85 C: Final Project Proposal, Sections A3 & A4, TA Di Fede

Topic(s): The Relationship Between Racism and the News Media: The Depiction of African-Americans on Online News Websites

Format:  I like to use a Prezi, a cloud based presentation software, for it visually depicts concepts with images and editing so that the viewer has some interaction to material. But if turns out my research is too complex to present on a simple Prezi, I will write an academic paper.

Thesis question(s): To what extent, does the racist, inaccurate images of African-Americans changed, through the coming of online news media from newspapers?

Sources: http://das.sagepub.com/content/11/1/7.short, http://www.laprogressive.com/race-racism-online, http://www9.georgetown.edu/faculty/irvinem/CCT510/Sources/Anderson-extract.html, http://nms.sagepub.com/content/12/7/1085.abstract, http://das.sagepub.com/content/11/1/7.full.pdf+html

Two sources on history and how they relate:

1. “Online News Consumption Research: An Assessment of Past Work and an Agenda for the Future” by Eugenia Mitchelstein & Pablo J. Boczkowski (http://nms.sagepub.com/content/12/7/1085.abstract)            

2. “Community or Colony: The Case of Online Newspapers and the Web” by Patricia Riley, Colleen M. Keough, Thora Christiansen, Ofer Meilich, & Jillian Pierson (http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1083-6101.1998.tb00086.x/full)

How They Relate: Both sources analyze how the news media both online and printed help establish images of community, where viewers identify themselves to certain images that it depicts. By watching and accepting these images, viewers place themselves in this imagined community. 

Two sources on theory and how they relate:

1.  “Race, Racism and Online News & Sports: What the Research Tells Us” by Jessie Daniels (http://www.laprogressive.com/race-racism-online/)

2. Racism and the Press by Teun Van Dijky

How They Relate: Both sources theorize that certain images depicted by online news media are more superior than others based on race. Specifically, civilized images of white Americans are widely accepted as normal individuals that best define America as a whole, while uncivilized images of African-Americans and other minorities are widely perceived as the 'Other' or non-Americans who practice crime.