In my undergraduate studies, I was fortunate enough to take a First Amendment law class taught by Lee Bollinger, a noted FA scholar. While Bollinger never imparted his personal POV onto the class, I got the impression through my studies that more speech was better – essentially, when Congress makes a law abridging speech, that’s bad. The less restrictions on speech there are, the happier we’ll all be, right?

The decision for Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission is ostensibly a victory for more speech. It removes a restriction on corporations and unions to spend money running independent campaign commercials. (The idea that money equals speech has long been established by the courts.) Sure, there are corporations that will now be able to spend unlimited amounts of money to share messages I disagree with, but corporations and associations closer to my point of view (and this ruling includes unions and organizations like the NAACP) could spend just as money as well. The end result is more ideas in the public marketplace.

Not everyone shares this viewpoint, and for many, the Citizens United decision was mistake and a setback for democracy. While there has been a lot of talk about the uproar against the decision, there has been very little discussion as to why there is opposition.

I’m using content analysis to determine how Reddit users on a specific reaction thread frame the Citizens United decision in an effort to understand, for at least this small population, why this decision may (or may not) inspire antipathy. I’m searching the text to find relevant themes and patterns to make these assessment. I have begun to analyze the comments, and already some interesting themes have begun to emerge.

My challenge now is to ensure that the codes I’m seeing are actually valid.

I have found that framing theory has, at least somewhat, rooted my research in an area of study. Framing theory holds that people construct meaning and opinions about something based on how the issue is framed – by their own values and perspectives (frames in thought), as well as how the idea is portrayed (frames in communication).

I am loathe to rely too much on the theory however, as I don’t know how the Supreme Court case was framed to the commenters (e.g. what news site they first read) or their own personal views on the matter (e.g. their perspective on the First Amendment, campaign finance, etc.). As such, I do still have questions on how much theory I should include, and how to determine validity for my results. I have already found one study that discusses framing theory and campaign finance,* but the search continues for more!

*Grant, J., & Rudolph, T. J. (2003). Value Conflict, Group Affect, and the Issue of Campaign Finance. American Journal Of Political Science, 47(3), 453.