ Stories: explanations and connections.
○ Synecdoches: partial explanations to depict a whole:
○ Metaphors: Claiming likeness
○ Ambiguity: multiple meanings

4. Meaning
Reality maps out issues within larger contexts (Hoggwood and Gunn, 1984)
● Emphasis:
○ The selection of particular factors or components as more salient constructs a particular version
of reality.
■ Stress, family, genetics, biology: what can we do about mental illness?
● Level of Analysis
○ The selection of emphasized independent variables suggests a course of action.
■ Are Los Angeles riots due to a heinous event or a catalyst revealing racial inequalities?
● Measurement
○ Optimistic versus pessimistic; gauging magnitude and rate of change; determining approach
■ What does it mean to raise taxes? Interpretive ranges may vary dramatically.
● Interconnections
○ The reaction to an issue depends on its relationship to other issues.

5. MultipleSimultaneousCausation
ComponentCausation
Z2
Causation
X1
X2
X3
Y1
Y3
Y2
Z1
A
SequentialCausation

6. Ownership
Problem ownership assigns control and responsibility to individuals and/or groups.
Drug
Use
Medical
Familial
Societal
Drug
Use
National
Local
State

7. Postmodernism
Critical attitude concerning the ambitious narratives and ideologies of rationality
often responded to in skeptical, ironic, or dismissive terms.
Rejection of the notion of impartiality, claiming that both rationality and neutrality
don’t exist in absolute terms outside of theoretical space.
Assemblage of constructed realities from a succession of conclusions, choices, and
rejections of alternatives
Rhetoric justifies, advocates, and affirms the process of decision-making.

8. Rhetoric
● Causality
○ The origin of the issue: unguided-purposeful, intended-unintended (Stone, 1989)
● Severity
○ The seriousness of an issue: extent, timing, and impact. (Stephens 1991)
● Incidence
○ The frequency of the issue generates increasing salience. (Stafford and Warr, 1995)
● Novelty
○ Newness garners momentary attention, gaining salience. (Downs 1973, Bosso 1989)
● Proximity
○ The more relatable the greater the value to the listener.

9. Rhetoric
● Crisis; Emergency
○ Dire conditions of extended neglect demands immediate response.
● Problem Populations
○ Definitions extend beyond the issues to the afflicted; deserving-undeserving.
● Instrumental v. Expressive Orientations
○ Instrumental orientation purposefully sets a course for an intended result, a desired end.
○ Expressive orientation focus on the means, emphasizing the process as the expression of values.
● Solutions
○ The desired solution often defines the problem
○ Solution availability and acceptability filter how a problem is potentially perceived.

10. Summary
● Meaning
○ Emphasis
○ Level of Analysis
○ Measurement
○ Interconnections
● Causation
○ Multiple-simultaneous
○ Sequential
○ Component
● Ownership
○ Control
○ Responsibility
● Rhetoric of Salience
○ Causality
○ Severity
○ Incidence
○ Novelty
○ Proximity
○ Crises
○ Afflicted Populations
○ Instrumental or Expressive
○ Solution Framing
■ Availability
■ Acceptability

11. Plant Closings (John Portz)
1. Brown and Williamson Corporation in Louisville
a. Established production exceeded market demand; Closing the plant assured company survival
b. Recognizing consequences, pledged relocation assistance, retraining, and job search support
c. Community, satisfied with the problem and solution, did not involve local government.
2. Rath Packing company in Waterloo.
a. Stories of poor managerial decisions and expensive labor practices focus on job loss.
b. Citizens believed that restructuring could savage the failures of the existing plant.
c. Feasibility study defined the problem with a long term and short term solution for retaining jobs.
d. Economic and institutional forces led to the close of Rath despite efforts.
3. US Steel focused on firm’s survival, competitiveness, and the consequences
a. Tri-State Conference organized to prevent closings
b. Market forces closed the plant
4. Success Traits: Political Acceptability, Comprehensiveness, Claim to Authority

12. Air Transportation Policy (Baumgartner, Jones)
Seldom examined in full, issue component parts rise and fall, subject to spill over
from other issues, and issue generality sets tone towards sets of issues.
1. Zoe Baird, appointed by Bill Clinton as Attorney General, hired illegal aliens
a. Zoe Baird: the mother, looking after the needs of her family
b. Zoe Baird: a woman born of humble beginnings, achieved prominence through hard work.
c. Zoe Baird: privileged with a well-to-do lawyer lifestyle
2. Air Transportation
a. Policy responded to components media propagated: technology, rates, economics, and safety.
b. Technology dominates the media into the 50s
c. Media primarily discussed government involvement from 1944-46, 1953-62, 1966-85
d. The media agenda enters the congressional agenda in the 60s

13. Sexual Harassment (Ellen Frankel Paul)
● Defined
○ 1964 Title VII of the Civil Rights Act define quid pro quo and hostile environment as sex
discrimination
○ 1980 Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) sexual harassment as sexual
discrimination
○ 1986 Meritor Savings Bank v Vinson held employers liable for sexual harassment by employees.
○ 1991 Civil Rights Act added compensatory and punitive damages; reasonable woman
● Anita Hill files sexual harassment charges against Clarence Thomas.
○ Thomas is African American, Member of EEOC, Female Favorable Testimony.
○ Anita Hill: Inconsistent storytelling, delayed concerns, continued employment, motives,
continued relationship, political differences, connection to Democratic staffers, no witnesses.
● Tailhook: Assaulted women at the Tailhook Association Convention
● An issue needs a focus event, a catastrophe, a scandal for emergence.

14. Antidrug Policymaking (Elaine B. Sharp)
Drugs remain on the public agenda
1. Proximity: children’s health, personal safety, moral fabric.
2. Novelty: Complex and Contradictory (Stone, 1989)
a. Intentional Cause: Drug pushers and gangs need a military/ police response.
i. Nancy Reagan “If your a casual drug user, you're an accomplice to murder.”
b. Accidental Cause: Addicts and mental illness need a medical response: a disease requiring
treatment.
c. Inadvertent Cause: The illegality of drugs has created a hostile black market.
3. The Drug “Policy Window” is habitually open.

15. Agriculture and Tax Policy (Gary Mucciaroni)
● Tax expenditures reduce the amount of incomes taxes paid to the government.
● Tax reform: Favored Producers
○ Middle class burdened with “high taxes,” sympathetic to corporate tax concerns.
○ Inflation and wage increases moved middle class citizens into higher brackets, increasing taxes.
■ Tax rates are not indexed for inflation
○ “Three martini lunch” loopholes, publicizing corporate tax abuses.
■ 128 out of 250 paid no federal income taxes in at least one year between 81 and 83
○ Horizontal Equity: same income, same tax.
○ More equitable distribution of the tax burden.
● Agriculture Policy: Favored Producers
○ Agrarian myth: yeomanry devoted to the land protecting American ideals.
○ Proximity: Rural interest are overrepresented in Senate, all states have agriculture.
○ Fairness: relief to farmers.

16. Traffic Congestion (Joseph Coughlin)
● Traditional Growth Perspective
○ Individualists place a high value on individual choice.
■ Technology will compensate for the ills of present choice.
■ Economic growth leads to long term solutions through innovation.
■ Economic costs of congestion are more important that inconvenience; gawker delay at 10B.
■ Goal: to move traffic generated by economic activity: the right to mobility.
■ Increase capacity to compliment economic growth
● Green Growth Perspective
○ Communitarian emphasizes social equity.
■ Advocate for responsible use of resources and planning
■ Highways create development opportunities, sprawl is minimized with highway absence.
■ Pollution through congestion is destroying the environment;
■ Individual choice to overuse resources threatens our health and way of life
■ Public Transit as a egalitarian, environmental solution

17. Green Perspective
Traditional Growth Perspective
Operational
Restrictions
(HOV)
Technological
Improvements
(IVHS)
Technological
Improvements
Congestion
Pricing
Mass
Transit
Salience
Salience

18. Current Agenda Issues
The Government/Poor Leadership 23%
Immigration 16%
Race relations/Racism 6%
Environment/Pollution/Climate change 6%
Healthcare 5%
Guns/Gun control 5%
Why are these issues salient?
https://news.gallup.com/poll/1675/most-important-problem.aspx