The Tea Party Movement, Framing, and the US Media
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Social Movement Studies,
Vol. 10, No. 4, 341–366, November 2011
The Tea Party Movement, Framing, and the
US Media
JULES BOYKOFF* & EULALIE LASCHEVER**
*Department of Politics and Government, Pacific University, Forest Grove, OR, USA, **Department of
Sociology, University of California, Irvine, CA, USA
ABSTRACT In February 2009, the Tea Party Movement (TPM) burst onto the political scene in the
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USA. Emerging out of popular unrest over the economic downturn of 2008 and the perceived radical
agenda of President Barack Obama, the Tea Party quickly captured the imagination of disenchanted
conservatives. Media coverage of the movement was abundant, with a frame contest between the
TPM and its political opponents swiftly surfacing. Media frames bracketed discussions over the
authenticity of the Tea Party, the composition of its members, the movement’s message, and whether
the TPM was poised for a long-term impact. This study systematically analyzes the predominant
media frames that materialized in 882 news packets from nine major print and television news
sources between 19 February 2009 and 30 November 2010 in order to better understand the role the
US media played in defining the Tea Party, and to determine whether Tea Party perceptions of its
media coverage were accurate. Four sets of diametric frames appeared in the media—the Everyday
American vs. Non-Mainstream, Grassroots vs. Establishment-Affiliated, Fiscal-Federal Frustrations
vs. Amalgam of Grievances, and Election Impact vs. Flash in the Pan. Overall, the TPM succeeded in
mobilizing symbolic media representations to advance their goals, achieving politically propitious
coverage. US media depicted the TPM with supportive frames more than twice as often as the
deprecatory characterizations the activists opposed. This study investigates how the media used
these frames and discusses implications of Tea Party coverage as it relates to journalistic norms,
social activism, and overarching framing processes.
KEY WORDS : Tea Party Movement, mass media, framing, framing contests
Introduction
On 19 February 2009, Rick Santelli of CNBC Business Network railed against President
Barack Obama’s Homeowner Affordability and Stability Plan, ultimately calling for ‘a
Chicago Tea Party in July’ to protest. Video of Santelli’s impassioned outburst caught fire
on the Internet and in the blogosphere, and he appeared on NBC’s Today Show the
following morning to elaborate on the issue. The energy was catching and the term ‘Tea
Party’ spread across the USA. Within months of its inception, the Tea Party Movement
(TPM) garnered regular television and newspaper attention—accompanied by con-
troversy—including accusations of racism, extremism, and doubts about the movement’s
‘grassroots’ bona fides.
Correspondence Address: Jules Boykoff, Department of Politics and Government, Pacific University, 2043
College Way, Forest Grove, OR 97116, USA. Email: boykoff@pacificu.edu
1474-2837 Print/1474-2829 Online/11/040341-26 q 2011 Taylor & Francis
http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/14742837.2011.614104
342 J. Boykoff & E. Laschever
The TPM swiftly and successfully disseminated its socio-political opinions to a wide
audience. Tarrow (1998, p. 110) explains the strategic logic undergirding claims-making
processes: ‘social movements are deeply involved in the work of “naming” grievances,
connecting them to other grievances, and constructing larger frames of meaning that will
resonate with a population’s cultural predispositions and communicate a uniform message
to power holders and others’. The TPM tapped into extant ‘cultural predispositions’;
journalist John B. Judis (2010, pp. 20 – 21) identified three ideological strands inherent in
Tea Party messaging that stretch back to the USA’s founding: apprehension over social
and economic decline; a Jeffersonian propensity for ‘staunch anti-statism’; and a
producerist mentality whereby hard-working people should enjoy the fruits of their labors
rather than be forced to share them.
While TPM ideas resonated with historical traditions of US political culture, the
movement needed media to disseminate its vision to the wider public. As Gamson, (2004,
p. 243) notes, ‘the mass media arena is the major site of contests over meaning because all
of the players in the policy process assume its pervasive influence—whether it is justified
or not’. While some view any media coverage as positive for social movements, others
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question this assumption (e.g. Rosie & Gorringe, 2009) and examine how media coverage
can suppress social movements (e.g. Boykoff, 2007). However, as Cottle, (2008, p. 859)
notes, ‘[t]oday’s media ecology arguably contains more political opportunities for
dissenting voices and views from around the world than in the past’.
The TPM garnered attention from mass-media critics, with right-wing analysts at the
Media Research Center (2010) contending that activists were ‘hit with [a] hostile and
crude media response’, while left-wing researchers at Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting
(Hart & Rendall, 2010) critiqued the corporate media for lavishing the movement with
extensive coverage. Despite TPM-favorite Sarah Palin dismissing mainstream media as
‘lamestream’, a survey by the Washington Post found that 76% of local TPM organizers
believed mainstream media coverage of their movement was ‘very fair’ or ‘somewhat fair’
(Gardner, 2010). In this article we systematically assess the dominant media frames that
mainstream print and television outlets used when covering the TPM, beginning in
February 2009 and concluding at the end of November 2010 when the activists’ influence
on Washington, DC’s political topography was clear. In the process, we explore Gamson’s
‘contests over meaning’ on the US media terrain.
The TEA Party Movement
Since this study explores the relationship between US media coverage and the TPM’s
stated identity and objectives, we first analyze the Tea Party-produced literature and how
the movement defines itself. The Tea (Taxed Enough Already) Party Movement1 is a
collection of grassroots groups sparked in early 2009 by the perceived progressivism of the
Obama administration. These decentralized groups share a loose set of beliefs and are
sometimes linked with national-level organizations such as the Tea Party Patriots and the
Tea Party Express, though largely they operate independently. While sometimes funded
by political heavy-hitters like FreedomWorks and Americans for Prosperity, local Tea
Party groups enjoy relative autonomy (Williamson et al., 2011, pp. 28 – 29). Rasmussen
and Schoen (2010, pp. 146 –160) distinguish the TPM into four major components. First,
‘Organizational Backers’ such as FreedomWorks provide infrastructural support for the
movement. Second, the ‘Individual Organizers’ conduct on-the-ground planning and
Media Framing and the Tea Party Movement 343
solidarity work. Third, ‘Symbolic Leaders’—nationally recognized figures identifiable to
outsiders (e.g. Sarah Palin)—echo the movement’s sentiments. Finally, ‘The Base’ is
the bulk of the movement: ‘a cross section of America’ that ‘represents a solid one-third of
the electorate, if not considerably more, perhaps right up to 50 per cent’ (pp. 156, 158 –
159). However, others question the movement’s pervasiveness (Williamson et al., 2011,
pp. 27, 36).
TPM activists credit the multibillion-dollar government bailouts of auto and finance
industries—and underwater homeowners—with catalyzing the original protests. However,
they emphasize that concern over out-of-control federal spending had mounted since the
Reagan era. The first wave of protests occurred on 15 April 2009 because, according to
TPM proponent John O’Hara (2010, p. 13), ‘on Tax Day every American is fiscally
conservative’. Coalitions quickly formed over shared disdain for the ‘ObamaCare’ health
care bill progressing through Congress in summer 2009. TPM members viewed the bill as
fiscally irresponsible federal-government overreach. The activists’ penchant for the ‘broad
principles of fiscal responsibility and limited government as pillars of the movement’
(O’Hara, 2010, p. 205) coheres with a Washington Post canvass released ahead of the 2010
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midterm elections. When asked to offer ‘the single most important issue for the group’, the
top two replies were government spending/the deficit (24%) and limited government/the
size of government (20%) (Washington Post Canvass, 2010).
While TPM activists and their supporters unite around a policy agenda of fiscal
responsibility and limited government, many acknowledge consistency ends there.
Members boast affiliates from across the political and ideological spectrum, claiming a
widespread appeal to ‘common sense’. O’Hara (2010, p. 208) proclaims the group consists
of ‘Democrats, Republicans, Libertarians, independents, and everything in between’ who
‘agree that government is not always the answer’. The TPM often defines itself by what it
is not. Self-describing as the antithesis of left-wing protesters, TPM activists stress that
they are everyday, mainstream citizens—stay-at-home moms who have never before
protested. As one supporter explained, ‘[t]hese aren’t masked anarchists smashing
windows and setting fires at a G-20 summit. They aren’t angry, “Bush Lied, People Died”
sixties throwbacks using a political rally to score some pot from their grandkids’
classmates’ (Graham, 2010, p. 2). Rather, they ‘were middle-class Americans of all ages
talking about fiscal sanity’ (Armey & Kibbe, 2010, p. 15). Proponents describe the TPM as
a conglomerate of retirees, military vets, small business owners, suburban farmers,
grandmothers, office managers, and churchgoers disillusioned with out-of-touch political
elites (Graham, 2010, pp. 1– 3).
However, an extensive poll carried out by the New York Times/CBS in April 2010
determined TPM members fair better than the average American. Only 35% of Tea
Partiers reported making less than $50,000 a year, compared with 48% of the general
population. TPM members also boast higher educational attainment, with 70% having at
least some college education, compared with 53% of the population at large. And with
75% of respondents 45 years or older—including 29% of the respondents 65 years and
older—they are older than the general population, which is 50% and 16%, respectively
(Zernike, 2010, pp. 195– 227; also CBS News & New York Times Poll, 2010). McVeigh’s
(2009) ‘power-devaluation model’, which focuses on ‘relatively advantaged’ right-wing
movements aiming ‘to preserve, restore, and expand their collective privileges’, helps
explain TPM mobilization. McVeigh theorizes, ‘power devaluation, resulting from
structural change, produces shifts in interpretive processes, which, in turn, lead to344 J. Boykoff & E. Laschever
activation of organizational resources and exploitation of political opportunities’ (p. 39).
The explanatory model features three central dimensions: economic, political, status-
based devaluation. Power devaluation does not automatically translate to collective action,
but triggers ‘a shift in interpretive processes’, potentially prompting those threatened ‘to
activate preexisting organizational resources and exploit preexisting political opportu-
nities in an effort to reverse devaluation’ (pp. 46 –47).
The TPM’s strength comes partially from shared mobilizing structures with right-of-
center predecessor movements such as Grover Norquist’s Americans for Tax Reform
(Micklethwait & Wooldridge, 2004) and the Christian Right (Diamond, 1995, 1998),
although the TPM focuses on fiscal issues while the Christian Right’s bailiwick is social
issues. Also, the TPM does not share the Christian Right’s built-in hindrance to growth
because it does not proffer theological tenets that anti-tax, anti-government folks might
find off-putting.
The TPM is sensitive about its portrayal in the mainstream media, or what it often
derides as the ‘liberal, elite media’. Accusations of media bias range from under-
representation to defamatory intimations of racism. Activists contested allegations linking
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the movement with extremists, decried outright name-calling and sexualized jokes about
‘teabagging’, and questioned their ‘anti-tax’ characterization as oversimplifying the
message of fiscal responsibility and limited government (O’Hara, 2010, pp. 76 –89, 215).
O’Hara, (2010, pp. 210– 211) asserts, ‘the tea parties were simultaneously couched by
the liberal media and politicians as small and insignificant but out of control, populist
mobs’. Supporters also opposed claims that the TPM was manufactured by the
conservative establishment (Taibbi, 2010). Dick Armey and Matt Kibbe (2010, p. 76)
protested a particular portrayal by New York Times columnist Paul Krugman (2009)
who asserted that TPM was an ‘AstroTurf’ group funded by ‘the usual group of right-wing
billionaires’ and ‘being promoted heavily by Fox News’. Jane Mayer (2010) outlined
in the New Yorker how Koch Industries bankrolled Americans for Prosperity, a big
TPM funder.
Quickly, TPM activists met many of the preconditions for successful collective
action—attracting fresh recruits, sustaining solidarity, generating support from bystander
audiences, cultivating leaders, securing media coverage, and procuring tactical space to
pursue political goals (McAdam, 1996; Boykoff, 2006a). Regarding media coverage, the
TPM benefited from a propitious media environment, with the rise of advocacy journalism
featured on Fox News Network (FNN) and MSNBC. In an academic article, Williamson
et al. (2011, p. 30) assert, ‘Fox News provides much of what the loosely interconnected
Tea Party organizations otherwise lack in terms of a unified membership and
communications infrastructure’. In this article we examine the role FNN—and others—
played in framing the TPM.
Framing
Scholars have used the term framing in numerous ways, leading Entman (1993, p. 51) to
call it a ‘scattered conceptualization’ in need for clarification. Meanwhile, D’Angelo
(2002, p. 871) contended that news framing should be ‘multiparadigmatic’, and Reese
(2007, p. 148) argued that, ‘[f]raming’s value [ . . . ] does not hinge on its potential as a
unified research domain’ but instead ‘as a provocative model that bridges parts of the field
that need to be in touch with one another’.Media Framing and the Tea Party Movement 345
Framing is a complex process in which contending political actors interrelate. Social-
movement scholars often use the term to mean ‘the conscious, strategic efforts of movement
groups to fashion meaningful accounts of themselves and the issues at hand in order to
motivate and legitimate their efforts’ (McAdam, 1996, p. 339). Social-movement activists
engage in what Gamson (2004, p. 245) dubs as ‘framing contests’, with established political
actors discursively jockeying for political advantage by expressing their grievances to
journalists (Ryan, 1991), fellow activists (Rohlinger & Quadagno, 2009), political elites,
and the general public (Reinsborough & Canning, 2010) as persuasively as possible.
A second way in which scholars use the term framing is to indicate the process by which
journalists organize the whirling swirl of empirical reality into consumable news
packages. In this research, journalists place figurative picture frames around the ever-
moving target of events and actions, thereby focusing our attention on particular issues,
ideas, and individuals while obscuring what lies outside the frame. Such framing processes
yield media frames that organize events and issues through tenets of selection and
emphasis. Gitlin (1980, p. 7, emphasis in original) defines media frames as ‘persistent
patterns of cognition, interpretation, and presentation, of selection, emphasis, and
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exclusion, by which symbol-handlers routinely organize discourse’. Thus, frames are
analytical constructs with normative implications. This normativity is highlighted by the
definition of framing given by Entman (2004, p. 5): ‘selecting and highlighting some
facets of events or issues, and making connections among them so as to promote a
particular interpretation, evaluation, and/or solution’.
Media frames both organize and set the stage for real-world politics, leading to a third
way in which scholars research framing: media effects. D’Angelo (2002, p. 873)
summarizes common lines of framing-effects inquiry at the micro- and macro-levels:
scholars ‘examine how news frames activate, and interact with, an individual’s prior
knowledge to affect interpretations, recall of information, decision making, and
evaluations’ and explore ‘how news frames shape social-level processes such as public
opinion and policy issue debates.’2 Scholars have investigated how media frames affect
public opinion (Nelson & Oxley, 1999; Winter, 2008), sometimes engaging in controlled
experiments to test how media framing affects attitudes such as tolerance (Nelson et al.,
1997). Scheufele’s (1999, p. 105) observation that ‘[m]ass media actively set the frames of
reference that readers or viewers use to interpret and discuss public events’ captures how
media coverage can lead to framing effects, channeling an analytical path between what he
distinguishes as ‘media frames’ and ‘audience frames’.
Figure 1 depicts these three ways of construing the concept of framing. The left side of
the figure denotes the terrain of ‘framing contests’ where political actors—social-
movement organizations, elected officials, and others—make their claims and stake out
policy positions. Such contestation is bounded by the political opportunity structure of time
and geography. Political claims must pass through two filters before becoming news:
cultural resonance and journalistic norms. If a group’s or individual’s claims resonate with
established US political culture, it will more likely be converted into a media frame,
especially if it coheres with the journalistic norms and values guiding news production.
Therefore, social movement organizations often attempt to self-represent in ways that both
chime with the predominant octaves of political history and that compel journalists and their
ingrained news-making predilections, organizational dictates, and temporal pressures. The
media frames at the center of Figure 1 can also lead to framing effects—located at the right
side of the figure—such as public opinion shifts, collective action repertoire adjustment,346 J. Boykoff & E. Laschever
Figure 1. The framing process.
and altered public-policy discourse. The ‘Cultural Congruence’ filter comes from Entman
(2004, p. 14, emphasis in original) who notes about news frames:
The more congruent the frame is with schemas that dominate political culture, the
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more success it will enjoy. The most inherently powerful frames are those fully
congruent with schemas habitually used by most members of society. Such frames
have the greatest intrinsic capacity to arouse similar responses among most Americans.
There is a feedback-loop feature to this model, with the media effects becoming the
initial inputs to the system, affecting what becomes news (media frames). As D’Angelo
(2002, p. 882) puts it, ‘framing effects, then, are not one way.’3
In this research we adopt a critical-constructionist approach that focuses on mass-media
frames, treating journalists as processors of information and ideas who produce
interpretive representations of reality rooted in the norms, values, and routines of
newsgathering (D’Angelo, 2002, pp. 876 –877). Therefore, we are working in the center
and left-hand zone of Figure 1, focusing primarily on the construction of media frames and
secondarily on their congruence with the TPM’s self-representation. Borrowing from
Reese (2007, p. 150), we view media frames as ‘structures that draw boundaries, set up
categories, define some ideas as out and other as in’. These frames form ‘persistent
patterns’ that ‘organize discourse’ (Gitlin, 1980, p. 7), structuring ideas, issues, and events
into digestible news packets. So, media frames are consistent, coherent bundles of
information that journalists provide to imbue real-world events with structure and
meaning. Media frames organize issues, pointing both backward at what happened and
forward, offering interpretive cues for what it all means. We zero in on media frames, or
what Scheufele (2004, p. 402) calls ‘the textual structure of discourse products’, treating
them as the dependent variable. Along the way we examine how the TPM represents itself
in terms of its policy preferences, membership, and style to examine whether or not the
movement was successful in converting its self-representation into media frames.
Sometimes journalists pipe activists’ self-representations unadulterated to the public via
media frames, but often the desired characterizations of the movements face blockages
and alterations while zinging through the news-making processes. Media reflect and
reproduce the political culture and ultimately act as the arbiter of what Koopmans and
Statham (1999, p. 228) call the ‘discursive opportunity structure’, or the set of variables
‘determining which ideas are considered “sensible”, which constructions of reality are
seen as “realistic”, and which claims are held as “legitimate” within a certain polity at aMedia Framing and the Tea Party Movement 347
specific time’. Through framing, media construct discursive brackets classifying certain
ideas and political actors as rational and thus to be taken seriously, while others are framed
as extremist and therefore unacceptable. As such, the quality and quantity of media
coverage of activism is significant. Such coverage can help activists disseminate their
ideas to bystander publics and potential recruits while legitimating these ideas in the
public sphere. However, an array of scholars have found that mass media distort social
movements or portray them in deprecatory terms, whether they are feminist movements
(Bronstein, 2005; Barakso & Schaffner, 2006), anti-war movements (Small, 1994; Klein
et al., 2009), racial justice groups (Jeffries, 2007; Rhodes, 2007), or the modern-day
Global Justice Movement (Boykoff, 2006b; Rauch et al., 2007). The preponderance of
scholarly research on media coverage of activism focuses on left-of-center social
movements; this paper provides a counterweight to that trend.
Mass media tend to proffer more positive portrayals of activists whose tactics and
strategies remain within the boundaries of the rules and laws of the socio-political system
while belittling dissident citizens who eschew such rules and laws (Small, 1994; Snow
et al., 2007). For example, Hallin (1986, p. 197) found that media covering anti-Vietnam
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war activists ‘would frequently plug opponents of the war who chose to “work within the
system”’, thereby creating ‘boundaries marking the limits of acceptable political activity’.
Thus, groups operating within the institutionalized political system and adopting
‘contained’ tactics fare better under the media spotlight than those eschewing institutional
politics and adopting ‘transgressive’, outside-the-box tactics (Tarrow, 1998).
To understand framing—and in particular what Scheufele (1999, p. 115) distinguishes
as media ‘frame building’—one must consider the journalistic norms affecting what is
considered newsworthy and how the newsworthy information is depicted. As mentioned
above, these professional norms act as a filter in the media framing process. Boykoff and
Boykoff (2007, p, 1192) identify ‘first order norms’ as personalization, dramatization, and
novelty; highlighting how personalities, conflict, and newness are key factors—or
‘baseline influences’—in what becomes news. ‘Second order norms’ include balance and
authority-order, where journalists turn to authority figures as sources who assure the public
that social disorder will soon be addressed and order will prevail (also Bennett, 2002, pp.
45 –50). In electoral politics, the journalistic norms filter can lead to what Lawrence (2010,
p. 272) dubs as the ‘game frame’ whereby covering the complexity of issues becomes
secondary to describing the machinations of political strategy.
Methodology
We assembled the data set for this study by conducting database searches on LexisNexis
Academic and Proquest for television news reports and newspaper articles referencing
‘Tea Party’. Selection was limited to the New York Times (NYT), the Washington Post
(WP), the Wall Street Journal (WSJ), and USA Today (USA), as well as the FNN, CNN,
MSNBC, CBS News, and ABC News. We chose these newspapers because they represent
four of the top five newspapers in national circulation.4 Newspaper op-eds were included
to provide balance to ‘hard news’ stories and because of their influence on policy-making,
while letters to the editor were excluded because news organizations did not actually
produce them. We included television in light of a recent Pew Research Center (2009) poll
finding 71% of the US population turns to television for its national and international news
and 64% rely on television for local news. FNN, CNN, and MSNBC were selected because348 J. Boykoff & E. Laschever
of their high viewership, while CBS and ABC were included to expand perspective. We
analyze traditional media because, despite rising consumption of social media, traditional
sources still lead the news industry (Ahlers, 2006).
While newspaper and television, and ‘hard’ news and op-eds, may be guided by varying
assumptions or intentions, they all share space in the US mediascape, competing as
meaning-creators. We aggregated them in this analysis due to this direct competition.
Also, polls during this study’s time frame showed that over 50% of TPM members viewed
FNN’s opinion shows as hard news (CBS News & New York Times Poll, 2010; Zernike,
2010, p. 221). For the purpose of analyzing meaning-creation in the media, if news
consumers considered a source news, it makes sense to analyze it as such.
Our 22-month time frame ranges from 19 February 2009—when Santelli issued his plea
for a ‘New Chicago Tea Party’—to 30 November 2010 in order to capture a significant
slice of the midterm post-election coverage concerning the TPM’s electoral impact and
projections for long-term influence.5 3362 items met the selection criteria, and Graph 1.1
summarizes the longitudinal breakdown of the data. Early coverage spiked around the 15
April 2009 Tax Day Tea Party Protests—the first major event organized by TPM
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coalitions—and rose meteorically with the spring 2010 primaries and the general election
in fall 2010. Coverage peaked the month before the midterm elections.
Graph 1.2 illustrates the distribution of the data set by source. In terms of frequency,
CNN reports nearly doubled those of FNN, the source with next greatest prevelance.6
Meanwhile, CBS offered the least coverage, one-tenth of CNN’s. Graph 1.3 shows data by
breaking down the sample between television reports and newspaper articles.
Graph 1.1. Number of articles and reports by month.
Graph 1.2. Number of articles/reports about Tea Party by media source.Media Framing and the Tea Party Movement 349
Graph 1.3. Number of articles vs. reports.
After compiling a data set of eligible transcripts and articles, we randomly selected a
45-article mini-sample7 to run an open –closed coding for inductively identifying
predominant frames (Glaser, 1978, pp. 56 –61). Each author independently read the
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sample and noted all emergent frames. For the sake of parsimony, we then compacted
related themes and tropes, resulting in eight predominant frames for our closed coding,
with four sets of competing frames. In the following section, the introduction to each
frame includes the frame definitions we used when coding. To measure validity of the
coding structure, the authors tested inter-coder reliability by independently closed-coding
the sample for the eight dominant frames. We then ran a statistical comparison to ensure
each frame attained statistically significant agreement. Overall, our reliability test
achieved 93.6% coder agreement, well within the acceptable range of reliability
coefficients (Riffe et al., 1998, p. 131; Neuendorf, 2002, pp. 142 –143).8 After achieving
inter-coder reliability we analyzed a representative sample of 882 news packets,
compiling it by arranging the full data set chronologically and selecting every fourth
item. The sample almost perfectly mirrors longitudinal distribution, and distribution by
source.9
The unit of analysis for this study was the news packet, with each packet potentially
exhibiting up to eight frames. While the two frames in each framing set are dichotomous
and distinct, news packets frequently displayed competing frames in accordance with the
balance norm. We included each news packet as one account of each frame it used,
regardless of the frequency of the frame’s appearance, or its appearance with competing
frames.
Results
Everyday American Frame versus Non-Mainstream Frame
Tea Party proponents describe their movement as comprising everyday Americans, and
the media mirrored this self-representation. Articles and reports including the Everyday
American Frame represented TPM members as new to politics and not being political
activists; proponents were portrayed as patriots or as individuals operating on the basis of
common sense. By contrast, TPM members lamented that media unfairly portrayed them
as outside-the-mainstream racists, freaks, and right-wing extremists. We found that media
did indeed use what we call the Non-Mainstream Frame, which appeared in discussions350 J. Boykoff & E. Laschever
of the TPM, its members, and candidates as ignorant, naive, freaky, racist or extremist
(Table 1).
Table 1. Everyday American Frame vs. Non-Mainstream Frame
Everyday American Frame Non-Mainstream Frame
No. of Percentage of total No. of Percentage of total
News sources articles/reports articles/reportsa articles/reports articles/reports
ABC 2 5.7 8 22.9
CBS 2 8.3 8 33.3
CNN 51 18.3 108 38.7
FNN 50 34.0 19 12.9
MSNBC 11 9.2 83 69.2
NYT 9 8.3 36 33.0
USA 4 16.0 6 24.0
WP 6 6.5 28 30.1
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WSJ 9 18.0 10 20.0
Total 144 16.3 306 34.7
a
The percentage of total articles/reports for that source within the representative sample.
The TPM was portrayed as Non-Mainstream in approximately 35% of the sample,
doubling that of the Everyday American Frame. MSNBC led sources in the attack, with
69% of their reports invoking the Non-Mainstream Frame, often laced with invective, as
with this excerpt from MSNBC’s Keith Olbermann:
If racism is not the whole of the Tea Party, it is in its heart, along with blind hatred,
a total disinterest in the welfare of others, and a full-flowered, self-rationalizing
refusal to accept the outcomes of elections, or the reality of democracy, or
of the narrowness of their minds and the equal narrowness of their public
support.10
MSNBC did not shy away from strong language in discussing the TPM, and was
responsible for the controversial ‘teabagging’ innuendo in spring 2009. Among other
sources, however, the Non-Mainstream Frame was more commonly posed as an inquiry
about whether or not the movement exhibited elements outside the mainstream. In the case
of FNN, the frame frequently occurred as a straw-man argument on the road to refuting the
claim. The frame often arose as sources debated whether or not the TPM was actually
racist. This passage from the Washington Post typifies the balance many articles adopted
as journalists represented both sides of the movement—the ostensibly racist fringe and the
rest of the movement:
tea party members are not seething, ready-to-explode racists, as some liberal
commentators have caricatured them. Some are extremists and bigots, sure. The
crowd was almost entirely white. I differ strenuously with the protesters on about 95
per cent of the issues. Nevertheless, on the whole, they struck me as passionate
conservatives dedicated to working within the system rather than dangerous militia
types or a revival of the Ku Klux Klan.11Media Framing and the Tea Party Movement 351
Despite declaring no association with the Klan, describing the movement as
predominantly white with a fringe of bigotry offers some deprecatory bite. Overall,
though, this passage highlights that while fringe elements may exist, they do not constitute
the bulk of the movement.
While incarnations of the Non-Mainstream Frame outweighed the Everyday American
Frame, the latter played prominently, particularly within FNN. Breaking with the trend
from other news sources, FNN used the Everyday American Frame in 34% of the reports
(more than 2.5 times its use of the Non-Mainstream Frame). This frame conjured images
of American flags flying over middle-town USA and frequently referenced the founding
fathers, as with this comment on FNN’s Hannity: ‘I’ve been to some tea-party rallies [ . . . ]
they are some of the best people. They are patriotic people. They believe in America. They
believe in the values of the founders. And you can’t bad-mouth these people, because they
are [ . . . ] decent American people’.12 With this frame the TPM was heralded as middle-
class Americans struggling to make the most of the country they love, as a populist
movement of small business owners, nurses, veterans, and mothers.13 News outlets also
showed that TPM members were Everyday Americans by describing them as new to the
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political process—as individuals who, despite never having voted previously, became so
concerned about the direction of the country that they were spurred into action, as with this
Wall Street Journal article:
The ‘tea-party’ movement brewing in the 2010 elections is being driven in part by a
potent force: first-time activists [ . . . ] Matthew Clemente, a 20-year-old college
junior, says he wasn’t politically active until recently. But working at his family’s
Purchase Street Market in Worcester, Mass., in 2008, he says, he saw that business
was down because many of the regulars were in hard-hit construction and
contracting businesses.14
This passage typifies media portrayal of the TPM as a collection of individuals provoked
into political action for lack of options. As the New York Times noted, ‘it is not uncommon
to meet Tea Party advocates who say they have never voted’.15 Other newspapers
reported that TPM seeks a similar ‘fresh face, an everyday Joe new to politics’16 in their
candidates.
Grassroots Frame versus Establishment-Affiliated Frame
The Grassroots Frame and the Establishment-Affiliated Frame represent the second
framing battle in the data set. The TPM adamantly professes being a genuine grassroots
movement arising bottom-up and operating in a decentralized manner. One of the
TPM’s chief complaints is its media portrayal as an Astroturf tool of the Republican
Party. The Grassroots Frame was present if the news outlet depicted a genuine and
authentic movement, independent of the Republican Party. The frame applied when the
group was portrayed as decentralized, lacking in formal leadership, or safe from co-
optation by the establishment. Alternatively, the Establishment-Affiliated Frame
occurred if the TPM was described as an Astroturf group, a tool of the Republican
Party, co-opted by existing powers, or as connected with the Washington, DC political
establishment (Table 2).352 J. Boykoff & E. Laschever
Table 2. Grassroots Frame vs. Establishment-Affiliated Frame.
Grassroots Frame Establishment-Affiliated Frame
No. of Percentage of total No. of Percentage of
News sources articles/reports articles/reports articles/reports total articles/reports
ABC 4 11.4 5 14.3
CBS 6 25.0 2 8.3
CNN 69 24.7 37 13.3
FNN 54 36.7 8 5.4
MSNBC 24 20.0 42 35.0
NYT 19 17.4 18 16.5
USA 6 24.0 3 12.0
WP 17 18.3 10 10.8
WSJ 14 28.0 2 4.0
Total 213 24.1 127 14.4
While the TPM correctly noted that media sometimes portrayed them as Establishment-
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Affiliated—particularly MSNBC, with 35% of its reports—the majority of news outlets
strongly favored the Grassroots Frame. CBS and CNN both used the Grassroots Frame
with roughly double the frequency of the Establishment Affiliated Frame; FNN and the
WSJ used the Grassroots Frame a whopping seven times as often as the Establishment-
Affiliated Frame.
Defending his controversial depiction of the movement as ‘unsophisticated’, Karl Rove
explained on FNN that this word referred to the movement’s Grassroots and Everyday
American nature. He used multiple manifestations of the Grassroots Frame:
They’re [ . . . ] not comfortable in a cocktail party in Georgetown or a lobbyist meeting
on K Street. This [ . . . ] wasn’t formed by elitist think tanks. This was a spontaneous
uprising that began in February of 2009 when Rick Santelli went on television in a rant
about why should people who were prudent about their mortgages have to bear the
cost of bailing out people who were not. You know, this isn’t clever TV ads focused-
grouped by some Madison Avenue thing. This is [ . . . ] leaflets and hand-written
posters and homemade placards. This is not [ . . . ] a manifesto drafted by a bunch of
intellectuals[ . . . ]You know, this is common sense of America. And [ . . . ] seasoned
political operatives are not running this. It’s mom and pop. It’s ordinary Americans
around the kitchen table or in a coffee shop. This is not [ . . . ] run by some central
headquarters from the top down. It is from the bottom up.17
Not only did Rove argue against the Establishment-Affiliated Frame, but he also
emphasized the bottom-up, authentic nature of the movement and buttressed it with a heavy
dose of the Everyday American Frame. This quote also displays an underpinning feature of
the movement: a distrust of those viewed as elite, particularly intellectuals and academics.
Other invocations of the Grassroots Frame were subtler, often arising as sources
discussed the decentralized nature of the movement and its rejection of insider politics and
incumbent politicians. CNN’s Jessica Yellin reported:
I’m not dismissing the fact that they have national funding, but there is a grass roots
quality, and in each of the races you described Ali [Velshi of CNN], each of theMedia Framing and the Tea Party Movement 353
people who either lost or suffered most were people who were part of the insider, the
establishment, people who maybe voted for T.A.R.P [ . . . ] people are so angry, Wall
Street got saved when regular folk didn’t.18
This excerpt illustrates how journalists discounted funding streams, preferring to portray
the movement as anti-establishment grassroots. When identifying connections to well-
heeled national organizations, news outlets disregarded implications of the Establishment-
Affiliation Frame possibly arising from FreedomWorks’ President Dick Armey being the
former Republican Speaker of the House. In fact, FreedomWorks—a well-funded, well-
connected, DC-based think tank—was described as ‘a conservative grassroots group’ or ‘a
nonprofit group that mounts grassroots campaigns’.19
On the flip side of the framing contest, the Establishment-Affiliated Frame often
occurred through discussion of how this authentically grassroots movement might be co-
opted by financial heavyweights. Journalists speculated that members of the establishment
provided funding and organizational support to exploit the movement’s raw power for
their own interests. For example, on CNN, in response to Kathleen Parker’s question why
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the TPM is doing ‘the legwork for the Big Banks’, Matt Taibbi acknowledged the
movement is grassroots ‘in some respects’ before asserting, ‘the Koch brothers and other
financiers, once they saw this movement happening, were more than willing to push it
along and give it the energy and the resources that they needed to spread around the
country’.20 In a relatively rare moment in the TPM coverage, a journalist noted that the
movement was tied to some of the biggest names in high-stakes finance and politics,
‘powerful interests’ that help promote the TPM to achieve their own ends.
While many cases of the Establishment-Affiliated Frame contended that TPM’s genuine
roots were co-opted or exploited, others went further. In USA Today, former President
Jimmy Carter demonstrated his opinion of the TPM by placing scare quotes around the
term ‘grassroots’, denoting spuriousness:
Much of the financial support for the ‘grassroots’ Tea Party movement has come
from extremely wealthy owners of petroleum and energy companies whose profits
depend on preventing strict environmental standards and regulations that promote
safety and competition. Another is that a powerful news organization has provided
the requisite publicity and promotion for the Tea Party movement.21
Carter’s tenor was mirrored by Frank Rich in the New York Times, when he described
the TPM as ‘an indisputable Republican subsidiary’ that ‘was created by prominent G.O.P.
political consultants in California and raises money for G.O.P. candidates’.22 Some
journalists saw connections between the TPM and the Republican Party, FNN, and
wealthy financial backers as indications the movement is Establishment-Affiliated.
However, this version of the frame appeared less frequently than those describing the Tea
Party as inadvertently or tenuously affiliated with the establishment.
Fiscal-Federal Frustrations Frame versus Amalgam of Grievances Frame
The TPM’s central message is the need to limit a federal government that is taking too
much power from the states and individuals. This relates to demands for lower taxes and
reduced government spending, and concerns over a ballooning federal deficit. These354 J. Boykoff & E. Laschever
matters manifested in the media as the Fiscal-Federal Frustrations Frame. Other times the
movement was portrayed as having a hodgepodge of grievances or no unified message;
this was the Amalgam of Grievances Frame (Table 3).
Table 3. Fiscal-Federal Frustrations Frame vs. Amalgam of Grievances.
Fiscal-Federal Frustrations Frame Amalgam of Grievances
No. of Percentage of No. of Percentage of
News sources articles/reports total articles/reports articles/reports total articles/reports
ABC 11 31.4 2 5.7
CBS 10 41.7 0 0.0
CNN 118 42.3 17 6.1
FNN 67 45.6 10 6.8
MSNBC 29 24.2 8 6.7
NYT 27 24.8 4 3.7
USA 10 40.0 1 4.0
WP 23 24.7 5 5.4
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WSJ 23 46.0 1 2.0
Total 318 36.1 48 5.4
The Fiscal-Federal Frustrations Frame was the second most predominant media frame
in this study, surfacing in 36% of all news packets. The Amalgam of Grievances Frame,
conversely, appeared with the lowest frequency. This indicates the TPM was resoundingly
successful at defining their purpose and that the media accurately conveyed their central
grievances.
When addressing the movement’s political objectives, news outlets defined them as
being focused on aspects of fiscal responsibility. As John Avlon explained on CNN, ‘there
are many different tributaries to this movement. But the bottom line, the common ground
that exists is fiscal conservatism. It is a reaction against overspending and the growth of
government’.23 While others agree that the TPM concentrates on taxation and
governmental overreach, they believe concern about the federal deficit drives the
movement. A front-page USA Today article explained that ‘typical Americans are growing
anxious about the nation’s mounting debt, which is helping to fuel the rise of the anti-tax,
anti-big-government “Tea Party” movement’.24 As one protester explained on CNN, ‘the
government has grown too big, it’s gotten too out of control in their spending and the taxes
are just way too high. And I’m sick and tired of government growing and spending and
taxing everybody into oblivion’.25 Most incarnations of the Fiscal-Federal Frustrations
Frame took this approach, defining the movement at the fiscally responsible nexus of
spending, taxation, and debt.
Many Fiscal-Federal Frustrations framings made special note that the TPM’s focus did
not extend to social issues, tacitly distinguishing it from conservative movements such as
the Christian Right. As Amy Kremer of the Tea Party Express explained on CNN, ‘we are
focused completely on the fiscal aspect of the economy. We’re not focused on the social
issues’.26 Some see this focus on fiscal over social issues as a key to the movement’s
success in not alienating possible recruits, supporters, and bystander publics who wanted
to steer clear of the ‘culture war’. Sources often painted the TPM not only as tightlyMedia Framing and the Tea Party Movement 355
defined around concerns of fiscal responsibility, but also as consciously so—noting
intentional efforts to organize on politically unifying concerns.
Despite the prevalence of the Fiscal-Federal Frustrations Frame, not everyone agreed
that the TPM held tight to a unified message of fiscal fears: 5.5% of the news packets used
the Amalgam of Grievances Frame in expressing confusion over the hodgepodge of
frustrations or in censuring the TPM for having no real message outside of anger. Reports
described how at TPM rallies there was ‘anger being voiced against the president on a
number of issues [ . . . ] that go far beyond taxes’27 and that ‘it’s a very amorphous group of
people who don’t all . . . agree with the same things.’28 Many of those using the Amalgam
of Grievances Frame argued that despite claims to the contrary, the TPM is just as focused
on social and cultural issues.29 Following the 2010 midterm elections, media
commentators also discussed how ‘powerful factions within the movement are actively
debating whether or not to tackle hot button social issues’, and that this would ‘definitely
alter the movement.’30 The other predominant incarnation of the Amalgam of Grievances
Frame stated that the TPM offered only amorphous, meaningless rage, without providing a
clear message or solutions.31 A few pundits argued that TPM outrage was interchangeable
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with any political hot-button issue-du-jour that right-wing elites conjured to rile up their
base. As Eugene Robinson remarked on MSNBC, ‘[p]erhaps for the right, it was an
organizing tool, but it didn’t really have much of an aim except, you know, we’re mad as
hell and not going to take this anymore, whatever “this” is’.32
Election Impact Frame versus Flash in the Pan Frame
Social movements aim to affect policy, elections, and/or public opinion. Early on, the
TPM expressed the desire to unseat incumbent politicians who members felt were
entrenched, corrupted, and no longer representing their constituents’ interests. The
Election Impact Frame describes articles and reports portraying the movement as
influential or important in elections, as a significant player in horse-race politics, or as
playing a key role in legislative action. The diametric frame in this framing contest was the
Flash in the Pan Frame whereby media speculated on the limited impact of the movement,
describing the TPM as ill-equipped for the reality of DC politics, as a group with transitory
(if that) influence, or as torn apart and weakened by factions and infighting (Table 4).
Table 4. Election Impact Frame vs. Flash in the Pan Frame.
Election Impact Frame Flash in the Pan Frame
No. of Percentage of total No. of Percentage of total
News sources articles/reports articles/reports articles/reports articles/reports
ABC 31 88.6 1 2.9
CBS 17 70.8 0 0.0
CNN 192 68.8 25 9.0
FNN 80 54.4 5 3.4
MSNBC 77 64.2 19 15.8
NYT 74 67.9 8 7.3
USA 17 68.0 1 4.0
WP 63 67.7 11 11.8
WSJ 39 78.0 2 4.0
Total 590 66.9 72 8.2356 J. Boykoff & E. Laschever
The Election Impact Frame was virtually absent from 2009 media coverage. First
appearing after the special elections in winter 2009 –2010, it climbed steadily through the
primaries, before spiking and becoming the predominant frame in summer 2010. Nearly,
every article after 1 May 2010 included some discussion of ‘Tea Party candidates’ or how
TPM energy drove voter activity. In total, 67% of the news packets featured the Election
Impact Frame, by far the most prevalent frame in the study. By contrast, the Flash in the
Pan Frame appeared in only 8% of the data set and was effectively absent from about half
of the media sources.
Agreement existed across news outlets that the TPM heavily impacted the November
2010 midterm elections. Even movement critics like President Carter told CNN that TPM
‘will be very influential in the upcoming election’.33 In post-election coverage, predictions
turned into mantras, with the media crediting the TPM for the Republican tidal wave,
describing it as ‘a high octane rock band’ that ‘propelled the Republicans to historic wins’.34
The most common version of the Election Impact Frame, however, was the description
of ‘Tea Party candidates’. When Chris Matthews stated on MSNBC, ‘Rand Paul, the Tea
Party candidate, has defeated the establishment Republican Trey Grayson, the candidate of
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Mitch McConnell’,35 this implied that the TPM was a player in electoral politics, with the
Tea Party candidate challenging the Republican establishment’s candidate. As Jim Acosta
said about Rand Paul on CNN, ‘[h]e almost has a “T” next to his name instead of an
“R”’.36 Most media interpreted the TPM’s energy as a positive factor increasing the
political participation of the Republican Party’s base. However, others argued that it
forced the Republican Party to field candidates who were unelectable over moderate
Democrats, as captured by the title of this front-page New York Times article: ‘For G.O.P.,
Fervor of Tea Party Holds Promise, and Problems’.37 Many asserted that primary victories
for the Tea Party candidates spelled electoral defeat in the general election where more
moderate voters held sway.38 Nevertheless, journalists regularly conveyed that the TPM
indubitably influenced the election.
After the midterms, the Election Impact Frame morphed slightly as the media began
addressing the potential legislative influence of the Tea Party in Congress. One of the Tea
Party’s first initiatives was to ban earmarks in Congress; one reporter commented, ‘[i]t was
entertaining to watch Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell reluctantly capitulate to
the Tea Party by supporting a two-year ban on requests for earmarks from his chamber’s
Republicans’.39
However, not everyone agreed that the TPM would have lasting influence. About 8% of
news packets used the Flash in the Pan Frame to indicate they felt the TPM was a passing
fad. As Jonathan Martin remarked while on Hardball, ‘a lot of Americans in this country
are not following this at all. New numbers from Pew today, 30 per cent of those surveyed
hadn’t even heard of Tea Parties. So let’s not make it more than what it actually is’.40
Some felt that people overinflated a movement that they believed had limited scope and
support. Others felt that the movement’s incoherent message and absence of solutions
decreased its long-term power and potential effectiveness in the Beltway: ‘[y]ou can win
an election on screaming and anger, but you cannot hold and govern for a significant
period of time on screaming and anger’.41 Still others opined that philosophical
inconsistency would break the TPM from the inside out. Reporters claimed that in some
states infighting prevented the TPM from coming together to forward their cause, ‘instead
of uniting in a final push toward election day, the movement in Colorado has begun to
splinter, with rival camps accusing one another of betrayal, naiveté and failure ofMedia Framing and the Tea Party Movement 357
courage’.42 Fighting also surfaced among TPM leadership as they jostled for power and
debated what issues should be included in the movement.43
Reports and articles often portrayed the TPM as influential in driving voter
participation, but believed that the movement’s decentralized nature made it ill-equipped
at providing cohesive and sustainable suggestions through Congress. Largely, media
portrayed the TPM as a powerful political player and ‘the biggest dynamic of the
campaign’,44 a dynamic with the potential to continue influencing the political landscape
through legislative efforts and future elections.
Framing the Tea Party Movement
In this study, we identified the predominant media frames in US media coverage of the
TPM. We also traced framing contests between TPM supporters and their detractors as
arbitrated by the US media. Overall, the US media depicted the TPM with supportive
frames (Everyday American, Grassroots, Fiscal Federal Frustrations, and Election
Impact) more than twice as often as the deprecatory characterizations the activists opposed
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(Non-Mainstream, Establishment-Affiliated, Amalgam of Grievances, and Flash-in-the-
Pan). Usually, media portrayed the TPM as an electorally influential grassroots
movement—albeit sometimes depicted with a non-mainstream fringe—primarily
concerned with an overreaching, fiscally irresponsible federal government. The four
frame pairs constituted discursive battles over how to define the emergent and burgeoning
movement in the public sphere.
With the onset of the primary elections, however, media slid into horse-race mode:
election coverage concentrating on who is ahead in the race for votes and money while
largely ignoring issues and policies (Flowers et al., 2003), which Lawrence (2010) calls
the ‘game frame’. Eventually, the media grew overwhelmingly reliant on the Election
Impact Frame, relegating the frame contest to background noise. But by then, the
movement had been defined, and in generally favorable terms.45 Table 5 summarizes the
framing contest and provides evidence supporting the TPM’s sentiment it benefited from
advantageous coverage (Gardner, 2010).
Table 5. Framing contest.
Frames used by Tea Party in self-
description Frames opposed by Tea Party
No. of Percentage of total No. of Percentage of
Frames articles/reports articles/reports articles/reports total articles/reports
EAF 144 16.3 N-MF 307 34.8
GF 213 24.1 E-AF 126 14.3
F-FFF 318 36.1 AoGF 48 5.4
EIF 590 66.9 FitPF 72 8.2
Total 1265 35.9 Total 553 15.7
The TPM succeeded in mobilizing symbolic media representations to advance their
goals, fomenting a conducive ‘discursive opportunity structure’ where its ‘ideas are
considered “sensible”’, its ‘constructions of reality are seen as “realistic”’, and its ‘claimsYou can also read
