scholarly journals Evolution of Concept “Black” in the US Media Discourse

Author(s):  
Tatiana Melnichuk ◽  
◽  
Natalia Saburova ◽  

Media discourse is an effective tool for projecting and shaping the public perception of a certain idea or image. The article focuses on the linguistic and semantic representation of the concept “Black” in the American media discourse with a particular attention to how the concept representation has evolved from the 1990s to 2010s. The study employed corpus methodology (keyness, frequency, concordances) to analyze news articles from “The New York Times” and “The Los Angeles Times”, which were arranged into three corpora according to the publication date (1990s, 2000s, 2010s). The corpus analysis established a number of changes in the concept “Black” representation manifested primarily through the high relevance keywords and high frequency collocations. Dominant semantic components were identified in the concept representation in each corpus, as well as notable shifts in core and peripheral aspects within these semantic components. The analysis showed that although the semantic components ‘racial / ethnic inequality’ and ‘economic issues’ remain at the core of the concept in each corpus, they are expressed through connections with other semantic components which may vary throughout three decades, such as ‘culture’ in the 1990s, ‘education’ and ‘politics’ in the 2000s and ‘police brutality and profiling’ and ‘appearance’ in the 2010s.

2019 ◽  
Vol 3 (Supplement_1) ◽  
pp. S537-S537
Author(s):  
Brianne M Stanback

Abstract Rhetorical inquires have shown connections between representation and power, workplace fashion and development of ethos, and the rhetoric of glamour through women’s fashion and dress. One element absent from that conversation is how the life course, which typically differs for women because of existing power structures advantaging men, may impact the experience of women as they age, their choice of dress, and the rhetorical implications of those decisions. To explore dress and rhetoric from a life course perspective, this project traces the evolution of Serena Williams’ work apparel across her professional tennis career to the catsuit worn at the 2018 French Open, which is the focus of the project. Press reports on the 2018 catsuit by Nike, New York Times, Sports Illustrated, Business Insider, BBC Sport, Washington Post, and Los Angeles Times, interviews given by Williams, and the television documentary, Becoming Serena, will be analyzed for their treatment of Williams’ work attire and the life course. Responses to the catsuit emphasize attitudes about gender, race, and class, either discounting or ignoring the life course implications such as motherhood and changes in health status. Despite professional success, responses about the catsuit may reflect that Williams faces the same jeopardies, and invisibility, common to many women as they age, and the rhetorical perspective provides new methodological and pedagogical possibilities for instruction in aging.


2019 ◽  
pp. 379-393
Author(s):  
Mike Dillon

American news organizations have long been criticized for failing to anticipate, appreciate and exploit the Internet as it became a fact of daily life in the mid-1990s. This chapter explores and analyzes the lack of planning that stymied the development of journalism on the Web and cast doubt on the viability of traditional public-service journalism with its enduring values of accuracy, fairness and advocacy. Specifically, the essay documents and analyzes the online debuts of two venerable “old media” news outlets (The New York Times and The Los Angeles Times) and two “new media” Web news outlets (Salon and Slate) in the mid-1990s by exploring the claims they made about their aims, purposes and expectations as they introduced themselves to the public via their salutatory editorials. It is a cautionary tale for a digital world that reconfigures itself in ever-quickening cycles.


1988 ◽  
Vol 9 (3) ◽  
pp. 1-9 ◽  
Author(s):  
Paul Martin Lester

Mug shots from five U.S. newspapers: USA Today, Chicago Tribune, New Orleans Times-Picayune, New York Times and the Los Angeles Times, were analyzed for the same five-day work week of each month for 1986. The 300 front pages yielded 520 head shots of 1,148 photographs. USA Today and newspapers with its similar graphic style use more mug shots without an accompanying article on the front page than more traditionally designed newspapers.


2012 ◽  
Vol 2 (2) ◽  
pp. 6-12
Author(s):  
Malia Wollan

An essay review of California Is a Place, a collection of three- to ten-minute web video vignettes, by filmmakers Drea Cooper and Zackary Canepari. Their work has attracted more than three million viewers since their first videos went online in early 2010. Widely distributed across the Internet, the videos have won awards and been featured on news sites including PBS’s NewsHour, the New York Times, The Atlantic, and the Los Angeles Times. “People are craving honest stories,” Cooper says. “They want stories that are unmitigated by the television structure of dramatic moments.”


2021 ◽  
Vol 11 ◽  
Author(s):  
David Mattson ◽  
Katie Mathew ◽  
Jen Katz-Buonincontro

Worldwide, the COVID-19 pandemic has forced people to adapt quickly, and to reexamine interactions and responsibilities toward communities in creative ways. This paper presents a qualitative media analysis (Altheide and Schneider, 2013) of 50 online news articles (Los Angeles Times and New York Times) published between March 17th and August 6th, 2020 using the key-words “creativity” and “COVID-19.” Informed by a definition of creativity as actions that are considered both “new” and “appropriate” (Sternberg and Lubart, 1999), articles describing a “creative action” were kept for analysis. These articles highlight creative responses to the COVID-19 quarantine in various domains including architecture, fashion, and faith. In this paper, we discuss the themes derived during this analysis- “renewal and continuity” and “the multidimensionality of creativity” which elaborate and contextualize a perspective of socio-cultural creativity theory and propose two implications of this study. The first implication posits that creativity was an observable, cultural response to the COVID-19 pandemic. The second implication offers a broader concept of how cultural resources function as dynamic constraints or “affordances” within the Five A’s model of creativity (Glǎveanu, 2013). Discussion of further research through the lens of socio-cultural creativity is discussed.


1989 ◽  
Vol 2 (1) ◽  
pp. 83-90
Author(s):  
Michiel van Bremen ◽  
David J. Thibodeau

On October 31, 1988, in a ceremony at the Beverly Hilton Hotel attended by Congressmen and members of the artistic community. President Reagan signed the 1988 Berne Convention implementation Act. This Act allowed the United States to join the international Berne Convention lor the Protection of Literary and Artistic Works as of March, 1989. Although the Act somewhat expands the availability of U.S. copyright protection to European atilhors, it affects U.S. authors' rights even less, practically speaking. Perhaps that explains why only three major U.S. daily newspapers, The New York Times, The Washington Post, and Los Angeles Times, briefly mentioned this historic moment for the internal ional copyright environment. This article explores why and how the U.S. has joined the Berne Convention after more than 102 years, and the effect that this will have un the availability of U.S. copyright protection to foreign authors. Before considering the technical consequences of the Berne Convention Implementation Act, we give a brief overview of two relevant international copyright treaties and their major differences.


Author(s):  
Edward Alan Miller ◽  
Elizabeth Simpson ◽  
Pamela Nadash ◽  
Michael Gusmano

Abstract Objective This study sheds light on the agenda-setting role of the media during the COVID-19 crisis by examining trends in nursing home (NH) coverage in 4 leading national newspapers—The New York Times, Washington Post, USA Today, and Los Angeles Times. Method Keyword searches of the Nexis Uni database identified 2,039 NH-related articles published from September 2018 to June 2020. Trends in the frequency of NH coverage and its tone (negative) and prominence (average words, daily article count, opinion piece) were examined. Results Findings indicate a dramatic rise in the number of NH articles published in the months following the first COVID-19 case, far exceeding previous levels. NH coverage became considerably more prominent, as the average number of words and daily articles on NHs increased. The proportion of negative articles largely remained consistent, though volume rose dramatically. Weekly analysis revealed acceleration in observed trends within the post-COVID-19 period itself. These trends, visible in all papers, were especially dramatic in The New York Times. Discussion Overall, findings reveal marked growth in the frequency and number of prominent and negative NH articles during the COVID-19 crisis. The increased volume of coverage has implications for the relative saliency of NHs to other issues during the pandemic. The increased prominence of coverage has implications for the perceived importance of addressing pre-existing deficits and the devastating consequences of the pandemic for NHs.


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