Strategy and issue frames in election campaign coverage: A social cognitive account of framing effects

This study examines how news frames in campaign coverage affect individuals' interpretation of campaigns. Framing effects are conceptualized in terms of the process by which textual features in new stories set limits on knowledge use in the construction of a discourse model-a mental model constructed through the interaction between news frames and the interpreter's social knowledge. Examining message structures in campaign news stories led to identifying two major frames in campaign coverage: strategy and issue. Narrative data collected from two field experiments were analyzed. The findings suggest that both strategy-frame and issue-framed print news stories are effective influencing campaign interpretation.