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Critical and Cultural Studies

Western Washington University

Articles 1 - 9 of 9

Full-Text Articles in Social and Behavioral Sciences

#Iftheygunnedmedown: A Narrative Analysis Of News Media Coverage, Zoe Deal Jan 2020

#Iftheygunnedmedown: A Narrative Analysis Of News Media Coverage, Zoe Deal

Occam's Razor

This study examines the 2014 media coverage of #IfTheyGunnedMeDown, an early example of hashtag activism driven by the social media sub-community Black Twitter in response to the murder of a Black teenager, Michael Brown, Jr., by a white police officer in Ferguson, Missouri. Reacting to national reporting on the event, #IfTheyGunnedMeDown criticized the mainstream media for promoting racially prejudiced representations of Brown and utilized this example to critique two historical patterns in American news coverage: the pattern of stereotyping Black Americans as violent to justify police brutality and the pattern of representing journalism informed by a hegemonically white perspective …

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Perception And Policy: U.S. Sociological Attitudes And Policies Towards Guatemalans And Salvadorans In The Late 20th And Early 21st Centuries, Violeta Paredes Jun 2016

Perception And Policy: U.S. Sociological Attitudes And Policies Towards Guatemalans And Salvadorans In The Late 20th And Early 21st Centuries, Violeta Paredes

Scholars Week

This paper looks into Guatemalan and Salvadoran history and immigration in the late 20th Century and identifies how these patterns compare to and continue to affect present day immigration policy. By examining the difference between how immigration policy was handled prior and after the events that occurred on 9/11, the reader will be able to distinguish how social perception of immigrants in the U.S. changed drastically with the span of a few months. By examining the history of immigration policy post-WWII, the reader will be able to identify that aid such as providing asylum has historically contributed to systematic …

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Youtube Celebrity And The Future Of Online Video, Nicole Shapiro May 2016

Youtube Celebrity And The Future Of Online Video, Nicole Shapiro

Scholars Week

In recent years, the rise of online video streaming services has become so great that traditional media, such as television, are worried about a potential eclipse in popularity and prevalence. YouTube is the largest online streaming platform, with over 1 billion users, and accounts for one-third of all internet traffic. This study analyzes YouTube’s attempt to professionalize the platform through a new service YouTube Red – taking amateurs, making them professionals and crafting them into celebrities – and what that means for the future of online video. This study looks at other scholarly works to analyze what makes a celebrity, …

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Spanish News Framing Of The Syrian Refugee Crisis, Ariana Hoyer Apr 2016

Spanish News Framing Of The Syrian Refugee Crisis, Ariana Hoyer

WWU Honors College Senior Projects

During 2015 and 2016, Europe dealt with the largest migratory crisis since WWII due to the escalation of the Syrian civil war and ongoing conflict and violence. When an issue as significant as the Syrian refugee crisis occurs, it is crucial to carefully examine the news framing of the issue due to its strong power to influence public discourse. This influence can originate from many different aspects of framing, but one of the most influential is word choice. The word choices used to refer to groups of people can change the feelings of identification or “otherness” among readers. This paper …

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Perception And Policy: U.S. Sociological Attitudes And Policies Towards Guatemalans And Salvadorans In The Late 20th And Early 21st Centuries, Violeta Paredes Jan 2016

Perception And Policy: U.S. Sociological Attitudes And Policies Towards Guatemalans And Salvadorans In The Late 20th And Early 21st Centuries, Violeta Paredes

American Cultural Studies Capstone Research Papers

This paper looks into Guatemalan and Salvadoran history and immigration in the late 20th Century and identifies how these patterns compare to and continue to affect present day immigration policy. By examining the difference between how immigration policy was handled prior and after the events that occurred on 9/11, the reader will be able to distinguish how social perception of immigrants in the U.S. changed drastically with the span of a few months. By examining the history of immigration policy post-WWII, the reader will be able to identify that aid such as providing asylum has historically contributed to systematic …

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Review Of Markets Of Sorrow, Labors Of Faith: New Orleans In The Wake Of Katrina By Vincanne Adams, Helen Morgan Parmett May 2014

Review Of Markets Of Sorrow, Labors Of Faith: New Orleans In The Wake Of Katrina By Vincanne Adams, Helen Morgan Parmett

Communication Studies

I recently took a group of students to New Orleans over our spring break for an interdisciplinary class on the relationships between space, culture, and media industries in cities. It was a trip that promised to be both wonderful and terrifying—wonderful in the sense of students living an embodied education of not only the history, politics, and culture of the city, but also of the sights, sounds, smells, and physical encounters that make up those histories, politics, and cultures; yet terrifying in the sense that the students might miss the significance of how these same sounds, sights, smells, and physical …

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The Driving Force Behind Media Skepticism, James Kozantis Jan 2013

The Driving Force Behind Media Skepticism, James Kozantis

Occam's Razor

Faith in the media is down across the board. A recent Gallop poll shows that 60% of people do not trust the media, including broadcast, print and online news sources, to report the news fairly, accurately and fully (Morales 2012). This poll, and other studies like it, also show that Republicans don’t trust the media with half the frequency Democrats do, with 58 percent of Democrats saying they have a great deal or fair amount of trust in the news media, while only 28 percent of Republicans gave that response. This paper examines what role the media itself has in …

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Disneyomatics: Media, Branding, And Urban Space In Post-Katrina New Orleans, Helen Morgan Parmett Feb 2012

Disneyomatics: Media, Branding, And Urban Space In Post-Katrina New Orleans, Helen Morgan Parmett

Communication Studies

Following the events of Hurricane Katrina, the Walt Disney Company took on New Orleans as a special philanthropic project. For many citizens of New Orleans, Disney's active role and its consequent partnership with the city is highly problematic, as evidenced by a spate of newspaper articles after Katrina that expressed fears about the rebuilding leading to the potential "Disneyfication" of the city. Citizens fear Disney will turn the city into something like Times Square-a space emptied of its former meanings and histories and rearticulated to Disney's sanitized family brand, marked by racial, class, and sexual exclusions. Thus, in New Orleans, …

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Using Service-Learning To Teach Threshold Concepts, Helen Morgan Parmett Jan 2012

Using Service-Learning To Teach Threshold Concepts, Helen Morgan Parmett

Backward by Design Mini-Studies

The course I chose to focus on for the Backwards by Design retreat and for this particular study is Communication 244: Advocacy through Media. This course enjoins students to critically consider how media can be used as a tool to advocate for social and political change, and, especially for social justice. Students engage with scholarly and activist literature on theories of media, social change, and advocacy as well as case studies of media makers who intervene in the process of social change. Students’ critical acumen is sharpened through participating in a service-learning project, where students learn how to apply theories …

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