Framing Energy Politics: The Importance of Strategic Framing in a Changing Media Environment

This dissertation compares strategic and informative communications about energy issues in the state of Wisconsin from 2009 - 2010. Using content analysis and framing analysis, this study compares legislative minutes, industry press releases and blog posts, advocacy blog posts and newspaper articles to look at how strategic communications affect media coverage.;The study advances framing research in positing energy as a special issue that is discussed in a unique way by both strategic and informative communicators. Energy is found to be discussed through thematic framing by newspapers, unlike typical episodic coverage. Episodic frames are instead used by the energy industry to control a narrower discussion about energy issues.;This dissertation quantitatively asserts the existence of contest framing beyond government and between institutional stakeholders to affect media coverage, which is underexplored. It examines through a sociological lens, how contemporary political and industry communications continue to influence the media through professional routines and relationships.;By comparing advocacy organizations to government and industry, the value of post-bureaucratic organizational structures and adoption of new technologies is questioned. This comparison explores the dominance of political strategic communications over a scientifically grounded industry, which overwhelms attempts to frame energy as an environmental issue or posit scientists and environmental organizations as sources due to journalistic indexing norms.;Hypotheses predicted a narrowing of frames as issues worked their way through political processes and were contested by different sides of debates. Comparisons predicted an influence of frames employed in strategic communications to affect the frames used to construct newspaper stories about energy issues. Newspaper coverage was expected to use frames that follow the event cycle of politics and official sources. This is wholly different from advocacy blog coverage of energy topics, which was expected to follow a different pattern of coverage and use environmental sources that support the views of the organization.