Frames and their Consequences For Rural Issues Part Two How Americans Think About Rural Issues The Research Base • 30 one-on-one interviews 10 each urban, suburban, rural Maryland, Colorado, Illinois • 7 focus groups New Hampshire (3), Arkansas (2), New Mexico (2) mixed gender, ethnicity/race Urban/suburban + rural (2 hour drive) community influentials screen • Builds on extensive prior research from Kellogg Focus groups, survey research, content analysis, etc. What Are the Pictures in Americans’ Heads When they think about rural America? Depends on Where You Sit • Q: How do people in rural areas make a living? • A: Beats the heck out of me. If they don’t farm, I have no idea. [urban IL man] vs. I think one of the problems in rural areas is that there aren’t enough white collar jobs. I’m speaking for this particular area. It’s a very blue collar town, and I would like to see this town, anyway, develop some white collar jobs, some high-tech jobs. [rural IL woman] When In Doubt, Default Visible Issue Attitude Implication 1 Rural Utopia Implication 2 Implication 3 Implication 4 Rural Dystopia Implication 5 Implication 6 Implication 7 Rural Systems Implication 8 Implication 9 What Frames Are Available from Media The Dominant Frame • Rural = areas facing urbanization and trying to preserve their rural past or atmosphere (encroachment) • Change = loss • Rural residents oppose it • “TV news just wasn’t interested in civic life in rural America.” • Change = inevitable • Future = negative, fearful • Less about agriculture or farming than open space • 1/12 = quaint and charming • 1/12 = economically challenged, socially marginalized • Farm Bill covered as “politics as usual” • Largely episodic, little contextualization or issues orientation • Nice place to visit Center for Media and Public Affairs for W. K. Kellogg Foundation, content analysis of 337 rural stories, national TV, magazine and print Rural Dystopia Another Available Default Frame • Poverty, hardship, “I’ve done some traveling in hopelessness the South and there the real poverty is devastating. I mean • Backward people live in shacks I’ve • Dysfunctional driven past that looks like if you sneezed it would fall • Shiftless, trashy, down. Not quite as bad a place as like India, inbred, drunk but…”[urban CO male] • The Other Rural Systems: Connect the Dots • Explains disconnection, decline, lack of a reliable economic base • Shows cause and effect • Connects rural to rest of America – both physically and same issues • Gets civic culture and empowerment into picture • Wal-Mart, not Mayberry or Dogpatch Systems Thinking • Big pictures not snapshots • Interconnections between people in cities and country • No quaintness • Lack of facilities and services affecting many people • Situations not people Rural Utopia • Life is simple • Poverty is a virtue • Encroachment is the main threat • We help each other • They chose this lifestyle Life is Simple I'm thinking in a rural neighborhood, life is much simpler… [It’s not about] the latest color of eyeshadow that came out, which is what a city need is, or, in suburbia it's that wine that you need for dinner. I mean, not that not that people in rural neighborhoods are light-years behind anybody else, I mean, but there's probably a smaller selection, so their needs are probably more basic… I'm not saying that as a put-down, I think that's something people need to revert back to. I'm all for it. You know? Eliminate all the 20 different products of one thing, you know, we don't need it. [suburban IL woman] Consequences of the Rural Utopia Frame: Poverty Is Not A Rural Problem Q: So when you think about poverty in America, would you associate that more with cities or with the country? A: I think the cities. I think I hear more about it in the cities, the large cities. Although I take stuff to the mission down here [in a small Colorado town] and I know there’s plenty of poor people down there…I mean the inner city, that’s where to me, I think you have more poverty. [rural CO woman] Well, I’d rather be poor in the country than I would in the city. I feel very sorry for people that have very bad incomes and live in the city. I really don’t know what, how they manage. Whereas in the country, you can just go outside and smell the grass and..I really don’t have much feeling of how they cope with it. I feel terribly sorry for them and I think it’s very sad. [rural CO woman] Q: Do you think there tends to be more poverty in rural parts of the country or more in the cities? A: I think more in the cities, like out here [in suburban Colorado], I don’;t really see many homeless people, but like in the city, there’s tons of them. Q: Okay. But in rural areas you figure people probably aren’t so poor? A: Or they go to the city. I don’t know. Like they might be struggling, but I mean they’re not like to the verge of poverty, I guess. [suburban CO woman] Consequences of the Rural Utopia Frame: Poverty Is Not A Rural Problem Rural people Urban people • Own land • Are dispossessed • Work hard •Are lazy • Self sufficient • Hand out • Ennobling • Degrading Consequences of the Rural Utopia Frame: No Role for Government Rural Urban • Natural • Man made •Simple • Complex • Backward •Progress •No stress •Stress • Get away from it all • Strive, achieve • Village • Isolated individuals • Government would • Government tries to spoil it fix it Consequences of the Rural Utopia Frame: Encroachment as the Main Threat • Progress is inevitable • Save the Family Farm = Save the Whales • Precious resources to be mined till gone vs. disrupted systems • Leads to Museum Stance and tourists in the rural landscape We Help Each Other A Rural Code of Ethics • Do whatever you can for yourself • When things get tough, sacrifice and do with less • When necessary, help friends, family and neighbors • Only truly dysfunctional people would need outside help • Intervention is not respectful They Chose This Lifestyle “I don’t think farmers are being exploited, because it’s a choice. They’ve chosen to do that as where their passion is or how they want to live.” [suburban IL man] If you don’t like being the country, why don’t you go somewhere else? Consequences of the Frames Foreground Conclusion • Simplicity • Don’t spoil it • Self-sufficiency • Don’t interfere • Choice •Move • Saving/preserving • Museum mindset • (Invisible) poverty • The way things are supposed to be Speculative Reframes from Past Research • Rural areas are places of innovation. • Rural areas are places of history and culture. • Rural areas are places of diversity. • Rural areas are an untapped asset. • What are the consequences of these frames from FW elicitations? • What are the consequences of these frames from FW focus groups? Rural areas are places of innovation. • More ingenious than high-tech • Work with what you’ve got (self- sufficiency) • Doesn’t automatically set up education, training, jobs • Needs work to prevent default Rural areas are places of history and culture. • Already think that • Negates Rural Dystopia • Sets up Rural Utopia • Antiquated forms • Modern progress is inevitable • Save the last best space/museums mindset Rural areas are places of diversity. • Diversity of race and ethnicity not routinely perceived • May connect to crime frame, if asserted • Intra-rural diversity: do you have indoor plumbing? • Uniqueness of regional crafts does little to motivate policies • Civic culture in rural America not visible Rural areas are untapped assets. • Offers the public a compelling vision of what stronger rural communities would look like in the contemporary context • Foregrounds new successful small businesses on Main Street • Explains the systems at work: agribusiness, Wal-Mart • Connects rural America to urban and suburban America Refining the Reframes Results from the Focus Groups Structure of Focus Groups • Collaging symbols (dominant frames) • Probe for past speculative reframes • Problems discussion • Solutions, responsibility probe • Vision of future • Policies discussion (importance for rural areas, nation, future) • 6 frames: 2 dominant frames plus 4 new speculative reframes as news articles • Revisit policies • What are rural issues/areas about? Top of Mind Issues • Economy • Education • Opportunity (to get out) • Farm consolidation • Transportation • Health care • All problems, no solutions • Responsibility is on rural residents to fix these problems Reactions to Inserted Issues • Economic development important, robust conversation, must be done with respect and participation of rural residents • Internet connections a no-brainer • Helping farmers switch to organic farming is about health, not economics • Living wages are about migrant workers • Child care is not a problem (farm frame) Six Focus Group Reframes 1. In the Path of Progress: Preserving Yorkville (dominant frame of museum mindset/inevitability) 2. Rural Poverty (dominant frame of problem/deficits) 3. Innovation in the Heartland (innovation/ingenuity, diversity, help from outside) 4. We are All Connected – Boundaries Blend Between Rural and Urban Areas (systems) 5. Outside Forces Breaking the Small Town Economy (cause and effect) 6. Restoring Main Street (vitality, cause and effect) In the Path of Progress: Preserving Yorkville Like small towns everywhere, Yorkville • Familiar story/script is struggling with how to adjust to progress. People who live in the area • People in rural areas have mixed views on the new housing developments sprouting up. “It’s some conflicted over future of the greatest land in the world,k and it’s gone forever..We’ll look just like • Progress is inevitable every other shopping mall in America,” says Frank Ahrens. “There is going to • Focuses attention on be growth. We need to try to make it happen the way we want it to, a rural as place not people balanced approach,” says city administrator.