Competing discourses of community

Abstract

Based on a critical analysis of the news coverage and editorial content regarding the Elián González international custody case in The Miami Herald and El Nuevo Herald, this article explores the ideological tensions between local general-market and Latino news outlets during moments of increased social crisis. Specifically, it documents the newspapers’ relationship with each other and analyzes the competing discourses of ethnic, community and national identity embedded in the journalistic texts. The study suggests that, as US ethnic and racial demographics continue shifting in its major cities, particular attention must be paid to the dynamic role of the ethnic media. Examining the production of meanings in ethnic and general-market news coverage in relation to one another presents an opportunity for rethinking the role of journalism in public negotiations over constructs of community, national identity, and ethnic and racial difference.

News Media Representations: Audience Perceptions of News Frames About Latinxs and Hispanics

“…While Latinxs and Hispanics noticed most of the negative news frames about them, the analysis showed that the representation “Latinxs and Hispanics are employed in minimum-wage jobs” yielded no significant differences due to non-Latinxs/Hispanics also perceiving higher prevalence of that narrative in the news industry. The latter further expands the literature on the differentiated news-making process in relation to Latinxs and Hispanics (Guzmán, 2006; Rendon et al, 2019) and that Latino-related media content with a stereotypical approach can negatively impact this group’s own perception (Martins et al, 2022; Tukachinsky et al, 2017; Vaquera et al, 2022; Zaman & Das, 2021).…”

“…These findings suggest that, while portrayals of Latinxs and Hispanics in positions of power continue to be underrepresented, the framing of Latinxs/Hispanics as an underclass remains ubiquitous in news content interpretation. Thus, some representations of Latinxs/Hispanics continue to be perceived by audiences in terms of stereotypical understandings that have long permeated narratives across genres (Chavez, 2020;Domínguez Partida, 2022;Guzmán, 2006). From a wider social perspective, this might be a signal that these sort of stereotypical constructs about Latinxs/Hispanics have taken deep roots in the collective imaginary (Taylor, 2004).…”