Abstract

Using a quantitative content analysis that tracks the anti-death penalty movement across fifty years, this research looks at how their framing choices have changed. During this time, the national legal environment saw many significant doctrinal revisions, which in turn shaped and transformed the conversation around death punishment. While several have examined death sentence framing, no one has taken an empirical, systematic method that puts the speakers' frames front and centre. This project examines the following questions: (1) which frames were dominant in the anti-death penalty movement discourse in the early 1970s, during the abolitionist movement's height; (2) how were these frames displaced by subsequent changes in discursive opportunities, as anchored in major court decisions; and (3) which frames were marginalized and the social impacts of their marginalization as other frames became dominant. It also takes into account the diversity of frames held by movement participants. This review seeks to address these problems by examining the anti-death penalty frames used in a statistically significant sample of stories published in the New York Times and the Los Angeles Times between 1965 and 2014. While the findings show that the movement is now more dependent on instrumental frames than moral ones, the movement literature may have exaggerated this trend. This study sheds light on a movement that has failed to make a dent in public discourse and policy debates by examining the media's impact on cultural resonance, the relationship between movement framing and public opinion, and the differences in framing among movement factions.

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