Framing Latina/o Immigration, Education, and Activism

Although Latinas/os have a long history in the USA and represent a growing percentage of the population, they remain largely invisible or stereotyped in dominant images and discourses. Such representations are often ahistorical, and they camouflage the effects of US power and inequality. However, the spring 2006 immigrant rights demonstrations disturbed dominant conceptions. The demonstrators called attention to the contradictory US practices that disrupt home countries, recruit labor migrants, and deny immigrants full participation. Likewise, the role of students in these demonstrations spurred reflections on why youth would walk out of their schools for immigrant rights. Inspired by these demonstrations, we combine materials from multiple disciplines to emphasize the significance of US imperialism, exploitation, and exclusion on Latina/o migration, education, and activism. Key to this article is a reframing of how the media, K-12 curriculum, and popular discourse often engage in a cultural cover-up that sustains inequality.     

Social Innovation Ignored: Framing Nonprofit Activities in European News Media

VOLUNTAS: International Journal of Voluntary and Nonprofit Organizations - News reporting typically has a dual function: it mirrors what is going on in real life, but it also shapes how actors...     

Framing and Temporality in Political Cartoons: A Critical Analysis of Visual News Discourse*

Les caricatures politiques constituent une forme visuelle du discours des médias. Les sociologues rejettent généralement leur valeur idéologique en raison du fait qu'elles offrent aux lecteurs des exposés absurdes des conditions du « problème » putatif et ne doivent pas être prises au pied de la lettre. Toutefois, c'est par l'humour que les caricatures se sont emparées du bon sens et l'ont renfoncé, et par conséquent ont permis au public de classifier, d'organiser et d'inter‐préter activement ce qu'ils perçoivent ou vivent relativement à l'actu‐alité dans le monde à un moment donné de façon significative. Dans le cadre des théories interactionnistes de Goffman et de Mead, deux caricatures illustrant la dernière « crise » des « vagues d'immigration » déferlant au Canada seront étudiées. Political cartoons are a form of visual news discourse. Sociologists normally dismiss their ideological import on the grounds that cartoons simply offer newsreaders absurd accounts of putative “problem” conditions and are not likely to be taken very seriously. Nevertheless, it is through comedic conventions that cartoons seize upon and reinforce common sense and thus enable the public to actively classify, organize and interpret in meaningful ways what they see or experience about the world at a given moment. Informed by the interactionist theories of Goffman and Mead, two cartoons illustrating the recent “crisis” of “migrant waves” to Canada will be examined.     

The Framing of Fundamentalist Christians: Network Television News, 1980-2000

As Fundamentalist Christians have often claimed a bias in the media, this study probes for both explicit and implicit portrayals, examining the issues used by the media to frame discussions and the overall impression news clips offer. A population content analysis of network television news from 1980 to 2000 gathered from the Vanderbilt archive using search terms Fundamentalist and Christian indicated Fundamentalists are reported in a consistent, mildly negative manner. Politics is often the main focus of newscasts involving Fundamentalists, and conflict has been the most prevalent news value. Although often portrayed as being somewhat intolerant, racist, violent, and prone to impose their views on others, Fundamentalists are also depicted as being somewhat patriotic. Implications of these results are discussed.     

News Framing and Cueing of Issue Regimes: Explaining Clinton's Public Approval in Spite of Scandal

During the period of exceedingly critical news coverage surroundingthe Monica Lewinsky debacle, President Bill Clinton's job approvalratings were at some of the highest levels they reached duringhis tenure in office. Given this public response, many pollsters,pundits, and scholars argued that news coverage of the scandalmust have been largely irrelevant to the public. Our view countersthese claims by advancing a theory that recognizes that citizens'political preferences are influenced substantially by framesand cues provided by news media. To test our ideas, we drawupon three types of data, all from January 1993 to March 1999:(a) a longitudinal content analysis of major news media, (b)a time-trend of opinion polls on presidential job approval,and (c) monthly estimates of real disposable personal income,seasonally adjusted. Analyses reveal that news media emphasisupon and framing of certain issue regimes—to the framingof the scandal in terms of the strategic motives of conservativeelites.     

Strategy and Issue Framing: An Exploratory Analysis of Topics and Frames in Campaign 2004 Print News

This study refines the study of strategy and issue framing in campaign news. A content analysis of Campaign 2004 articles published in the New York Times (N = 267) from Labor Day to election day was conducted. Strategy and issue frames were observed in a topical architecture that included 8 campaign topics grouped into 3 categories: (a) Policy Issues, (b) Politics and Process, and (c) Personality. Also, strategy and issue frames were observed in stories containing metacoverage-stories that blend behaviors, products, and standards of the news media with 1 or more of the 8 campaign topics. As expected, stories that contained a salient Policy Issues topic tended to be issue framed, whereas stories with a salient Politics and Process topic tended to be strategy framed. Stories with a salient Personality topic tended to be issue framed. Metacoverage, salient in 9% of coverage, was most commonly combined with Personality topics in stories that were mainly issue framed. Implications for the study of framing in political communication are discussed.     

Immigration in America

The purpose of this study was to analyze the evolution of geography in the United States’ K–12 education system throughout the Nineteenth Century to understand the causes of variations, shifts in focus, and relative importance placed on geography. A broad theoretical framework, based on the work of sociologists of education and education philosophers and historians, guided the process of data collection and analysis. The authors feel that this research is significant because it clearly shows that geography was a high-status, “stand alone” subject in the public schools throughout most of the Nineteenth Century. Factors contributing to geography's prominent curricular position correlate well with the theoretical notion that the variation of emphasis of school subjects hinges largely on the involvement of their respective academic disciplines and/or scholars, and that society must perceive the subject as macro-economically beneficial to the long-term longevity of the nation's interests and economy. For the social studies as a whole, this paper represents a model of analysis for all of the subject areas that are currently included in the collection of ideas, themes, and approaches that comprise the modern concept of the social studies.     

International News Selection by the Elite Press: A Case Study

This study examines the news factors influencing the selectionof international news for publication—frequency, threshold,unambiguity, meaningfulness, personal and national elitism,and negativity. The subject of investigation is The Times (London)during a two-week period (January-February, 1975). Comparisonsare made between published and unpublished news events, codedaccording to World Event/Interaction Survey event categories.To avoid some of the problems inherent in testing individualnews factors, the complementarity and additivity hypotheseswere also tested; both are supported by the data. In addition,relevance of the study to policy issues such as agenda settingby the press and recent Third World criticism of Western newscoverage is discussed.     

Internal Migration and Spanish Regional Convergence (1972–1998)

The aim of this paper is to study the relationship between internal migration and Spanish regional convergence between 1972 and 1998, a period between the mass emigration prior to the 1970s and the mass immigration of the end of the twentieth century. The main results indicate that internal migration led to a fall in Spanish regional development gaps. However, internal migration did not lead to the disappearance of these gaps in the long term. Some regions will always receive workers, others will send them out and a third group will experience a sequence of migration reversals. The econometric methodology used allows us to identify structural breaks and to differentiate between long‐ and short‐term effects. This approach enables predictions to be made for internal migration flows in the long term in the absence of shocks.     

Immigration and unemployment in Australia

"This article is presented in two parts. The first contains a discussion of Australia's migration programme, its different categories and changes in intakes. It also deals with the contribution made by immigration to the size of the labour force.... The second part deals with the effect of immigration on the unemployment rate and concludes that its effect is negligible or, at best, slightly positive.... Against this background the paper discusses factors contributing to the employment and unemployment experience of migrants, for whom English language proficiency and the possession of recognized skills and qualifications are important in determining employability." (SUMMARY IN FRE AND SPA)     

Framing Sectarianism in the Middle East

This paper argues that a long view perspective of contemporary sectarianism between Sunni and Shia Islam in the Middle East could be read on the background of earlier forms of sectarianism going back to the 19^th and 20^th century history of the region. Such an approach would disentangle sectarianism from primordial narratives as an intrinsic problem of Islam going back to the early schism of the 7^th century and place it in social formations and social practices, and link it to the emergence of sectarianism during the Ottoman age of reforms. It would explicit arguments that link sectarianism with modernism, discussing how the emergence of modern, secular institutions that were based in early-modern millet system led to sects and sectarianism. The outcome of this approach is conceptualization of sect and sectarianism, its categorization, and confronting it with other modern narratives of the history of the Middle East.