Reply #5: framing, pt. 2 [View All]

I knew I would get some good responses at DU, which is why I cross-posted here and at the local Meetup.com message board.

“However, in a practical sense, all you have to do is look around. We are bombarded with messages in every aspect of our lives in order to be sold on the a product.”

I guess I’m different. I can’t recall ever buying something because I saw it on TV or heard it on the radio. Newspaper ads, likewise. Internet is a completely different story. Ebay, amazon, yeah,
been there for a while, but I’m searching for it, it's not really impulsive buying, no one tells me “Hey you! Look at this! Buy it!”. It’s not anything like subliminal persuasion. I already know what I want and what I need. I have no larges amounts of disposable income to throw around.

“bombarded”? Surely an understatement. “Bombard” as in electronic warfare, or in military-industrial psy-ops working on the domestic front. Radio talk shows are mostly rightwing, machine-gun chatter by simpletons and morons who can’t shoot very straight anyway, fast talkers who get paid by the word, their corporate sponsors are more specific: commercials are basically random target-shooting by mercenary sniper fire.

“Maybe think of it not as 'framing' but as marketing strategy for politics. The term 'framing', is in reality a verbal strategy of branding. We need to do a better job at branding us and them.”

Well, that’s a good way to look at it. Although I can’t see much of a line between the commercials and the programming. The rightwing “branding”. It’s pretty seamless.

“... 60 second sound bytes with themes repeated ad nauseum will eventually take hold. And these have been in play since the late 70's with Reagan, Limbaugh, and the transformation of Horowitz.
Loony Left (Repeat) weak Liberals (Rewind) Tax and Spend Democrats (Replay) See what I mean?”

That’s easy for me to see. OTOH I knew one person at work who kept those stations locked in. He was a former drug-user, busted and going thru the half-way houses. I think he needed to listen to Rush Limbaugh as a substitute for the previous drug addictions. Framing would not have helped him. If you took him off Rush, he would be back to smoking crack the next day. For some reason, his mind just couldn’t handle a different point of view. Maybe they screwed with his brain in jail or at the half-way house, who knows?

The other guys at the workplace were mostly Christians. Christian Republicans, I should say. Nice on the front but totally intolerant, even back-stabbing types. Don’t see framing of any use here. They go Republican all the way because they know it’s all about money in their pockets and the Republicans are basically in control of distributing it. Maybe the Rethugs control the intaglio presses that print our money, who knows? Are there any Democrat bankers at the Federal Reserve? Would that make much difference?

“Bombarded”? Me? Not really, I only listen to the AM/FM car radio for a few short moments and it gets shut off. If I am lucky, a decent song will play for 3 or 4 minutes but that’s only if I
am lucky and my random timing is right. I go thru the channels right and left and it almost like every one is programmed to play commercials at the same time. I rarely afford the expense of real
(no commercials) music (CDs or cassettes). Likewise for the TV, it has a literal film of dust on it from non-use. It’s rightwing AM radio on high-frequency, video is as pointless and uninteresting
as the voices coming out of its speakers. No, I can’t afford cable TV and I can’t afford to get the people’s TV network or the progressive stuff on radio. Not much in my area to receive. Most
corporations don’t sponsor progressive stations. Just look at how pathetic PBS has become. At best it’s an avenue to project a corporation’s PR, its so-called “social responsibility” in a 60-second sound byte.

I am left with the only other option, to absorb information from text and files on the Internet. Pop-up ads are minimal. There are countermeasures to the “bombardment”, like DU and the other
progressive internet sites. They can’t hit me over here with their corporate bullets.

Okay, back to the framing issue. If I can apply framing to influence one single WASP (family, friends, complete strangers), then I’m willing to try and learn some of it.

“Language is most successful when we have concrete understandings of what is being said. Obama used visual imagry in his speech. That is one reason why he was so successful.”

I’ve never heard Obama speaking on audio. Are there any links to some RealAudio files with him? Perhaps we need to re-learn the oral tradition, which is more ancient than the written tradition. I don’t recall that Lakoff’s framing had any specific emphasis on speech, language skills, oratorical excellence. I would guess that’s as important as the visual. Perhaps someone who can master framing, he/she will turn out to be a good speaker in public? Lakoff on the DVD made a good impression, you could have just listened to the audio and learned the same things. So I would say he is a good speaker.