The Washington, D.C. 1991 Riots in Mount Pleasant: An Analysis of Local Press Coverage
The Washington, D.C. 1991 Riots in Mount Pleasant: An Analysis of Local Press Coverage
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Date
1993
Authors
Lima, Christina C.
Advisor
Gurevitch, Michael
Citation
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Abstract
Studies in the field of communication have found
that the U.S.A. mainstream (English-language) news
media coverage of minorities is characterized primarily
by the portrayal of minorities only in the context of
the problems or difficulties that they pose to society.
In addition, because of cultural values and customs,
the media, when covering minorities, tend to focus on
the event itself rather than on the underlying causes
of the event. Thus the coverage tends to be
stereotypical.
In order to address these issues, this thesis
analyses the content of coverage of the 1991,
Washington, D.C. Mount Pleasant civil disturbances in
two English- and two Spanish-language newspapers. A
quantitative content analysis was employed in order to
determine the extent and type of coverage provided to
Latinos two weeks before the disturbances, the week of
the disturbances, and the week after the disturbances.
For the same period, a thematic content analysis
was used to contrast the frameworks used by the
English-language press in comparison to the Spanish-language
press. The assumption was that by having
cultural proximity to and understanding of the Latino
Community, the Spanish-language press provided a more
thorough coverage of the event.
The results, however, show that both presses
failed to provide a comprehensive coverage of the
event. In fact, the results seem to indicate that both
presses followed journalistic news values and patterns
more closely than they followed cultural values. The
most notable difference between the two presses was
that they incorporated the news values and patterns
into their own cultural bias.