7 What happens to debates with little framing?
A place where debates about doping are often very open ended and are often not framed, is social media or in the comment sections that accompany online material on some platforms such as YouTube. You are about to look at some typical online comments made about doping, which partly demonstrates how some people randomly express their personal perspective with no particular common thread or clearly framed argument.
Activity 7 Online comments about doping
Read the examples of comments below (in Figure 1) typically found on online platforms. Try to identify the types of positions people take, drawing on what you read in Activity 5, for example, positions about: protection from harm, fairness, zero tolerance and the spirit of sport.
Discussion
There are examples of simple framing in these posts (e.g. Post 1 – sport is inherently unfair, Post 2 – social and cultural pressures are responsible). Simple framing can become the dominant discourse, partly as it may be easier for the public to understand. In the realm of social media, it can be distilled to short sound bites or sentences. This then skews discussions on complex issues towards the simpler ways of framing them rather than taking account of more complex positions and critique of multiple influencing factors.
You have seen how discussions with little framing can become rather over-simplistic. Next you will move onto to a more complex, nuanced example of framing.