Power and the newsprint media’s framing of the Downtown Eastside
Author/s: Sikee Liu
Creation date: 2010
Contact info: Sikeeliu@gmail.com
Senior supervisor: Nicholas Blomley
Keywords: Downtown Eastside, news framing, power relations, social construction, news media, content analysis
Geographic focus: Downtown Eastside, Vancouver, BC; Vancouver, BC; British Columbia; Canada
Research question/s: How is inner city space represented and by whom?
Significance
The newsprint media’s portrayal of the Downtown Eastside (DTES) is often taken as just an objective reflection of the DTES without taking into account the media’s constitutive capacity and the power relations embedded in such representations. Thus, the media has broad social implications, affecting such phenomena as DTES-related public policy and social movements, and ultimately, the DTES itself.
Findings
Based on a content analysis of 247 articles in The Vancouver Sun and The Province published from 1997 to 2008, the author found that the media’s dominant framing of the DTES reproduces and is, in part, a reflection of the existing asymmetric power relations of society. Consequently, this hegemonic framing doubly stigmatizes the DTES: firstly, privileging outsiders’ monochromatic portrayals of the DTES as a problematic space defined through the medicalization, criminalization, and socialization lenses, and secondly, framing its residents as passive social actors who are incapable of constructive change.
External publications: "Making news and making space: Framing Vancouver's Downtown Eastside" in The Canadian Geographer. Volume 57, Issue 2, pages 119–132, Summer 2013.
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