Framing Theory

As the demand for Nike’s products grew, the large corporation outsourced their production facilities to eastern nations. However, Nike became the center of controversy when information about the safety hazards in the factories and the young age of their workers, as well as the fact that they were being paid less than minimum wage, got out. Human rights activist groups and other anti-corporate parties soon began holding protests, attempting to turn the market against the giant company. Nike’s business opponents worked with these groups to quickly create different anti-corporate frames such as negative identity frames, collective action injustice frames, and negative consequence frames to try and have the media focus only on the negative aspects of Nike. The sport company quickly counter-framed the issues by using positive identity frames, collective action remediation frames, and positive consequence frames to re-emphasize what they were doing to improve the situation in their factories. One of the things Nike did to help improve public opinion was to focus on the human rights issues, since they were a bit easier to fix without costing the corporation too much money, while mentioning little more than necessary about improving the working conditions of the sweatshops. Nike’s use of counter-framing strategies implies that so long as there is someone in a corporation’s communication department who knows how to handle a crisis and counter-frame effectively so that the media focuses on what that company wants, it’s possible to get away with just about anything.