Topic 6 - representations of ethnic minorities

Stereotypical representations 

Akinti (2003) - coverage of ethnic minorities over focuses on crime, Aids in Africa and Black underachievement in schools, whilst ignoring the culture.

Van Dijk (1991) - content analysis study and found that representations of Black people in the news were catergorized in the following negative ways.

Ethnic mionorities as criminals

Black crime and violence is the most frequent issue found in the media news coverage of ethnic minorities.

African-Carribeans portrayed as criminals.

Akinti (2003) - television often reflects an inaccurate and superficial vieqw of Black life.

Agbetu (2006) - 'a Black person constructed in the media has three atributes: they are involved in criminality, involved in sports or involved in entertainment'.

However although Black people are viewd as troublesome, the media see them as exciting. They are newsworthy because they almost always consitute 'bad news'.

Ethnic minorities and moral panics

Watson (2008) - moral panics often result from media stereotyping of Black people as potentially criminal.

Hall's 1970 moral panic study constructed around the folk devil of the 'Black mugger'.

The result of these stories was the labelling of all young African-Carribeans as criminals and as a potential threat to White people.

Ethnic minorities as a threat

Van Dijk (1991) - common news stereotype that ethinic minorities pose as a 'threat' to White people.

There are three groups that have been labelled as this 'threat' (moral panic), and they are:

• Immigrants - a threat in terms of their numbers.
• Asylum seekers - a threat as they only come to abuse and take advantage of the British welfare state.
• Muslims - before and after 9/11, Muslims have been subjected to islamophobic news coverage.

Race, migration and media

Philo and Beattie (1999) - moral panics often arise focused on immigrants and asylum seekers.

Television journalists presented their stories about immigration in an extremely negative and alarmalistic way - boarders being 'dangerously' under policed, etc.

The media use the terms 'illegal immigrant' interchangeably. Philo and Beattie suggest that this has some racist overtones.

This coverage has created fear and concern amoung the general UK population.

Philo and Beattie conclude; the result was a news which was sometimes xenophobic…