Coverage of Burmese refugees in Indiana news media: An analysis of textual and visual frames

Journalism ◽  
2016 ◽  
Vol 19 (11) ◽  
pp. 1552-1569 ◽  
Author(s):  
Emily A Ehmer ◽  
Ammina Kothari
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
News Media ◽  
Media Coverage ◽  
The United States ◽  
Refugee Resettlement ◽  
Refugee Crisis ◽  
Attribution Of Responsibility ◽  
Human Interest ◽  
Dominant Feature ◽  
Visual Frame

This study investigates how Burmese refugees were framed by Fort Wayne’s The Journal Gazette located in one of Indiana’s cities where refugee resettlement has taken place over the last two decades. We analyzed 335 stories and 286 accompanying images to identify salient textual and visual frames. Results show that the human interest and attribution of responsibility were most salient textual frames, while the visual frame of exotic was dominant. Feature stories were more likely to have a human interest frame and, if an image is included, to reflect the visual frame of Burmese as being exotic. As a global refugee crisis continues to unfold, this study presents implications for how media coverage of future refugees in the United States will evolve based on public opinion.

Capturing Cruelty

2019 ◽  
Vol 27 (1) ◽  
pp. 92-108 ◽  
Author(s):  
Shannon T. Grugan
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Content Analysis ◽  
News Media ◽  
Media Coverage ◽  
General Public ◽  
Companion Animals ◽  
The United States ◽  
Primary Sources ◽  
Print News ◽  
Nonhuman Animals

AbstractThe news media has long been identified as one of the primary sources for factual crime information for the general public, but not much is known about media coverage of cruelty against nonhuman animals, specifically. This study is a content analysis of media-presented themes in 240 print news articles that reported incidents of cruelty against companion animals in the United States in 2013. Seven thematic presentations of cruelty are identified and include: neutrality, condemnation, sympathy for the animal, drama, advocacy, humor, and sympathy for the offender. These themes are not mutually exclusive, with many articles including aspects of more than one theme. Themes are discussed in detail in regard to expanding the understanding of how specific forms of crime are presented by the news media based in news-making criminology.

scholarly journals Critiquing Anthropocentric Media Coverage of the COVID-19 Sport “Hiatus”

2020 ◽  
Vol 13 (3) ◽  
pp. 559-565
Author(s):  
Samuel M. Clevenger ◽  
Oliver Rick ◽  
Jacob Bustad
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Media Coverage ◽  
Recent Trend ◽  
The United States ◽  
Democratic Politics ◽  
Human Interest ◽  
Sports Industry ◽  
Neoliberal Capitalism ◽  
The Media ◽  
Media Discourses

This commentary highlights a recent trend of anthropocentrism (a focus on human-centered interests and activities) in the media coverage in the United States and Europe on the disruption of the contemporary sports industry caused by the COVID-19 pandemic. The authors argued that the coverage promotes anthropocentric narratives by framing the pandemic as an external force causing a temporary and unforeseen “hiatus” in the sports industry. As a result, media consumers learn about human interest stories associated with consumer demand and industry adaptation: stories that renormalize, rather than question, the sports industry in its current and hegemonic form. Such media discourses bypass an opportunity to consider the longstanding entanglements of human and nonhuman actors in sporting contexts, rethink sport through environmental and nonhuman perspectives, and, ultimately, advance more progressive, democratic politics. The commentary employs a posthumanist lens to critique the recent anthropocentric media coverage, highlighting the ways in which it reproduces the dualist logic of neoliberal capitalism and deflects attention to the human and nonhuman relations that have always existed in contexts of sport and human physicality.

scholarly journals Trends In News Media Coverage Of Mental Illness In The United States: 1995–2014

2016 ◽  
Vol 35 (6) ◽  
pp. 1121-1129 ◽  
Author(s):  
Emma E. McGinty ◽  
Alene Kennedy-Hendricks ◽  
Seema Choksy ◽  
Colleen L. Barry
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Mental Illness ◽  
News Media ◽  
Media Coverage ◽  
The United States

The Spread and Intensification of Gay and Lesbian Identities

2018 ◽  
pp. 69-95
Author(s):  
Jeremiah J. Garretson
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Urban Communities ◽  
News Media ◽  
Coming Out ◽  
Media Coverage ◽  
The United States ◽  
Historical Narrative ◽  
Lesbian And Gay ◽  
Act Up ◽  
The Cold War

The historical narrative of the book starts in this chapter through a recap of the primary events in LGBTQ movement history in the United States leading up to the 1990s. The origin of the concept of ‘homosexuals’ in the medical research of the late 1890s, the firing of lesbians and gays during the Cold War for fears of communist association, the founding of Mattachine society, the development of distinctive lesbian and gay subcultures and urban communities in the 1970s, and the rise of AIDS and the LGBTQ community’s response in the form of ACT-UP in the 1980s are all discussed. ACT-UP’s response to the crisis proved to decisive turning-point in LGBTQ history. The chapter ends by presenting data showing that, by targeting the national news media, ACT-UP normalized media coverage of AIDS and LGBTQ issues, leading to increases in coming out.

Enemies, Allies, and the Struggle for Self-definition in “Muslim Punk” Rock

2018 ◽  
Vol 6 (3) ◽  
pp. 270-283
Author(s):  
Amy D. McDowell
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
News Media ◽  
Media Coverage ◽  
The United States ◽  
Punk Rock ◽  
Mainstream Media ◽  
American Muslim ◽  
Media Frame

Research shows that both entertainment and news media coverage of Islam and Muslims generate anti-Muslim attitudes in the wider U.S. public. In this article, I explore how this media trend shaped Taqwacore punks’ struggle to define what it means to be American, Muslim, and punk rock on their own terms. Upon their first U.S. tour, Taqwacore started getting the attention of both independent and mainstream media outlets. Taqwacores initially welcomed this because it helped them expand their audience to other (potential) Taqwacores as well as to a larger non-Muslim public. Their perspective changed, however, as they started to realize that most mainstream media stories were turning their punk protest into sensationalist stories about Americanized “Muslim punks” who oppose Islamic conventions. It was around this time that Taqwacores began imagining their audience as either with them or against them, enemies or allies. This study shows how this understanding of their audience shaped an internal dispute among Taqwacores about whether or not to identify as “Muslim punk.” Findings reveal that their internal debate over the Muslim punk label is structured by a racist media frame that defines Muslims as either good or bad, with or against the United States.

scholarly journals Analyzing natural herd immunity media discourse in the United Kingdom and the United States

2022 ◽  
Vol 2 (1) ◽  
pp. e0000078
Author(s):  
Marco Zenone ◽  
Jeremy Snyder ◽  
Alessandro Marcon ◽  
Timothy Caulfield
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
United Kingdom ◽  
High Risk ◽  
News Media ◽  
Media Coverage ◽  
Herd Immunity ◽  
The United States ◽  
Media Discourse ◽  
High Risk Populations ◽  
Pandemic Response

Natural herd immunity, where community-acquired infections in low-risk populations are used to protect high risk populations from infection–has seen high profile support in some quarters, including through the Great Barrington Declaration. However, this approach has been widely criticized as ineffective and misinformed. In this study, we examine media discourse around natural herd immunity in the United States (US) and United Kingdom (UK) to better understand how this approach was promoted. Country-specific news media publications between March 11, 2020 and January 31, 2021 were searched for references to herd immunity. News articles focused on herd immunity and including a stakeholder quote about herd immunity were collected, resulting in 400 UK and 144 US articles. Stakeholder comments were then coded by name, organization, organization type, and concept agreement or disagreement. Government figures and a small but vocal coalition of academics played a central role in promoting natural herd immunity in the news media whereas critics were largely drawn from academia and public health. These groups clashed on whether: natural herd immunity is an appropriate and effective pandemic response; the consequences of a lockdown are worse than those of promoting herd immunity; high-risk populations could be adequately protected; and if healthcare resources would be adequate under a herd immunity strategy. False balance in news media coverage of natural herd immunity as a pandemic response legitimized this approach and potentially undermined more widely accepted mitigation approaches. The ability to protect high risk populations while building herd immunity was a central but poorly supported pillar of this approach. The presentation of herd immunity in news media underscores the need for greater appreciation of potential harm of media representations that contain false balance.

Recent Police Killings in the United States: A Three-City Comparison

2017 ◽  
Vol 21 (2) ◽  
pp. 196-222 ◽  
Author(s):  
Angela S. Lee ◽  
Ronald Weitzer ◽  
Daniel E. Martínez
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
News Media ◽  
Media Coverage ◽  
Large Scale ◽  
The United States ◽  
Media Representations ◽  
Police Misconduct ◽  
Specific Content ◽  
High Profile ◽  
The Media

Recent police killings of citizens in the United States have attracted massive coverage in the media, large-scale public protests, and demands for reform of police departments throughout the country. This study is based on a content analysis of newspaper coverage of recent high-profile incidents that resulted in a citizen’s death in Ferguson, North Charleston, and Baltimore. We identify both incident-specific content as well as more general patterns that transcend the three cases. News media coverage of similar incidents in past decades tended to be episodic and favored the police perspective. Our findings point to some important departures from this paradigm. Reporting in our three cases was more likely to draw connections between discrete incidents, to attach blame to the police, and to raise questions about the systemic causes of police misconduct. These findings may be corroborated in future studies of news media representations of high-profile policing incidents elsewhere.

scholarly journals Learning to Detain Asylum Seekers and the Growth of Mass Immigration Detention in the United States

2021 ◽  
pp. 1-29
Author(s):  
Smita Ghosh ◽  
Mary Hoopes
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Infectious Diseases ◽  
Cognitive Dissonance ◽  
Media Coverage ◽  
Asylum Seekers ◽  
Ad Hoc ◽  
The United States ◽  
Critical Component ◽  
Immigration Detention ◽  
Important Shift

Drawing upon an analysis of congressional records and media coverage from 1981 to 1996, this article examines the growth of mass immigration detention. It traces an important shift during this period: while detention began as an ad hoc executive initiative that was received with skepticism by the legislature, Congress was ultimately responsible for entrenching the system over objections from the agency. As we reveal, a critical component of this evolution was a transformation in Congress’s perception of asylum seekers. While lawmakers initially decried their detention, they later branded them as dangerous. Lawmakers began describing asylum seekers as criminals or agents of infectious diseases in order to justify their detention, which then cleared the way for the mass detention of arriving migrants more broadly. Our analysis suggests that they may have emphasized the dangerousness of asylum seekers to resolve the dissonance between their theoretical commitments to asylum and their hesitance to welcome newcomers. In addition to this distinctive form of cognitive dissonance, we discuss a number of other implications of our research, including the ways in which the new penology framework figured into the changing discourse about detaining asylum seekers.

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