Abstract
Same-sex marriage activists and anti-marriage advocates utilize print media to convey their ‘frames,’ certain conceptualizations of a divisive issue designed to sway public opinion. This discourse has featured two competing sets of frames termed as “morality” and “equality.” Morality, including notions of tradition, God, and family, initially appeared as a dominant frame in print but the equality frame, encompassing notions of diversity, tolerance and inclusion, has seemed to increasingly resonate with voters. In this thesis, I evaluated if the content of a frame and the unity, diversity and scope of a same-sex marriage coalition influenced increased rates of transmission to print. In order to address these questions, I compiled 120 randomly sampled articles from four different states—Arizona, New York, Maryland and Minnesota—that displayed a two-phase same-sex marriage campaign featuring both failure and success. I determined that the transmission of the morality frame remained constant in the second phase of a campaign—even as the equality frame arose in print discourse beginning in 2011. As indicated by Maryland and Minnesota, the equality frame appeared in both phases of their respective same-sex marriage campaign—regardless of outcome. Finally, the organizational structure of same-sex marriage coalitions changed between phases but did not seem to have an impact on rate of frame transmission. This leads one to re-consider the influence of framing practices in the same-sex marriage debate but also the impact of coalition behavior for future campaigns.