RESEARCH
As part of my graduate education, I have had the opportunity to participate in several research projects, all relating to the role media plays in driving social change. Please find descriptions of each of the projects below.
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“It takes a heck of a lot of oxygen to speak”: Power, Race and Objectivity in U.S. News Coverage of the George Floyd protests [2020]
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This study explores the roles of institutional power and protection of the status quo in U.S. news discourse following the death of George Floyd, a Black man killed by a White Minneapolis police officer in May 2020. The sample set was gleaned from two early days of reporting by five news outlets — two at the local level (KSTP-Minneapolis and WLNS/WLAJ-Lansing) and three at the national level (The Associated Press, Vox News and The New York Post). The framework used to engage in this qualitative discourse analysis melds and builds upon the Propaganda Model (Herman and Chomsky, 1994) and Teun A. van Dijk’s (1991) framework for analyzing race and racism in the press, in order to establish a three-part analysis of coverage of Floyd’s death and the Black Lives Matter protests that followed. It focuses on (1) context, (2) content, and (3) language in an effort to explore and unpack the relationships between organizational ownership, political affiliation, folk race theory (Hodges, 2015), language and story sourcing to evidence the widespread reliance on elements of the Protest Paradigm by the selected news outlets, as well as to question the feasibility of true objectivity in modern U.S. journalism. **Note: This study comprised my Masters dissertation at the University of Sussex.
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The Good (Poor), The BAD (Poor), and the ugly (Divide): Racialized news framing in the U.S. Media and its effects on public perceptions and government policy [2020]
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This research project consists of a case study comparing media coverage of two major incidents in working class midwestern towns: the Flint Water Crisis -- in Michigan -- and the Lordstown GM plant idling -- in Ohio. Ultimately, the paper sought to analyze whether The New York Times appeared to use different strategies, language and media frames to cover the incidents, in an attempt to determine whether there might be any correlation between the reporting style and the racial / socioeconomic demographics of these areas (Flint, Michigan, is a majority Black city, while Lordstown, Ohio, is a majority White city). My research, while small-scale, did lead to the conclusion that not all working class or poor communities are treated equally by the American paper of record. The paper can be read upon request.
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Social Media as a Combat Zone: Vox España’s Use of Conflict, Spectacle and Emotion in Spreading Populist Ideologies [2020]
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This solo research project culminated in an essay exploring the use of social media by a far-right political party in Spain, following the Dec. 2019 attack on a migrant youth center in the Hortaleza neighborhood of Madrid. In it, I sought to determine which communications strategies this quickly growing party is using on Twitter, particularly in light of their achievement of the third-highest number of seats in the nation's federal Congress. This comes just 42 years after the death of Spain's infamous former leader, Gen. Francisco Franco. My research ultimately led me to three key strategies: media warfare, spectacle, and "angry populism." The paper can be read upon request.
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FRAME THEM ALL: UK News Media Representations of Muslims and the Power Structures that Drive Them [2019]
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"Frame Them All" was a collaborative project completed at the University of Sussex. In it, we sought to determine how Muslims are represented in the British news media and why. Particularly, our research focused on media framing practices and their short- and long-term effects. Above, you'll find a link to the full Prezi presentation used to present our findings. Below is a copy of the handout we provided to our audience, which gives a brief overview of our research question and our key findings.
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Co-Contributors: Yasmin El-Beih, Jazmin Reigan, Paula Sarmiento, and Tomoko Ushiro.
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