Reframing: How Propaganda Shapes Our Views

What Is Reframing?

Language does not only describe reality. It organizes it. Every word that names a conflict, a people, or an act of violence carries embedded assumptions about who holds power, who holds blame, and what history led to this moment. Reframing is the systematic process by which those embedded assumptions are replaced — and with them, the conclusions audiences draw. Academically, the concept of framing was first systematized in the communication literature by Robert M. Entman in his foundational 1993 paper published in the Journal of Communication. Entman defined framing in terms that remain the standard reference point:

"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." — Robert M. Entman, Journal of Communication, 1993^[1]

Reframing, then, is the deliberate act of substituting one such frame for another. It is not lying in the traditional sense. The facts may remain identical. What changes is which facts are selected, which are suppressed, and what conceptual architecture is used to hold them together. Three separate definitions have emerged across academic disciplines, and understanding all three is necessary before examining how reframing functions as a propaganda instrument.

Three Academic Definitions of Reframing

1. The Cognitive-Psychological Definition: Equivalence Framing

In cognitive psychology, reframing was identified by Amos Tversky and Daniel Kahneman in their landmark 1981 paper, “The Framing of Decisions and the Psychology of Choice,” published in Science. Their research showed that when logically equivalent information is presented in different ways, human decision-making shifts dramatically — not because the facts have changed, but because the frame has.^[2] Their most cited experiment is the Asian Disease Problem: participants were told that 600 people were expected to die from a disease and were asked to choose between two response programs. When the programs were described in terms of lives saved, a majority chose the certain option. When the same programs were described in terms of lives lost, a majority switched to the risky option. The underlying statistics were mathematically identical. Only the frame changed — and it reversed majority preference.^[2] This is what Tversky and Kahneman called an equivalence frame: two descriptions of the same situation that carry different emotional valences. Their conclusion was severe: “the frame that a decision-maker adopts is controlled partly by the formulation of the problem.” Crucially, decision-makers are typically unaware that the frame is doing the cognitive work for them. Kahneman later received the Nobel Prize in Economics in 2002 in part for this body of work.^[2]

2. The Political Communication Definition: Emphasis Framing

While cognitive psychologists focused on logically equivalent presentations, political communication scholars developed a second definition focused on which aspects of an issue are emphasized. Dietram Scheufele, in his influential 1999 process model of framing published in the Journal of Communication, distinguished between frames as attributes of media content and frames as cognitive structures in audiences.^[3] On this definition, reframing does not require two logically equivalent messages. It works by shifting which dimension of a complex issue becomes the organizing lens. An issue can be framed as a security problem, an economic problem, a legal problem, or a humanitarian problem — and the same set of facts will generate different moral conclusions depending on which frame structures the conversation. Chong and Druckman (2007), reviewing 372 political framing experiments, found that emphasis frames are the dominant mode in political communication research, and that their effects are robust — particularly when audiences receive only one frame rather than competing ones.^[4]

3. The Media Studies Definition: Strategic Reframing

A third definition comes from media studies scholars working in the tradition of Entman’s cascading network activation model. Here, reframing is understood as a strategic act by institutional elites — governments, public relations agencies, military spokespersons — to displace an existing frame in public discourse and replace it with one that better serves their interests.^[1] This is the definition most directly relevant to propaganda. As Entman put it: framing diagnoses, evaluates, and prescribes. A government that succeeds in reframing a military occupation as a “security operation” has simultaneously redefined who the problem-holder is, what caused the problem, and what the legitimate response should be.

What Experiments Reveal About Reframing’s Power

The KKK Free Speech Experiment (Nelson, Clawson & Oxley, 1997)

One of the most cited experiments in political framing was conducted by Thomas Nelson, Rosalee Clawson, and Zoe Oxley, published in the American Political Science Review.^[5] Participants were shown one of two television news stories about a Ku Klux Klan rally. The stories were identical in factual content. The only variable was the frame: one story framed the rally as a free speech issue; the other framed it as a public order disruption. Participants who watched the free speech version expressed significantly more tolerance for the Klan rally than those who watched the public order version — not because they changed their underlying values, but because the frame activated a different value as the relevant one. The free speech frame made civil liberties the applicable standard; the public order frame made community safety the applicable standard. This experiment demonstrated that reframing does not change minds by introducing new facts. It changes minds by restructuring which moral framework people apply to existing facts.

The Competitive Framing Experiment (Druckman & Nelson, 2003)

James Druckman and Kjersten Nelson published an experiment in the American Journal of Political Science testing what happens when competing frames are presented simultaneously.^[6] Their finding was counterintuitive: deliberation — the act of discussing competing frames with others — reduced framing effects, but only when that deliberation was genuine. When participants were exposed to a single frame without counter-messaging, the framing effect was strong and durable. The implication for propaganda is direct: reframing is most powerful when the counter-frame is absent from the information environment. A population receiving only one frame for a conflict will organize its understanding around that frame, not because it is persuaded, but because it has no alternative architecture to deploy.

The Source Credibility Constraint (Druckman, 2001)

Druckman, in a series of experiments published in the Journal of Politics, showed that framing effects are moderated by source credibility.^[7] Participants who were told a frame came from a credible, trusted source accepted it more readily. This finding has direct implications for state-sponsored reframing: institutional sources — governments, official spokespersons, major media outlets — carry structural credibility advantages that amplify their frames independent of the frames’ accuracy.

The Gain/Loss Frame in Political Messaging (Laver, Benoit & Garry, PLOS ONE, 2013)

A study published in PLOS ONE examined how regulatory fit — matching a political message’s frame to the audience’s psychological orientation — affected implicit attitudes toward nuclear energy and voting intentions for political candidates.^[8] The finding is significant: reframing is not merely about the content of the message, but about its alignment with existing psychological orientations in the target audience. Effective propaganda does not fight the audience’s psychology — it finds the frame that fits.

How Israel Applies Reframing: Four Documented Cases

The following four cases document specific Israeli reframing strategies that are traceable to public sources, including a leaked 117-page language strategy document commissioned by The Israel Project from pollster Frank Luntz in 2009 (“The Israel Project’s 2009 Global Language Dictionary”). This document was leaked and reported by Newsweek and is publicly available online. It provides direct textual evidence for the framing choices described below.^[9]

Case 1: Occupation Reframed as “Conflict”

The most pervasive reframe in international coverage of Palestine is the substitution of the word occupation with the word conflict. These terms do not describe the same reality. An occupation is a specific legal condition defined under the Fourth Geneva Convention, in which one state exercises effective control over the territory of another. The International Court of Justice confirmed in its 2004 Advisory Opinion and again in its 2024 Advisory Opinion that Israel’s presence in the West Bank and East Jerusalem constitutes an unlawful occupation under international law.^[10] The word “conflict” describes a symmetrical dispute between parties with comparable agency. It implies mutual causation. It removes the legal framework that governs one party’s obligations and the other party’s rights. When “occupation” becomes “conflict,” the question shifts from what are the occupier’s legal obligations? to how do we get both sides to stop? The Luntz document is explicit about this substitution, flagging that describing the situation as an “occupation” is harmful to Israel’s public image, and recommending language that emphasizes “peace” and “shared future” instead — language that presupposes a symmetry that the legal record does not support.^[9]

Case 2: Israeli Victims Foregrounded, Palestinian Victims Aggregated

The Luntz document’s third chapter is dedicated to messaging strategy for Israeli civilian deaths. It instructs spokespeople to humanize Israeli victims — to name them, to describe their families, to make them identifiable individuals — while discussing Palestinian casualties in aggregate statistical terms.^[9] A 2024 preprint study published on arXiv, analyzing over 14,000 news articles from the New York Times, BBC, CNN, and Al Jazeera English during the first year of the war on Gaza, found three systematic biases in Western outlets: Israeli victims were substantially more likely to be depicted as identifiable individuals, while Palestinian victims were predominantly represented as undifferentiated numbers; Western reporting repeatedly invoked October 7 to equalize suffering even when no new Israeli-casualty events had occurred; and journalists disproportionately used language that cast doubt on Palestinian casualty figures, while Israeli figures were reported without qualification.^[11]

Case 3: Palestinians Reframed as “Arabs”

A subtler but consequential reframe involves the erasure of Palestinian national identity through generic ethnic labeling. By describing Palestinians as “Arabs” — implying they are interchangeable with the broader Arab population of 22 countries — Israeli diplomatic messaging has historically supported the argument that Palestinians have alternative national homelands and therefore no unique claim to the land they were displaced from. Gilboa (2006), in his analysis of Israeli public diplomacy published in The Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, traces how Israeli official messaging consistently emphasized the regional, Arab character of opposition to Israel’s founding — framing the conflict as Israel versus the Arab world, rather than Israel versus the specifically Palestinian population with specific historical claims to specific land.^[12] This also erases the Nakba — the 1948 expulsion of approximately 750,000 Palestinians — as a distinct event affecting a distinct national group with specific property rights.

Case 4: Hamas Reframed as “Terrorist Organization”

Hamas (Harakat al-Muqawama al-Islamiyya, the Islamic Resistance Movement) was founded in 1987 in Gaza as a resistance and social welfare organization. Its full name contains the word resistance. Its primary political context is the Israeli military occupation of Palestinian territory, which began in 1967.^[13] The reframing of Hamas exclusively as a “terrorist organization” — without acknowledgment of its resistance function, its social infrastructure role, or the occupation context that produced it — performs specific propaganda work. Once an organization is labeled only as terrorist, a set of logical consequences follows automatically: there is no legitimate grievance to address, no political solution to negotiate, no proportionality requirement for response, and no obligation to distinguish between the organization and the civilian population it governs. The Luntz document dedicates an entire chapter to “Isolating Iran-backed Hamas as an Obstacle to Peace,” instructing spokespeople to consistently link Hamas to Iran, to frame Hamas as the obstacle preventing Palestinian self-determination (rather than the occupation), and to avoid any language that acknowledges Hamas’s origins in a context of military occupation.^[9] A comparative media study examining Western and Middle Eastern outlets’ coverage of Hamas following October 7 found that Western outlets predominantly applied the terrorist-organization frame without contextualizing Hamas’s origins in the occupation, while regional outlets were more likely to frame Hamas within a resistance-and-occupation framework.^[14]

Why Reframing Is Difficult to Detect

Reframing works precisely because it does not feel like persuasion. It feels like description. When a news anchor uses the phrase “Israeli-Palestinian conflict,” they are not announcing a political position. They are choosing a word — one that appears neutral, balanced, and uncontroversial. The propaganda function is embedded in the architecture of the language, not in its apparent content. Scheufele and Tewksbury (2007), in a widely cited paper in the Journal of Communication, described this as the difference between agenda-setting (telling us what to think about) and framing (telling us how to think about it).^[15] Both functions operate below the threshold of conscious evaluation. An audience that is told the conflict has been told something — something structurally significant — before a single claim has been made. This is what makes reframing so powerful, and so resistant to fact-checking. You cannot fact-check a frame. You can only replace it with another one.

How to Detect Reframing: A Working Checklist

1. Identify the operative noun. What is the situation called? “Conflict,” “war,” “occupation,” “crisis,” “dispute,” “violence”? Each noun carries embedded assumptions about symmetry, causation, and legitimacy. Ask: does this noun match the legal and factual record? 2. Who is named as agent, who as patient? In sentences about violence, who is doing and who is receiving? “Israel struck Gaza” and “Gaza was struck” distribute agency differently. “Clashes erupted” assigns agency to nobody. Pay attention to passive constructions and intransitive verbs. 3. What has been removed? Reframing almost always works by omission. What historical context is absent? What legal framework is unmentioned? What comparative figure — casualty ratio, territorial control, legal status — is missing? 4. What is the implied starting point? Every news narrative begins at a particular moment. Frames that begin on October 7 omit 57 years of occupation. The choice of where the story begins is a framing choice. 5. Does the vocabulary match the vocabulary of a disclosed strategy? The Luntz document and similar hasbara manuals are publicly available. When official Israeli communications use specific recommended phrases — “peace for both peoples,” “Iran-backed Hamas,” “defensible borders” — those phrases are drawn from a tested persuasion strategy, not spontaneous description. Recognize scripted vocabulary for what it is.

Summary: What the Science Tells Us

The research record on reframing is, after five decades of experimental study, clear on several points:

• Equivalent facts presented in different frames produce different decisions (Tversky & Kahneman, 1981).^[2]
• Emphasis frames — which highlight some dimensions of an issue over others — shift moral evaluations reliably and measurably (Nelson, Clawson & Oxley, 1997).^[5]
• These effects are strongest when only one frame is present in the information environment (Druckman & Nelson, 2003).^[6]
• Source credibility amplifies framing effects (Druckman, 2001).^[7]
• Institutional elites carry structural advantages in getting their frames adopted as the default vocabulary of public discourse (Entman, 1993).^[1]

Israel’s public diplomacy apparatus is not unique in applying these principles. What makes it analytically significant is the degree to which its strategy has been documented in leaked primary sources, and the degree to which Western media’s vocabulary choices have demonstrably aligned with those strategic recommendations — not through conspiracy, but through the ordinary operation of elite framing: when the powerful repeat a frame consistently through credible channels, it becomes the default way of describing the world. The word “conflict” is not neutral. The phrase “Iran-backed Hamas” is not spontaneous description. The asymmetry in who gets a name and who gets a number is not accidental. These are choices. And choices, once visible, can be evaluated.

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Sources & References

All sources cited below are open-access, freely available online, or accessible through institutional open repositories. Tier classification follows site methodology.

Evidence Strength Score: 9/10 — Primary institutional sources (ICJ advisory opinions), open-access peer-reviewed experiments, and a leaked primary strategy document. Limitations: the arXiv preprint (Ref. 11) is not yet formally peer-reviewed; the ResearchGate preprint (Ref. 14) is similarly preliminary. All factual claims are independently supported by at least one Tier 1 or Tier 2 source. Last verified: May 2026.