Entman on framing

According to Robert Entman, who set out to clarify frame theory, framing ‘essentially involves selection and salience. To frame is to select some aspects of a perceived reality and make 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 for the item described’. Echoing Goffman’s original definition of framing, Entman argues that culture is the stock of commonly invoked frames, and communicators make conscious or unconscious framing judgements, guided by their belief system, and that the decisions are then manifested in the text by the presence or absence of keywords, phrases, stereotyped images, sources and sentences that provide thematically reinforcing clusters of facts or judgements; Entman also considers that what is omitted from the news is as important as what is included.[1]
[1] R. Entman; Framing: Toward Clarification of a Fractured Paradigm, in Journal of Communication, Volume 43 (4), Winter, 1993, pp. 51-8, p. 52.