Indian Country: Telling a Story in a Digital Age
146
Indian Country: Telling a Story in a Digital Age
146eBook
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Overview
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9781628952827 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | Michigan State University Press |
| Publication date: | 01/01/2017 |
| Series: | American Indian Studies |
| Sold by: | Barnes & Noble |
| Format: | eBook |
| Pages: | 146 |
| File size: | 1 MB |
About the Author
Benjamin Rex LaPoe II is Assistant Professor of interactive storytelling in the School of Journalism and Broadcasting at Western Kentucky University. LaPoe is the newsletter editor for the Minorities and Communication division of AEJMC and advisor for the Multicultural Journalists student group at WKU.
Read an Excerpt
Indian Country
Telling A Story in a Digital Age
By Victoria L. LaPoe, Benjamin Rex LaPoe II
Michigan State University Press
Copyright © 2017 Victoria L. LaPoe and Benjamin Rex LaPoe IIAll rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-62895-282-7
CHAPTER 1
Native Storytelling
Communication existed in America long before Christopher Columbus arrived in 1492. "Inca, Aztec, and Maya all had elaborate systems of recording, transferring, and storing records, including the work of scribes who wrote on bark tablets" and stone carvings. Tribes in both the Northern and Southern Hemispheres used a complex maze of trails that spanned the continents for runners to disseminate messages and network with other tribes; Aztecs used a combination of color banners to communicate with mass audiences in highly populated areas. Another common medium, an oral tradition of storytelling, was popular among the tribes for distributing and preserving knowledge. Although many ways of life changed, to put it lightly, for American Indians post–European colonization, ritualistic Native storytelling changed little — one of the few pluralistic threads that helped those communities survive. Digital media may possibly be changing the social fabric as well as norms and routines of Native storytelling. Thus, this research will use norms and routines theory to inform and guide the study's research questions.
Native Storytelling and Digital Media
Traditionally, most Native communities used storytelling as the primary instrument for historical record-keeping. While there are some similarities among American Indian communities, each American Indian and his/her tribal community has its own unique story, which is why it was essential for the individual histories to be recorded. The stories contain lessons that helped individuals and families make sense of how they and the tribe fit into the larger collective world.
American Indians orally shared these authentic stories with their children and grandchildren — from one generation to the next. Authentic stories are defined as oral communication from people who are connected to a language through "heritage and expertise." Not telling these stories threatened a key part of the community's history.
Journalism is connected to Native storytelling through the ritualistic sharing of stories within American Indian communities. Carey posits that "a ritual view of communication is directed not toward the extension of messages in space but toward the maintenance of stories in time." This ritualistic view of communication aptly describes American Indian storytelling because there is a similar thread between both ritual and Native storytelling; a collective view of communication, which includes preservation of history, community, religion, and fellowship, fits both Native culture and ritual communication. Digital media present variables that may change and enhance the nature of ritualistic storytelling in American Indian communities.
Scholarly research addressing Native news and digital media is extremely sparse. However, research on mainstream media and digital platforms may provide insight into how digital media may or may not advance Native storytelling. In an examination of four convergent mainstream newsrooms, newspapers that are partnerships with television and web news organizations, print journalists had concerns that the immediacy of relaying information through digital platforms would outweigh effective storytelling. As expected, the print journalists noted that they went to school to produce ethical journalism — not to multitask uploading video and updating the web. Many of the journalists had a difficult time with the constant apprising of information digitally. Social media allow for the visibility of breaking news stories before the mainstream media have yet had a chance to report on them. With tragic events such as the 2012 Colorado theater shooting, which resulted in twelve people dead and fifty-eight injured, eyewitnesses turned to social media to give firsthand accounts and uploaded video on YouTube. Hashtags even alerted friends and family that those they knew were killed.
Through posts on Facebook and Twitter, social media users cover critical events that mainstream media chose to ignore; norms, routines, and gatekeeping are the primary contributors that determine what stories are covered. In 2011, a Twitter user unknowingly broadcast the military operation killing Osama bin Laden after the user tweeted about a helicopter hovering in the middle of the night. In 2009, the United States asked Twitter to delay a network upgrade so there was no downtime for Twitter users in Iran who wanted to protest the presidential election. During a natural disaster in Japan, Twitter users broadcast crisis messages faster than any professional news medium; tweets about the Japanese earthquake occurred within a minute and twenty seconds.
Native Connectivity and Community
American Indians with basic Internet connectivity have been able to spread their stories to millions online through social media. There are multiple Facebook and Twitter accounts tribes use to contact Native news organizations about specific Native causes. While not everyone has connectivity, the essence of the digital divide, facilities at schools and libraries help people connect and share their information.
In addition to the previously mentioned media forms, American Indian websites have increased since 1994. Sites include information on education, PowWows, events, language, business, and tribal and genealogy resources. Within the past five years, Native news organizations have added newscasts and podcasts to their sites and mobile applications to offer users the latest news from Indian Country.
While there has been an increase in Native information, a digital divide persists. Defined as "an unequal access to information technology based on income, race, ethnicity, gender, age, and geography," this divide cripples Native media and communication. Compared to the rest of the United States and other minority groups, American Indians have a lower broadband penetration. "Word of mouth," print, and radio are still the overall preferred forms of communication but are somewhat outdated in a highly digital world.
The digital divide specifically affects minorities and their advancement economically. Scholars argue that having technology and instruction on how to effectively use it available to women and people of color would help bridge this gap. Mobility of not only minorities but also young adults, smartphone users, and other demographics is beginning to narrow the digital divide. African Americans and English-speaking Latinos are as likely as whites to own any sort of mobile phone and are more likely to use their phone for a wider range of activities. With the growth of minorities in the United States and the growth of digital media, technology provides the opportunity to portray this nation in an accurate, diverse manner. Providing a more honest view digitally not only affects who gets news and who is heard, but also how the world views the United States.
Norms and Routines
As Berkowitz explains, the individual journalist does not typically work alone or invent his/her own rules on how she/he covers a story. What journalists consider the norm and/or routine in covering stories are embedded practices within newsroom culture. With time constraints and multiple news holes to fill, journalists do not always stray from what they do not understand or can't explain on the news deadline clock. Unfortunately, Native tribes often fall in this category, and coverage of Native people emerges only when there is a type of news frame journalists typically can understand outside of Native culture, such as conflict or crime.
To understand how the news results in its final published or aired form, scholars have studied the internal and external influences in producing news, including a journalists' routine. Shoemaker and Reese's model includes five "hierarchy of influence" levels: ideological, extramedia, organization, routine, and individual. In the center of this model is the individual journalist, influenced by all other factors. The relationship between the journalist and these factors define how he or she creates news content.
Journalists learn to see in certain ways that can then be covered through work routines in order to process materials. The judgment of "what is news" is considered sacred knowledge that differentiates journalists from other "common" people. The mainstream media do not have the same news coverage routines as diverse focused media organizations. Most journalists in mainstream news operations have not taken the time to understand the inner workings of minority communities, explaining, in part, why stereotypical mainstream news continues. Journalists are supposed to possess news values to be successful, but few can define these routine elements that consistently exclude minorities. News workers depend on what they perceive as newsworthy, and often the "who" and "what" do not include minority audiences.
Media organizations look to each other to confirm and validate decisions. While journalists evaluate one another these professionals do not invite criticism from the public or outside groups. Newspapers cater to their news audiences by being able to provide lengthier detailed content. Generally speaking, newspaper readers tend to be more educated compared to broadcast audiences. In contrast, local television journalists have the largest time and size constraints; these television journalists try to report stories that will fit into very short segments.
Patterns of media may be compared to tribal ownership of Native media. Ownership influences the news that media consumers receive. Researchers tend to shy away from the fact that news stories tend to mirror the policy preferences of media ownership groups; news organizations hire staff that fits their policy, give stories to people who will cover them the "policy-way," and edit stories in a manner to fit the policy.
Some journalists undermine their job as "watchdogs" when they elevate the newsworthiness status of elite sources. Journalists, in turn, become "lapdogs" — in part because of newsroom constraints — but this influences the type of coverage news consumers receive. Officials and business representatives oftentimes have greater access to news media than those with less power. Diminished resources force journalists to rely on official, or "elite," sound bites more often because journalists do not have as much time to search for other sources that may have a different interpretation. To some, official sources equal an accurate view of the truth. Official voices essentially set the barometer for how a community should act and feel about an issue, and often those who are ignored are women and people of color. For many reasons, most of these official sources tend to be disproportionately white.
Journalists rely on mostly white males as sources; thus, marginal groups become invisible. The media often choose sources based on that person's position and/or authority within the community, which leads consumers to view one race as dominant and the other as recessive or nonexistent. Consequently, minority groups distrust mainstream media and white officials and rely instead on more personal forms of communication for information, such as community organizations and churches.
Jha and Izard find that news coverage of American Indians included primarily white sources even within diverse communities. These racial findings are consistent with research from Hurricane Katrina and the Deepwater Horizon disaster. During Katrina, media showed visuals of whites as powerful and African Americans as negative, displaying whites as officials helping African American victims. Miller and Roberts conducted an open-ended survey that asked respondents the images they remembered from Katrina and compared the responses to media images of the hurricane. The most memorable content was associated with race and gender and was the same images that media repeatedly displayed.
Mainstream media have not consistently portrayed minority audiences within news stories. Historically, the mainstream media excluded minorities altogether, included minorities only when they were perceived as a threat to their "white" audiences, addressed minority groups when there was a conflict, and/or presented minorities through stereotypes. Simply mentioning race can negatively impact how nonminorities feel about the individuals mentioned in news stories, providing heightened pressure on how journalists report on a story covering a diverse audience. Therefore, the hope for the future is a more concerted effort to include multicultural voices within the news.
One answer to the lack of diversity within news sources may be found with digital media and community journalism. Kurpius posits that community or civic journalism counteracts the mass media focus on white, male, elite sources. When evaluating community reporters' news coverage, Kurpius found nonminority journalists progressed in including more diverse audiences within their stories and were able to incorporate more minority sources. Civic journalism engages those within the community who are seeking change and want to speak out about community topics — allowing for a greater understanding of overall communal values and issues. The goal of civic journalism is for reporters to speak with everyday citizens instead of the overreliance on elite officials that dominates mainstream coverage.
Instead of focusing on individuals or small communities like civic journalists, major news organizations search for sensationalized characters that will improve ratings. Media prioritize stories revolving around drama, conflict, and controversy. News directors determine what is newsworthy through a process called gatekeeping, a process of controlling what will air based on what they feel their viewers will watch. Widely viewed stories, regardless of accuracy or meaningfulness, translate into advertising dollars. Therefore, concentration on profit makes some people more vulnerable, including viewers watching, sources interviewed, advertisers, and journalists who are at times controlled by their ownership groups.
News Routines and Minority Audiences
The norms and routines of mainstream journalism contribute to misrepresentation of minority audiences and, specifically, American Indians. Mainstream news coverage often ignores social problems, covers through a conflict frame, and simplifies complex situations into stereotypes. In two trusted national papers, the New York Times and Los Angeles Times from 1999 to 2000, Seymour found that journalists placed terms that are normally acceptable, such as "American Indian," "tribe," and "reservation," out of context and thus used them in an offensive manner, for example, noting the Census Bureau records some "reservations as rancheras." Seymour writes, "Silly Indians. Why would they object to their national territory being likened to a cattle pen?," noting that the writer "fell into a self-made trap as it attempted to describe 4.1 million American Indians (as of the U.S. Census of 2000) as a single group."
Seymour argues that this was careless journalism instead of outright racism — essentially lack of knowledge about the community since it is not necessarily considered an important beat. The manner in which journalists reported on stories displayed little understanding or concern about Native identity and law, lumping all American Indians together. The news coverage the journalists produced perpetuated stereotypes and misrepresentation of the Native community to non-Native audiences.
Journalists, when faced with unknown territories, go into norms and routines mode to cover stories — including the use of historically negative stereotypes. The deployment of routine allows journalists to know what stories, sources, and frames they should incorporate within news to fit the standards of media success. Stereotypes reinforce images of a group and serve as mental shortcuts to easily understand a complicated matter — for example, the conflict frame typically positions minorities as dark villains that are threats to white ideologies.
Stereotyping is a "conventional, formulaic, and oversimplified conception, opinion, or image," a way to bring a large collective audience into agreement. New consumers have a structure system in their heads that serves as a schema. Individuals are confused, often ignoring the narrative if it is constructed in a manner that does not fit the preconceived schema. Consequently, the same stereotypes and stories are accepted and told over and over again within our society. It is cognitively efficient for non-Native news consumers to resort to stereotypical schemas when addressing American Indians.
(Continues...)
Excerpted from Indian Country by Victoria L. LaPoe, Benjamin Rex LaPoe II. Copyright © 2017 Victoria L. LaPoe and Benjamin Rex LaPoe II. Excerpted by permission of Michigan State University Press.
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