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In:Framing in Interaction: Pragmatic approaches to framing analysis
Edited by Simon Borchmann, Anne H. Fabricius and Ida Klitgård
[Pragmatics & Beyond New Series 354] 2025
► pp. 125–159

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Chapter 5
Framing the Danish Prime Minister as communist dictator during COVID-19

 | Roskilde University
Published online: 30 October 2025
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https://doi.org/10.1075/pbns.354.05kli
Abstract
This article develops a pragmatic approach to framing analysis as it views framing in a wider communicative context, and as it views satire as an example of framing. News framing and news satire have been widely debated in communication studies, but rarely together. In this study, I suggest that framing and satire share a core structure of ambiguity — a double vision — through subversive frame-shifting. This assumption is based on a scrutiny of the stylistic construction of six satirical news articles in the Danish spoof website RokokoPosten which frame the Danish Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen as a communist dictator during the COVID-19 crisis in 2020. I will demonstrate how, cognitively, the subversion of one established frame to another defamiliarised one has the effect of raising the salience of conceptual connections which can lead to the creation of new connections of meaning-making in the receivers. Satire as framing is an act of communicative co-creation.
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Theory
    • 2.1Framing: A plastic paradigm
    • 2.2Previous studies on framing: Fixed or fluid framing
    • 2.3Entman’s framing as a fractured a paradigm
  • 3.Satire and framing
    • 3.1News satire
    • 3.2Previous studies of framing in satire
  • 4.Method
    • 4.1A framing analysis model
    • 4.2Data
  • 5.Analysis
    • 5.1Agenda/frame building: The sender/communicator and the medium
    • 5.2Agenda/frame setting
      • 5.2.1The context
      • 5.2.2The message/the text
      • 5.2.3The language and style: Analysis
        • 5.2.3.aArticle 1: 12 April, 2020: “Nordkorea: Mette Frederiksen gør det godt” [North Korea: Mette Frederiksen is doing a good job]
        • 5.2.3.bArticle 2: 18 April, 2020: “Danmark tæt på kommunistisk idealsamfund” [Denmark close to being a communist utopia]
        • 5.2.3.cArticle 3: 16 May, 2020: “Borgerlige meningsdannere indspiller protestsange mod regeringen” [Liberal opinion makers record protest songs against the government]
        • 5.2.3.dArticle 4: 28 May, 2020:“Kim Jong-un dybt skuffet over socialdemokrater” [Kim Jong-un deeply disappointed with Social Democrats]
        • 5.2.3.eArticle 5: 13 June, 2020: “Afsløring: Martin Rossen stod bag corona” [Disclosure: Martin Rossen concocted the coronavirus]
        • 5.2.3.fArticle 6: 12 December, 2020: “Diktatorer til Mette Frederiksen: du er stadig en amatør” [Dictators to Mette Frederiksen: You are still an amateur]
    • 5.3Framing effects: The receiver
  • 6.Results and discussion
  • 7.Conclusions and outlook
  • References
References (41)
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