Selena Truong ASTU 100A

Throughout my first year here at UBC, I’ve been invited into thinking about a variety of new and challenging concepts. Particularly in my ASTU course, something that I have learned and that has strongly resonated with me is the concept of framing. Framing, as defined by Jiwani and Young, is the process of “selecting and highlighting” certain aspects of “events or issues” to “promote a particular interpretation” to an audience (902). Although hegemonic framing has the power to further stigmatize and discriminate against marginalized groups, there is a potential to resist it through counter frames. I discussed this concept in depth in my research paper in relation to Missing Sarah: A Memoir of Loss, in which the author, Maggie de Vries uses this memoir to counter the dominant framework that stigmatizes sex workers. However, I see framing as continuing to be relevant now as the influential power of media is rapidly on the rise in our technologically advanced and globalizing world.

In this blog post, therefore, I will be looking at a Huffington’s Post article by Nick Wing, “When The Media Treats White Suspects And Killers Better Than Black Victims”, in which allows me to address an aspect of framing that I have not talked about before. In 2006, Jiwani and Young wrote about the aspect framing in newspapers, but as more of our world continues to log onto the World Wide Web, local news is able to and often times does branch out globally. Thus, this article that I will be discussing demonstrates not only how the media’s framing of stigmatized groups is reaching and influencing a wider audience on the global scale, but how these audiences are also able to resist these dominant narratives by responding immediately to the issue on the same public platform.

Wing, opens his article by introducing the problematic case of Michael Brown’s death. Michael Brown was “unarmed, black teenager” who was “fatally shot” by a police officer in Ferguson, Missouri in the summer of 2014. Wing explains that the nature of this case, of black men being killed in this manner, was not uncommon. He continues by explaining that after news of the teen’s death broke, “media-watchers carefully followed the narratives that news outlets began crafting” about Brown and this incident (Wing). Michael Brown’s case became a concern on the global scale as it was kept track of on international news channels and the internet. For example, Wing notes that people on Twitter started wondering how they would be represented or framed if they were killed. They thus created the hashtag, #IfTheyGunnedMeDown, in which users of this hashtag would post photos side-by-side to testify to the “power that news outlets wield” in influencing a certain interpretation based on the images they select (Wing). Technology has become a tool that supports the agency of viewers that allows them to take action from anywhere in the world to fight against and counter hegemonic frameworks in the media.

Source: Screenshot from Wing’s article

Wing highlights the tweet (on the left) from Twitter user, @SvmmieArnold, which emphasizes the media’s mistreatment of black victims as it is “often harsher than it is of whites suspected of crimes” (Wing). He does this by comparing the photos and news headlines of Michael Brown to that of a white teen. The media’s hegemonic framing through selecting of a picture of Brown in which satisfies the public’s perception of a “delinquent” or “gangster” attached with a headline that suggests violence on his part leads Michael Brown to seem like what Jiwani and Young would call a “blameworthy victim” (901). In contrast, the white suspect is framed in a way that reinforces the hegemonic dominance of white men through an image of him wearing a suit and being praised for being a “brilliant science student” even though he was a murderer.

This Twitter user’s actions, along with others who spoke up about this issue of unjust representation, demonstrate the capacity for us to take responsibility as global citizens to resist the hegemonic frames of power structures that impose and influence discrimination onto certain groups. Through current technology and the growing interconnectedness of societies, individuals are able to create counter narratives on a daily basis by identifying an issue, bringing awareness to it, and by standing by the victims and insisting on recreating the way their identities are narrated and represented and publically understood.

The content that I have explored in this ASTU 100 course and specifically the concept of framing and counter framing, has helped me understand the weighted importance of the way we represent ourselves and others. For the choices made in this process can have heavy impacts on social and political scales. An important aspect that I have taken away from this course is that it is essential that we look at representations of groups that are constructed by dominant power sources with a critical eye, as they are often framed to fill a political purpose. On a personal level, I have also decided for myself that I should not only learn to notice these hegemonic misrepresentations of certain groups, but, as I see myself as a “global citizen”, I should do my best to take part in resisting them.

Works Cited

Jiwani, Yasmin, and Mary Lynn Young. “Missing And Murdered Women: Reproducing Marginality In News Discourse.” Canadian Journal Of Communication 31.4 (2006): 895-917. ProQuest, search.proquest.com.ezproxy.library.ubc.ca/docview/219564084/fulltextPDF/3CC1DA255ACB49D0PQ/1?accountid=14656. Accessed 19 Nov. 2016.

Wing, Nick. “When The Media Treats White Suspects And Killers Better Than Black Victims.” The Huffington Post, www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/08/14/media-black-victims_n_5673291.html%20. Accessed 7 April 2017.