Presidential Addresses. Marilena Olguta Vilceanu. Running head: Framing the Millennium in Presidential Addresses

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1 Framing the Future: Attitudes toward the Millennium in Six Eastern European Presidential Addresses Marilena Olguta Vilceanu School of Communications & Theater MM&C Program, TEMPLE UNIVERSITY Running head: Framing the Millennium in Presidential Addresses 1

2 Abstract This study employed frame analysis and attribution theory to examine the millennial New Year s addresses delivered by the presidents of six Eastern European countries. The goal was to see how each president strategically framed the ritual of passage into the third millennium, and in turn how those frames reflected political positioning with respect to a central issue in Eastern Europe today: accession to the European Union. This study is based on previous analyses of the five news frames identified by Iyengar (1987) and Semetko and Valkenburg (2000): attribution of responsibility, human interest, conflict, morality, and economic consequences. The findings suggest that the choice for frames split the countries in this study according to their positioning in the process of accession to the European Union. Attribution theory suggests that accession success is attributed to internal factors (traced here under the attribution of responsibility frame), while failure is attributed to external factors (traced here under the morality frame). Acknowledgement I would like to thank Dr. Priscilla Murphy at Temple University. 2

3 Framing the Future: Attitudes toward the Millennium in Six Eastern European Presidential Addresses This study employed frame analysis and attribution theory to examine the millennial New Year s addresses delivered by the presidents of six Eastern European countries, in an attempt to see how their frames for the ritual of passage into the third millennium created an explanatory context to highlight successes and de-emphasize failures of their own administrations, particularly with respect to European Union accession. Before discussing the presidential addresses, it is important to consider framing theory, as well as the geo-political context of Eastern Europe countries entering the third millennium. Framing Theory. The idea of framing first appeared in Goffman s (1974) work. His underlying presumption was that thoughts and actions are affected by the organization of messages. Generally speaking, framing involves the organization and packaging of information. As Goffman put it: "we actively classify and organize our life experiences to make sense of them. These "schemata of interpretation" are labels for frames, enabling us as individuals to "locate, perceive, identify and negotiate our natural and social worlds (p. 21). Subsequent scholars have expanded and refined Goffman s original definition. For example, Minsky (1975), a psychology scholar, referred to frames as discursive or mental structures that are closely related to the ideas of scripts and. From the standpoint of relationship between context and information, the frame can be defined as a template or data structure that organizes various pieces of information (see Fiske and Taylor, 1991). 3

4 Gamson and Modigliani (1987) said that frames are the "central organizing idea or storyline that provide meaning." Overall, a frame is an ever-present discursive device that channels the audience as it constructs the meaning of particular communicative acts (p. 143). Pan and Kosicki (1993) explained frames as cognitive devices used in information encoding, interpreting, and retrieving: they are communicable, and they are related to established routines and conventions. Framing therefore may be studied as a strategy of constructing and processing discourse itself (p. 57). Nelson, Clawson, and Oxley (1997) provided the most comprehensive and common definition of framing as "the process by which a source defines the essential problem underlying a particular social or political issue and outlines a set of considerations purportedly relevant to that issue" (p. 222). In this context, framing is the process by which a communication source defines and constructs a political issue or public controversy. Key to the concept of framing are the twin elements of selection and salience (Entman, 1993). Producers of a given frame select the frame (angle, theme, perspective) for the text, and then attributes of the subject within that frame become more salient than objects outside the frame (p. 52). Entman (1993) understood framing to mean the process of selecting some aspects of a perceived reality and making them more salient in a communicating text, in such a way as to promote a particular problem definition, causal interpretation, moral evaluation, and/or treatment recommendation (p. 53). Communicators make conscious or unconscious decisions about what to say, guided by frames that organize their belief systems. The resulting text contains the frames, marked by the presence of certain 4

5 keywords, stock phrases, stereotyped images, sources of information, and sentences that provide thematically reinforcing clusters of facts or judgments (p. 53). According to Neuman, Just, and Crigler (1992), news frames are conceptual tools that media and individuals rely on to convey, interpret and evaluate information. To frame a message in a given way entails that it contains certain associations rather than others. For instance, a message describing integration in the European Union as a way to achieve higher status among the countries in the region would create or strengthen associations between integration, economic progress, and national pride. In this way, the concepts of integration, economic progress and national pride are framed together. Saying that a message constructs an issue means that it builds in particular associations between concepts. Thus, framing analysis is a careful examination of the way concepts are associated within the discourse. Writing about framing in politics, Gamson (1992) noted that every political issue has a relevant public discourse. In the present study, every speech contains a particular set of ideas and symbols that construct meaning around the issue of the third millennium. Although the particular speeches in the sample do not interact directly, the mere proximity and simultaneity of their performance, along with the similar (although not common) political interests expressed in the speeches generated a structured pattern of framing for constructing meaning. This structured framing pattern reflects each country s positioning in the European Union accession process. Positioning in the fast track of accession would be perceived as an achievement and presented in terms of future benefits, while positioning in the slow track of accession would be perceived as a failure and presented in terms of need for future efforts. 5

6 Thus accession to the European Union was fraught with symbolism and became a kind of report card about the presidential leadership and health of the country overall. That is why studying the way accession was framed could indicate much more about how the presidents viewed the strengths and vulnerabilities of their own countries and regimes. Attribution theory. Like framing theorists, attribution theorists (Rotter, Atkinson, Heider, and Weiner, 1990) have analyzed the way people choose to see things happening in their lives. Weiner (1990) defined attribution theory as a tendency to attribute a good act to a person perceived as good (such as the self). That is, given a positive outcome, the perceived attributional source is in part determined by motivational forces, as documented by phenomena such as the so-called hedonic bias (the tendency to attribute success rather than failure to oneself) (p. 2). Writing about this locus of control, Rotter (1966) constructed an I-E (internalexternal) scale to measure the degree to which individuals see the world more in terms of skill (whatever happens is due to internal, controllable causes) or more in terms of chance (whatever happens is due to external, uncontrollable causes). Weiner (1990) refined attribution theory by adding the stability dimension of causality and posited that failure because of lack of ability produces lower expectancy of success than failure perceived as due to lack of effort, although both are internal determinants of behavior (p.6). For instance, in the present study, in reporting about the stage of accession to the European Union, presidents would not report their lack of success in terms of their country s lack of ability to accede, but rather in terms of need for increased future efforts, because this positioning would lead to higher levels of success expectancy in their 6

7 audiences. For the same reasons, the task of acceding to the European Union would not be represented as an objectively difficult task, because this approach would lead to lower levels of success expectancy in their audiences. Eastern European context. Accession to the European Union is a goal of utmost importance for the Eastern European countries. The process of enlargement of the European Union to include Eastern European countries actually began on July 15, 1997, when the European Commission adopted recommendations for Eastern European economies that could be considered for EU membership. These recommendations resulted in a group of early accession countries: Poland, Hungary, the Czech Republic, Slovenia and Estonia, the fasttrack accession group. A wider group of potential EU countries included the Slovak Republic, Romania, Bulgaria, Latvia and Lithuania. These countries are known as the slowtrack accession group, although all of them are formally involved in the accession negotiations. Positioning on the fast-track or slow-track was determined by the speed of economic and political reform within each country, as well as their degree of success for transitioning from a state-controlled economy to a market economy. Framing in the mediated messages In the present study, the research interest was to see whether the same event (the passage into the third millennium) was situated within a common pattern of framing by a number of countries that shared geographical vicinity and some politico-economic 7

8 similarities. These commonalties would be revealed in the way the respective presidents positioned their political attitudes, ideological orientations and other preferences in framing the ritual of passage into the third millennium. In order to organize the millennial frames, the frame categorization scheme used by Semetko and Valkenburg (2000) was adopted. Semetko and Valkenburg analyzed the frames present in the news media covering the Amsterdam meeting of European heads of state in Their results showed the use of five types of news frames (human interest, attribution of responsibility, conflict, morality, and economic consequences). Following is the description of each of the five frames as they were used in this Semetko and Valkenburg s (2000) study. The first frame presented in the Semetko and Valkenburg study was actually identified by Iyengar (1987). The attribution of responsibility frame is employed to present an issue or a problem in such a way as to make possible the identification of agents responsible for its cause or solution. Semetko and Valkenburg (2000) defined the human interest frame as one that "brings a human face or an emotional angle to the presentation of an event, issue, or problem" (p.95). In a study about presidential addresses, framing salient political and economical practices provided a source of cohesiveness and homogeneity within the audiences, in order to create and maintain communities of interest and action. In analyzing U.S. news, Neuman et al. (1992) understood the conflict frame as a means of capturing audience interest. In using this frame, journalists sometimes reduce complex political issues to oversimplified, two-sided arguments. In this study, the conflict frame would be mainly defined and bounded by national experience; for instance, by people 8

9 understanding that some important aspect of their historical and present situation differentiates them from other peoples in claiming their right to membership in the European Union. Semetko and Valkenburg (2000) defined the morality frame as putting the event, problem or issue in the context of religious tenets or moral prescriptions. For instance, at the normative level, Eastern European presidents might try to convey moral messages, social prescriptions, and family values. Neuman et al. (1992) defined the economic consequences frame as reporting events, problems, or issues, in terms of the consequences identifiable for a group, nation or region. In the case of Eastern European leaders millennium addresses, the two salient issues (the millennium threshold and the European Union accession) might be approached in terms of costs, gains, and economic expectations from following the international trends, for instance, in a search for integration in the Western political and economic sphere. Transitioning economies are confronted with legal, political, and social crises arising from rapid change on a large scale. Having a functioning market economy is one of the prerequisite conditions for joining the EU. Given the different degrees of success these Eastern European countries have registered so far, the research question in this study is to determine whether positioning in the fast-track or slow-track has influenced the pattern of framing in the millennium address: RQ Does the use of frames vary significantly by the positioning of the country in the fast track or slow-track of EU accession? 9

10 The five frames were previously identified and analyzed by Semetko and Valkenburg (2000) as they appeared in television and print media political news. This study extended this use of frames to reveal patterns in the presidential addresses similar to the ones identified in Semetko and Valkenburg s original study. Method This study applied a model similar to the quantitative content analysis used by Semetko and Valkenburg (2000), this time on the frames used in six presidential addresses delivered in Eastern Europe between December 30, 1999 and January 5, Choice of sample. A purposive sample used six New Year discourses delivered by the presidents of the Eastern European countries that had begun the laborious process of integration in the European Union. Because of concern that important details might be lost in a translation, only discourses that were available in an official English version from the Presidential public relations offices were used in the sample. This procedure yielded the six speeches from Czech Republic, Estonia, Latvia, Poland, Romania, and Slovenia. The Czech Republic, Poland and Slovenia are in the fast track of accession to the European Union; Estonia, Latvia and Romania are in the slow track of accession. Unit of analysis. Following Semetko and Valkenburg's (2000) model, each speech was analyzed through a series of 22 questions to which the coder had to answer yes (1) or no (0). Each of the five frames was measured by presence of positive answers to specific 10

11 questions. The questions were asked about the series of sentences present in each paragraph, chosen here as a unit of analysis. Table 1 presents the complete list of marker questions and the frames to which they pertain. Insert Table 1 about here. After assigning each paragraph to a certain frame, the data were analyzed to determine frame frequency and extent, in order to assess the hierarchy of frames in each speech, as well as overall dominance for each frame. Frame frequency and extent. The frequency index (F) computed a percentage from the number of occurrences of frame, divided by the number of frames present in the speech. The extent index (E) computed a percentage from the number of words in frame coverage, divided by the total number of words in the speech. Frame dominance. After having determined frame frequency and extent, the next step was to compute the frame dominance index, per speech and across speeches. The speech frame dominance index (SFD) was determined by multiplying the length index by the frequency index for each speech, represented as a percentage. The result showed how much of the speech was dominated by each frame. By comparing the multiple frame dominance indexes in every speech, a conclusion could be drawn as to the frame hierarchy in each speech. In order to analyze frame dominance between speeches, the total frame dominance index (TFD) was determined by summing up the SFD indexes for every frame in the study. The result showed framing patterns across the sample, revealing the answer to the first 11

12 research question, inquiring about the relationship between country positioning in the process of accession to the European Union and the president's choice for dominant frames. Results As a first operation, the sheer number of frames used in each president s speech was computed. The largest number of frames occurred in the Polish speech (27 separate frames), which ranked only fourth in length (1421 words). The Czech speech, the longest by far (at 2697 words), also ranked second in the number of frames identified (20 separate frames). A mix of morality and responsibility frames dominated presidential addresses delivered on the threshold of the third millennium. Tables 2-3 show how the hierarchy of frames in terms of frame frequency, extent, and degree of personal implication. Insert Tables 2-3 about here. The most frequent frame was morality (F=32), followed by attribution of responsibility (F=27) and human interest (F=26). The least frequently used frame referred to economic consequences of political and economic decisions (only 2 occurrences). The frame coverage extent was examined next; this index used the relative number of words taken up by each type of frame. The morality and attribution of responsibility frames dominated the study with each covering 30 percent of the total words in the study, across speeches (2715 and, respectively, 2719 words). A close third was the human interest frame (2270 words, or 25 percent of the total words). The shortest coverage occurred for the 12

13 economic consequences frame (428 words). This finding was expected, given the very low frequency this frame registered throughout the study. After determining the dominance pattern for each speech, the next step was to assess frame dominance across speeches. Table 4 shows that the morality frame was by far the most frequently and extensively used, with a total frame dominance (TFD) index of 72.84, followed by attribution of responsibility (TFD 63.38), human interest (TFD 45.25), conflict (TFD 4.46), and economic consequences (TFD 1.05). Insert Table 4 about here. Considered at the country level, the frame dominance results split the presidential addresses into two groups. The morality frame dominated one group (formed by Estonia, Latvia, and Romania); the attribution of responsibility frame dominated the other group (the Czech Republic, Poland and Slovenia). This pattern suggests a relationship between choice of frames and stage of accession to the European Union, which answers the research question in this study. That is, the fast-track countries opted for the responsibility view, while the slow-track countries chose the morality view. In the Semetko and Valkenburg (2000) study, the attribution of responsibility frame was dominant in the most sober and serious sources. In this study, by comparison, the attribution of responsibility frame was dominant in the addresses delivered in the most successful countries, with regard to the process of accession to the European Union. From both the historical and the politico-economic perspective, these countries were powerful candidates for accession to the European Union. The Czech Republic was one of the most economically developed and industrialized parts of Europe even before the Second World 13

14 War, when Czechoslovakia was among the ten most developed industrial states of the world. The Polish State is over 1000 years old; as far back as the sixteenth century, under the Jagiellonian dynasty, Poland was one of the richest and most powerful states on the continent. Today, Poland stands out as one of the most successful transition economies. Slovenia s historical ties to Western Europe, strong economy, and stable democracy made it a leading candidate for future membership in the EU and NATO. In fact, Slovenia enjoys one of the wealthiest transition economies of Central Europe, even though almost half of the economy is still in state hands. On an external level, the accessions to NATO and the EU were really the most important international political achievements for the countries in this fast-track accession group. As the Polish president has stated: We were admitted to NATO, thus finding ourselves among the best-protected states of the world. We are closer to another Grand National Objective - accession to the European Union. The slow-track countries, on the other hand, may have focused on morality as a way to envisage a brighter future, since the results of their internal and external politics so far meant there was a need for more mobilization and more hard work. The slow-track countries started their transition to the market economy as poor countries, with scarce resources and little help from the developed countries already in the European Union - as opposed to the countries presently in the fast-track, which started the race as economically developed and politically connected to the West. Romania began the transition from communism in 1989 as one of the poorest countries in Central and Eastern Europe, with a largely obsolete industrial base and a pattern of output unsuited to the country's needs. Over the past decade, economic restructuring has 14

15 lagged behind most other countries in the region and living standards have continued to fall. Latvia is also struggling with a poor economy following the 60 years of Soviet dominance 1. This complex of factors may have led to the moral perspective present in the presidential addresses of the slow-track countries. That is, the New Year was to be taken as a new starting point (much better than the old start, ten years before) and there was hope for a better future. Hence the president of Latvia remarked: "We are putting our clock back to zero we are reproducing the ancient myth of the eternal renewal and purification the new age is standing before us as a cline white sheet; new days are standing ahead. The idea of change for the better is also present in the Romanian address, where the president was confident that "this symbolic boundary of the calendar witnesses a rapid change of mankind and this change is a positive one. This is a conclusion valid for Romania as well. Discussion Attribution theory sheds further light on the contrasting frames of fast-track and slowtrack presidential addresses. Due to its study of causal explanations for success and failure in achievement-related contexts, attribution theory can also be used to analyze political discourse. In this study, the two dominant frames reveal a difference in the locus of control (Rotter, 1966; Heider, 1958), inasmuch as the fast-track countries addresses were centered on 1 More data about the countries involved in the European Union Eastern Enlargement available online at 15

16 ability and internal factors affecting their present situation; the slow-track countries found a better approach in centering on the external causes for their present situation. Overall, this locus of control is revealed in the choice of positive coverage for European integration, but negative coverage for the more threatening widespread aspects of globalization. This might stem from certain meaning-related assumptions. On the one hand, integration into the European Union is an internally related factor: it is a goal whose achievement depends on the effort, patience, and/or ability of each country to pursue it. Therefore, framing it in positive terms enhances the internal locus of control in view of positive outcomes. On the other hand, globalization is an externally related factor. Since neither the president, nor the citizens can by themselves have a direct effect on it, globalization is seen more like a rapacious economic phenomenon, while integration into the European Union is seen (at least by the fast-track countries) as a return to the rightful membership in the heart of European culture and politics. For instance, the Czech president presented globalization under less than positive terms: globalization is progressing at an almost dizzying speed where an extremely dangerous phenomenon consists in the fact that the uniformising pressure which the increasingly globalized civilization brings to bear on the rapidly growing population generates many new social antagonisms and possibilities arise also for an unprecedented advancement of organized crime and terrorism. The attribution theory suggests that this representation of globalization as an external phenomenon is a substitute for the lack of control detained over it. In the fast-track group, dominated by the attribution of responsibility frame, there is an abundance of ability- and responsibility-related terms. The locus of control is internal, 16

17 allowing presidents to attribute responsibility for the present and future to each of their citizens. For example, the Czech president remarked: Every one of us is now more co-responsible for the fate of the world than we were in any previous period By global standards, we belong to the more advanced countries. Why, therefore, could we not be more generous in the round-number year in excusing the debts of some of the poorest nations? Such a gesture alone will not save the world. But it will show that we feel coresponsible for its future. This responsibility is shared in the Polish speech as well: We have still much to do. We must convince Polish families that we will do everything in our power to fight with crime, violence and impunity We must not forget about human poverty, either. We cannot leave [people in hopeless situations] to themselves. We must be at one with them. The best representation of this ability to succeed, however, was encountered in the Slovenian speech, where the president declared: We are prepared for these times. We have matured through a past that has put us through tough trials. Fortunately, we always had wholehearted and wise people. In this nation's hours of fate they were able to bring together the will of individuals into the nation's common and victorious endeavor. That is why we carry a good record of the past into the future. In a statement that epitomizes the whole group of fast-track accession countries, the Slovenian president summarized: 17

18 We decide ourselves how we are to live at home and how we are to be recognized in the world. We stand firmly on our native soil that has marked us with our language, culture and history. However, we wish to meet and work with all other people at the wellsprings of economic and technological development, knowledge, culture, decision-making and spirit of humanity's new civilization. In the slow-track group, dominated by the morality frame, the accent is not so much on what has been done so far (related to ability), as on what needs to be done in the future (need for more effort). This approach was predicted by attribution theory: for example, Weiner (1990) postulated that failure should not be presented as a result of low ability because it might result in a lower expectancy for success. Hence, in the Latvian discourse, the president mentions the dark that has made our lives difficult [...] our hopelessness and heaviness, and lack of belief in ourselves among the causes for Latvia s present situation and suggests that a remedy might be to [ ] summon the Thunder, the ancient god of our ancestors to help us and send all devils and goblins away from our land, and hurl them deep into the underworld to the forces of hell. Let the Thunder's anger strike those who bring misery and evil to their own land and nation with their evil thoughts and words and deeds. We will burn all of it in the fire and instead of that we will light the fire of joy in our hearts - very much like those rockets which we just now saw in the fireworks, such which open one after the other into different colors. 18

19 Even if some of the burdens and obstacles are internal ( those who bring misery and evil to their own land and nation ), in the speech these obstacles are singled out as somehow external to the audience. Similarly, the Romanian president summarized his country s situation by stating that Bad things happen everywhere, but there have always been people to make them right. We can do this too. The solution is to confidently and bravely enter the gate of this special year, whose main symbol is novelty and modernity, while always keeping close to our heart the national and moral values that give us strength and identity. Romanian patriotism and faith are two of the qualities for which God chose our country and our ancient Christian people to make the first step towards the great Christian reconciliation. 2 The present justifies Romanian hopes to meet the change of the millennium prefix with our heads up. We have every reason to pace into the New Year with a hope for a better life. Pride for the amount of effort already played into European Union Accession by the Romanian people who proved that it has wisdom, patience and strength to build up institutions and alliances that last leads to the solution for future success: certainly, there is a lot to be done together in order to make the State s institutions work as we expect them to, because these institutions showed they can learn from errors, they can go ahead and respond to the interest of the nation despite the hard times, even when many people in the country or abroad voiced their doubt with regard to our capacity of paying the debts or making order inside our borders. Therefore, there should be no doubt as to the people s ability to meet the terms for their country to accede to the European Union: I firmly believe that we will rise to 2 reference to Pope John Paul II s visit in Romania in 1999, the first Orthodox-majority country ever to be visited by the leader of the Catholic church 19

20 the greatness of the history of the Third Millennium. I believe in a prosperous Romania, built up on the welfare and happiness of each and every one of us. Here, the locus of control is external to the people, allowing political discourse to frame the lack of success in pursuing integration into the European Union under the morality frame, in the belief that hard work, patience and strength will lead the country to future success. For both Latvia and Romania, second in the hierarchy of dominance is the human interest frame, in which the presidents attempt to appeal to their audiences on an emotional level, by invoking folklore and tradition, or else human examples, and personal aspects in people's lives. For example, the Latvian president framed the impending new year in folkloric terms: It is the New Year night when wonders take place - when bees sing, when future is told and when horses start to speak in their stables. It is the New Year night, when lights glitter in the sky, being reflection from ancient fire rites inherited by us from prehistoric past. The Romanian president also appealed to human examples, the personal level of people s lives: I wish to send to each and everyone of you the feeling that the fear which consumed us for a whole millennium, the fear we might lose our independence, sovereignty, national unity, religious faith and cultural identity this terrible fear is now over. For good. Everyone can enjoy peace and freedom. This feeling of security is the great victory of this end of century and millennium. Perhaps it is too great to see it. Perhaps too close to us to feel it. Perhaps too deep to enjoy it. Not every aspect of the presidential addresses presented contrasts between fast track and slow track countries. For example, all millennium presidential addresses in Eastern 20

21 Europe were performances centered on the ritual aspects of passage into the new millennium. Presidents were quick to invoke magic, tradition, even history, in order to stress the symbolic significance of the millennium New Year. Summary. The millennium presidential address in Eastern Europe was studied here in terms of both framing and attribution theories. Combining these theories in order to analyze political discourses suggests that there was indeed a relationship between the countries positioning in the European Union accession process and their presidents use of discursive approaches related to the two theories. Addresses from the most successful candidates to the European Union accession were dominated by this attribution of responsibility frame. In opposition, the morality frame dominated the discourses from the slow-track accession countries. Attribution theory also revealed that when referring to the stage of acceding to the European Union, the Eastern European presidents chose to frame their ideas according to the locus of control. The most successful countries (Czech Republic, Poland, and Slovenia) placed the cause for their success in their (internal) ability to control things. The less successful countries (Latvia and Romania) stressed the external (uncontrollable) causes for their present situation and emphasized the need for more sustained future efforts in order for the goal of accession to the European Union to be attained. Future research. Given the results of this study, future research might explore whether there was a concomitant relationship between positive and negative media coverage 21

22 following each president s millennial address in other words, the extent to which each president s frames were able to set the media agenda. Another research direction could address the effect of each president's choice to personalize certain frames at the expense of others. Extensive use of personal referents (me, I, mine, our, us) in a given frame would suggest that the frame enjoys a preferential status in the president's approach. The challenge here would be to determine the frames in which such personal implications appear, as well as their impact on the frame s dominance and meaning. Overall, the findings of this study are important as they strengthen the link between framing theory and attribution theory. Scholars have long concluded that frames represent a strategic definition of the issues addressed in the discourse. Political discourse is especially exposed to this combination of theories (Gamson, 1992) because it is by definition about framing meaning in such a way as to entitle both the desirability and the possibility of action and/or change. 22

23 Table 1. Frame marker questions Attribution of responsibility frame (AR) Does the president suggest that the people have the ability to solve a problem? Does the president suggest that the government has the ability to solve a problem? Does the president suggest that the people are responsible for the issue/problem? Does the president suggest solutions to a problem/issue? Does the president suggest that an issue/problem require urgent action? Human-interest frame (HI) Does the president provide a human example, or put a human face on the issue? Does the president employ adjectives that generate feelings of indignation, resentment, empathy, caring, sympathy or compassion? Does the president emphasize how individuals and groups are affected by the issue/problem? Does the president mention the personal lives of the people? Does the president mention a spiritual heritage, myths and common truths specific to his people? Morality frame (MO) Does the president convey any moral message? Does the president make reference to morality, God, or other religious tenets? Does the president offer specific social prescriptions about how to behave? Does the president mention the idea of role models or family values? Does the president mention the role of the church in shaping the past and the future? Conflict frame (CO) Does the president mention disagreement between parties-individuals-groups-countries? Does the president reproach particular parties-individuals-groups-countries? Does the president refer to two sides or to more than two sides of the problem or issue? Does the president refer to winners and losers? Economic consequences frame (EC) Is there a mention of financial losses or gains now or in the future? Is there a mention of the costs/degree of expense involved? 23

24 Is there a reference to economic consequences of pursuing or not pursuing a course of action? Table 2. Frame frequency Frame AR F AR CO F CO EC F EC HI F HI MO F MO Frames in the speech CZ EE LA PO RO SL F/Study F = percentage from the number of occurrences of frame, divided by the number of frames in the speech AR = attribution of responsibility; CO = conflict; EC = economic consequences; HI = human interest; MO = morality; F/Study frequency of frame along the study 24

25 Table 3. Frame length country AR E AR CO E CO EC E EC HI E HI MO E MO Speech length CZ EE LA PO RO SL E/study E : percentage from number of words in frame coverage, divided by the total number of words in the speech. E/study = extent of frame along the study Table 4. Dominance of frames Country/Speech Domin. Index SFD AR SFD CO SFD EC SFD HI SFD MO CZ EE LA PO RO SL TFD TFD = Total Frame Dominance, sum of speech frame dominance indexes SFD = Speech Frame Dominance, frequency multiplied by extent in percentage 25

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