Framing Theory

Framing Theory and Analysis

Use the article, and any other articles you find during a Google search to answer the following four questions:

1. What types of frames did Nike’s opponents establish in the mass media

during the initial phase of the anti-corporate campaign?

    Nike was initially framed as a company that does not care for the people who worked for them. In the early 1990s, reports began coming out about Nike’s low wages and poor working conditions in factories mainly in Indonesia. Mass media showed Nike to be an uncaring organization only interested in making the most profit as possible. Mainly, Nike was framed to be a corporate power only interested in empowering itself at the price of low wages and poor living conditions for its workers.

2. How did Nike counterframe the sweatshop issue?

    Nike originally counterframed the sweatshop issue by releasing a press release of its own. This press release written by Andrew Young, Nike’s tasks diplomat and activists, was highly criticized for being extremely soft onNike. The report did not mention the low price wages and workers interviewed were done with Nike interpreters. Due to these facts, Nike only faced more criticism after releasing the press release  

3. How did Nike’s counterframing tactics on the human rights issue differ

from those used on the sweatshop issue?

    The first thing Nike did in order to solve the criticism they were facing about human rights was admit that they were doing wrong. The CEO of Nike, Phil Knight, gave a speech where he recognized that Nike had become a corporation linked to forced overtime, slave wage, and abuse. He promised to raise the minimum wage of his workers, increase monitoring of the shops, and implement a standard of clean air in all of his shops. Afterwards, Nike started the Fair Labor Association to establish independent monitoring and a better code of conducts for its shop. Nike also went on to audit about 600 shops in early 2000s. By 2005, Nike published a full list of factories with which it contracts.

4. What implications for corporate communicators can be drawn from Nike’s

use of counterframing communication strategies?

    This example shows the power of mass media. After Nike had been framed to be a slave-wage, human-rights ignorant corporation, it’s profits began to fall. This forced the company to implement a standard for human rights. It was forced to change the conditions of all its factories and subsequently changed the lives of the people working for them. At the end of the whole ordeal Nike not only became a more well-respected company, but also created the Fair Labor Association and pressured companies to join.

http://www.businessinsider.com/how-nike-solved-its-sweatshop-problem-2013-5