Indigenous Underrepresentation in Mainstream Media and how Social Media is Utilized to Increase Representation”

Slide 1: My presentation will deal with the topic on “Indigenous Underrepresentation in Mainstream Media and how Social Media is Utilized to Increase Representation”

Slide 2: Pierro et al. (2013) breaks down the mainstream media’s coverage of issues relating to Aboriginal people in Ontario. Between 2010-2013, the article checked every piece of news that came out of 171 print and online media sites in Ontario. This exercise was made possible by the use of search engines, focusing on keywords including Northern Ontario, Indigenous people, Aboriginal, and First Nations. All stories that captured these keywords were analyzed to discover how well the Aboriginal society in Ontario is represented.

Slide 3: Overall, controversial topics including the Attawapiskat housing crisis and the Northern Gateway Pipeline polarized public opinion, with both positive and negative coverage of important Aboriginal institutions and the federal government on both issues, according to the media. As a whole, 20 percent of the stories reviewed depicted Aboriginal people and concerns in a good light, 40 percent of the stories depicted Aboriginal people and topics in a neutral light, and 39 percent of the stories depicted Aboriginal people and topics in a bad light.

Slide 4: Following the findings, Pierro et al. (2013) feel that the mainstream media is very biased with regard to issues relating to the Aboriginal people. The article makes an argument that mainstream media negatively portrays Indigenous people in news presentation and other journalistic activities. The article is relevant to my essay topic because it gives a breakdown of how mainstream media in Ontario represents Aboriginal communities. The essay will help in developing my topic through focusing on the Ontario community and how news media continues to use stereotype to represent an entire community.

Slide 5: The free press has a responsibility to report on topics that the public needs to know about, rather than just those that the public wants to hear about. It is vital to recognize and appreciate the numerous positive examples of balanced and informed reporting about Aboriginal peoples that have been documented.

Slide 6: Legitimate Aboriginal rights violations, on the other hand, may be swept aside by ill-informed stereotypes (such as being unable to manage money) or by the unjust codification of inequitable opportunity (such as lower education funding) as a cultural deficit. The trend in negative reporting is likely to continue unabated.

Notes:As a result of the federal government’s assimilation and segregation efforts, tens of thousands of Indigenous Peoples were forcibly removed from their lands and transferred onto reservations or into permanent settlements across Canada (Harding, 2010). Because the land held the memory of their ancestors, Indigenous peoples’ connection to their ancestral lands served as the foundation for their identity as a People. Aside from evicting people from their houses, everything that distinguished them as individuals – their diverse cultural practices, languages, and religious beliefs – was disallowed, prohibited, or destroyed by the government. According to Murray (2009), the media continues to play on this bias. It sells stereotype of the Aboriginal people and related narratives. The danger that this does to the entire community is that it sells out the wrong picture of an entire people, causing more divide and increasing the likelihood of discrimination.

Slide 7:The topic for my essay, Indigenous Underrepresentation in Mainstream Media and how Social Media is Utilized to Increase Representation, will serve a number of purposes. First, it will highlight the underrepresentation of Indigenous people in mainstream media. Secondly, it will show how they are misrepresented wherever any form of representation is present. Thirdly, it will show Indigenous people are responding to the bias and poor representation through social media and other forms of independently produced Indigenous media. Social media and these other forms of independently produced indigenous media is changing the narrative by allowing Aboriginal people to present their own narrative to the world.

Notes: Therefore, Pierro et al. (2013) breaking down the mainstream media’s coverage of issues relating to Aboriginal is relevant to my essay because it will show patterns of how the Aboriginal narrative is taken, changed, and presented in mainstream media including journalism efforts and news presentation.

Slide 8: Discussion Questions

Why do we need to highlight the way Aboriginal people are represented in mainstream media in Canada?

Are there signs of change or can we expect the same stereotypical presentation of Indigenous people on mainstream media?

Slide 9: References

Harding, R. (2010). The Demonization of Aboriginal Child Welfare Authorities in the News. Canadian Journal of Communication, 35(1).

Murray, C. A. (2009). Designing monitoring to promote cultural diversification in TV. Canadian Journal of Communication, 34(4), 675.

Pierro, R., Barrera, J., Blackstock, C., Harding, R., McCue, D., & Metatawabin, M. (2013). Buried voices: Media coverage of Aboriginal issues in Ontario. Journalists for Human Rights, 2010-2013.