News and Views
El Rapero Implicado: Rap, Hip Hop, and Criminalizing Medias of Mexico
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Ruben Campos
On March 20th 2018, outside Guadalajara, México, Christian Omar Palma Gutiérrez disposed of three bodies for the Jalisco New Generation Cartel. Unbeknownst to him, the corpses he dissolved in barrels of acid were those of three film students, unrelated to the drug economy. Aside from his work for the cartel, Omar was a hardworking and successful musician and rapper, known to hundreds of thousands of fans as QBA. On May 24th, 2018, soon after the authorities apprehended Omar, and he confessed, major Mexican and international news media linked Omar’s two careers, and reproduced a common stereotype, which defines rap musicians by way of criminality. This study investigates the relationships between news media, narcoterrorism and Hip Hop, the culture associated with rap music. Through ethnographic interviews with artists and government functionaries in the nation’s capital, I aim to understand what consequences the media’s representation of QBA as a narco-rapper might have on individual artists in their daily life, and on government-sponsored cultural programs. I frame this study as an anthropology of media, and seek to understand how the news functions as a conflict discourse within the negotiation of social identity and cultural politics. As such, I recount less of what occurred in Tonalá, and more about the how mediated narratives have constituted a wider Drug War Zone spanning from Guadalajara to Ciudad México and to the United States. This paper, contributes to discussions of the relationship between musical cultures, global capitalism, governance, and resistance.
Media Representations of Black Women in Prime-time: Media Effects, Social Identity, and Social Reality
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Susan J Eddington
Most research considers race to typically refer to Black men and gender to typically refer to White women. Black women live with an intersectionality where race and gender mutually construct each other. This study used social identity theory as a framework to interpret how negative media representations can affect or reinforce racist attitudes and social oppression of Black females. Media representations that perpetuate negative stereotypes of Black women, being rooted in the argument for White supremacy, reinforce the appropriateness of the oppression that sustains White supremacy, stifling the well-being of Black women, their families and community. This study used a purposive sample of the three most highly watched television series with Black female leading characters to investigate the quality of current portrayals of Black women on prime-time television. Because the three programs selected were popular with the general market audience, social learning theory and cultivation theory suggested the character portrayals could affect how Black women are perceived by social others who do not have sufficient first-hand experience in social settings with Black females to develop an informed opinion. An analysis of findings explored how, through cognitive processing, media representations can affect attitudes and behavior that perpetuate negative stereotypes, diminishing opportunities and the well-being of Black women and girls.
New Immigrants’ Feedback on Taiwan’s TV News Programs: An Analysis from the Perspective of Ethnic Media Functions
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Pei Tsai
The “CTS New Immigrants News” is the first mainstream TV news program in Taiwan aimed at new immigrants viewers and broadcasts in their languages. The study started from examining the attitudes held by Taiwanese society or family members towards new immigrants and whether new immigrants use their mother tongues in Taiwan and explored how “CTS New Immigrants News” can be improved by adjusting their content in order to better meet the needs of new immigrants from the perspective of ethnic media functions. Suggestions on how to improve new immigrants TV news are provided in the study. Four focus group discussions were conducted with new immigrants in Taiwan between January and June 2018. A total of 19 new immigrants from Southeast Asian and China participated in the discussions. As an ethnic media, there is still a lot of room for improvement for “CTS New Immigrants News” in terms of ethnic media functions, especially in the following areas that new immigrants need the most: providing living information of Taiwan, helping immigrants adapt to the mainstream society, promoting mutual understanding and interactions between Taiwanese society and new immigrants, and promoting the desire of second generation immigrants to visit their home countries. New immigrants news programs have not covered enough of recent developments in Southeast Asia and non-metropolitan areas in China. They do not contribute in effectively eliminating negative stereotypes of new immigrants from these areas, nor do they promote the desire of second generation immigrants to visit their home countries.
