This article identifies four frames of corruption in the discourse of three leaders of Operation Lava Jato, also known in English as Operation Car Wash, a large-scale Brazilian anticorruption operation (2014–2021). These frames are inequality, hidden pact, backwardness, and chronic disease. The frames were identified by analyzing a wide set of press interviews, opinion articles, and books by two prosecutors and one judge whose work has revealed scandals involving the state oil company Petrobras. The operation had a major impact on politics and the economy and left a controversial legacy. We noticed a contradiction between one frame invoking judicial activism (inequality) and three frames focusing on specific techniques that appeal to a more conventional view on the judiciary’s role (hidden pact, backwardness, and chronic disease). Furthermore, even when scholars were still largely positive about the operation, the discourse showed signs of judicial activism. This analysis contributes to the debate on Lava Jato and judicial activism by focusing on discourse rather than action.

This article re-examines the account of the Delphic oracle in Phlegon of Tralles’ Olympiads (FGrHist 257 F 1). It argues that the oracular utterance is framed in an attempt to bolster the Lycurgan institution of the Olympic Games in 776 b.c. More specifically, according to Goffman's theory, the divine anger of Zeus (mênis) is keyed to the modulation of the frame, or the cognitive perspective, that has been radically changed by warfare and plague in the Peloponnese, thus serving a heuristic function in achieving political rationality. By showing the Delphic oracle to be even more dynamic than previous scholarship has suggested, frame analysis increases knowledge and understanding of the literary, social and political progresses reported in ancient sources.

Since the inauguration of Mexican democracy in 2000, organised criminal violence had been leaking into the political arena. Yet, it escalated in the 2018 elections, when dozens of local candidates were killed. In most of these cases, the concrete perpetrators and motives remained in the dark. How did Mexican society make sense of this opaque, unprecedented wave of electoral violence? On the basis of a qualitative content analysis of over 1,200 news reports, I examine the structuring power of a shared narrative: the frame of organised crime. By conceiving candidate killings as economic violence within the criminal community, this commonsensical frame of interpretation permitted Mexican society to ‘normalise’ these killings as ‘business as usual’ by criminal organisations.

The Presidential Regulation No. 125 of 2016 concerning the Treatment of Refugees (PR) was a promising step to a better humanitarian response for refugees and asylum seekers arriving in Indonesia. It also provided a much-needed legal framework to validate refugees’ presence and to ground civil -society organizations’ advocacy on their behalf. However, a closer look at the PR and earlier drafts of the document shows serious compromises that: (1) reproduce the notion that refugees are only transiting in Indonesia; (2) frame refugees as passive objects, failing to recognize them as subjects with rights; and (3) prioritize security concerns that position refugees at odds with Indonesian society (masyarakat). Using the “What’s the Problem Represented to be” approach, this article highlights what is included and excluded from the PR and how it falls short of guaranteeing meaningful protection for refugees while living in Indonesia.

This case study of the Australian Museum's Thylacine Cloning Project analyzes a frame dispute that emerged during public communication of a scientific project, which lasted from 1999 to 2005, and was premised on the idea of resurrecting an extinct species. In choosing the Tasmanian tiger—an iconic Australian marsupial officially declared extinct in 1986—the promoters of the cloning project ensured extensive media coverage. However, the popular and scientific attention generated by the idea of bringing back an extinct species challenged the Museum's efforts to frame the project in terms of scientific progress. The project repeatedly shifted from science to spectacle, as multiple stakeholders used the mass media to negotiate the scientific feasibility of trying to reverse extinction through the application of advanced biotechnology. The case study findings are relevant both to the emerging social issues surrounding the use of paleogenomics in wildlife conservation, and to the theoretical development of frame analysis as applied to scientific controversies.

The aim of this article is to investigate different ways in which nursing home scandals in Sweden have been framed, to discuss the relations between these existing frameworks, and to identify ways of describing the problem that are absent in the current debates. Data for the study consisted of media articles, television documentaries and internet debates, expert reports and court hearings, and interviews with representatives of organisations dealing with the issue of mistreatment in care services for older people. An analytical tool developed within social movement research was used to identify three ‘debates’ on such mistreatment in Sweden, where competing ways of framing the problem have been used: (a) a debate where staff are cast as either perpetrators or victims, (b) a debate on privatisation and profit as the motive for neglect of care recipients, and (c) a debate on deserving and non-deserving recipients of socially provided care centred around populist claims. The analysis highlights a need to introduce an alternative frame for interpretation where mistreatment in care for older people is regarded as involving scandalous cases of ageism. This anti-ageism frame would provide older people with a lead role in the drama – not just as victims but as stakeholders in relation to the problem.

Attempts to mitigate conflict between wolves and livestock breeding in the Mugello area of central Italy have so far proven to be costly, resource-intensive and fraught with tension. I applied frame analysis as a tool for investigating the roots of such tensions. The frame-analytical perspective highlighted that, while current policy focuses on improving technical approaches, conflict is also fuelled by a discrepancy in the frames of meaning that groups of stakeholders construct around the issue of wolf management. I outline two discordant frames: a dominant valuable wolf frame, currently underlying policy, and a political wolf frame that challenges existing management aims. Barriers to communication and potential points of mediation are identified. In addition, I outline a third, problematic wolf frame that may act as a potential aid in the process of bridging the two discordant frames, which is identified as a condition for successful wolf management.