The Training for Spokespersons course in the Advertising and Public Relations degree of Spain’s State universities: framing as a model

Abstract

For future spokespersons’ trainers, frame analysis is useful for learning how to build messages that define the situation according to the strategy of their organizations. In this process, the emotional content of social norms will prompt the activation of the long-term memory of the recipient, favoring the retention of messages. This paper analyzes the results of the exercise proposed to a group of the Training for Spokespersons course of the Universidad Complutense’s Advertising and Public Relations degree, which consisted of detecting the frame used by a spokesman. The students understood the role of emotional communication but they showed difficulties in identifying the abstract frame. This experience is proof of how framing helps to manage analysis, monitoring and contents, which are functions projectable to the course through the distinction between frames and themes or issues, or between broader and more specific frames of collective action.

KEYWORDS: social communication, spokesperson, university, public relations, framing theory, case study.