Do emotions fit the frame? A critical appraisal of visual framing research approaches

With the rise of a visibly more emotional public sphere, this article asks if visual framing approaches can be enriched by the integration of emotive elements. Focussing on television news, I ask in what way emotions manifest within audio-visual material, and how these representations of emotions and emotive elements can be analysed using visual framing analysis. This understanding is grounded in two recent turns: the turn to the visual and to the affective. Both turns provide the background for current framing understandings and visual framing approaches, and for a discussion of three empirical models of analysis and their varying potential to integrate emotive elements. I distinguish here between a holistic ‘emotion frame’, emotions as narrative structures, and emotion as frame element. I argue that emotions can be best conceptualized as a frame element; and three practical realizations are discussed to what extent they are helpful to analyse emotions empirically in audio-visual news material.