Femia’s musings on hegemony piqued my interest because they discussed the intellectual and moral leadership that underlies hegemony and infiltrates people’s mindsets, without them being aware of it. How does this unawareness shape the guns in schools debate that is so controversial and relevant right now? On a large scale, our country is deeply split into the political right and the left with very little middle ground. Hegemonical mindsets, derived from political leaders with power to make their voice be heard, pervade our debates, making people feel like they have to take side. Femia defines a state to be civil society and a political society, or hegemony armored by coercion. I interpreted this to mean that everyone who lives under some form of government is subject to some form of hegemony. Is voting a form of hegemony? Most people think voting is one of the most direct ways to exercise freedom but it’s the government, to an extent, that tells constituents to vote by labelling it as a powerful act.
Gamson differentiated between the audience and the reader, noting that calling people the audience squished them together into a mass of people who all thought the same. Calling people the reader noted their individuality and different perspectives. Oftentimes people in power (even journalists) think about the people their voice will reach as a faceless mass whom they must convince of something, whether that thing be to believe an idea or buy a product. Gamson’s piece also mentions the exploitation of journalists by their official, elite sources, who feed them propaganda. We must all use more conscious effort in how our daily routines, specifically how the information we consume, informs our mindsets or ‘frames’ relevant issues.
It’s bizarre to think about how people’s incredibly diverse experiences and resulting perspectives guide them to the binaries on issues. For example, regarding gun control, most people either want armed teachers or security guards in schools or want stricter laws in place regarding the accessibility of guns. From what we have heard from interviewing people, the reality is different. People seem to place themselves on one side of the issue but remain torn on what the best decision really is. The hegemonic binaries we create ideologically and politically split the ‘civil’ society (aka real people) up into groups pitted against eachother.
When framing "Guns in Schools" I have thought about what we have heard from our surveys, questions, interviews, journalists, etc. and distinguished what appear to be the diagnostic, prognostic and motivational frames that our current news/media use or at least what I have heard/interpreted from it:
Diagnostic: the problems the media identifies from guns in schools appear to be a multitude of things including: the loss of children, security of schools, the accessibility of guns, and a lack of mental health awareness especially for "troubled" children.
Prognostic: solutions stem from creating awareness of mental health, destigmatizing mental health, reducing the prevalence of violence in mass media, toys, games, etc., arming teachers, more security in schools, harsher gun laws and regulations, and more extensive background checks.
Motivational: the safety and innocence of children while they are at school seems to be one of the root causes for action.
I think above all the matter of guns is schools is really framed around the tragedy of losing children. From there, the issue branches out to guns, mental health, violence, media coverage, etc. While our country tends to function on a strict binary between the left and the right, liberal and conservative, democrat and republican, I think the issue of guns in school is interesting because while there is this polarization of beliefs on most of the matters that stem from guns in schools, the central framing being the tragic loss of children is common ground for both sides. This makes the matter very charged and complex because while most people can sympathize for the loss of children, the various ways the topic is otherwise framed (gun control, mental health, prevalence of violence) can cause tension, pushback, and ultimately continue to enforce a binary between the left and right.
Also as a side note, I really enjoyed reading the Gamson piece, "Media Images and the Social Construction of Reality" because it tied nicely into what we have been talking about recently. By this I mean, the monopolization and weaponization of media. He also writes about the importance and impressionability of images in the media. We should keep this in mind as we continue to edit our videos and understand the power we have of selecting footage, images, etc. in the quest to shape our stories.
Much of the narrative around Guns in Schools focuses on the creation of a story. Who was the shooter? Where did they obtain the weapons? How did the events of the shooting unfold? Why did they do it? In asking and answering these questions, the media, and by extension society as a whole, try to understand what took place and hopefully aim to use this knowledge in order to prevent further tragedy.
As “readers” who consume this media, it can be easy to construct an idea of what a “typical” school shooting looks like and this may even lead to perceptions that a mass shooting event in a school is much more likely to occur than in reality. Readers accept that this narrative created by the media is real, and they rarely contest what is being covered. In this barrage of information, knowledge can incite fear. Drawing from the ideas of Foucault, knowledge on the topic that is isolated to a consistent narrative constrains our thoughts on the issue. There is no space to change or reconstruct the story and this perpetuates a conversation without direction among members of the community. Without new information or creation of a new narrative, readers are told to accept a single story without question.
Much of the conversation being had on the issue is how we may be able to prevent further tragedy. I think it is fair to agree everyone wants to save the lives of children, but methods for preventing shootings vary greatly across different groups. One prevailing narrative is the creation of the “profile” of a school shooter. One tenet of structuralism is the creation of a binary. A structuralist would say that there are two types of people: shooters and non-shooters. While it is true that all people can be classified as either people who will never incite a school shooting and people who will, it is reductive to categorize people into these two groups. Seeking to categorize people as the kinds of people who will perpetuate violence in schools can harm those who are not actually at risk, while ignoring others who may actually be at risk. Trying to prevent by profiling can be detrimental. Another major narrative is the idea that “Guns Don't Kill People, People Kill People.” Because so much of the school shooting story focuses on the individual who committed the crime, it can be easy to focus on the individual rather than the institution. This focus upholds a system of widespread gun ownership which plays into the wider hegemony that exists in our society. Promoting gun control is much more challenging when this is the widespread message. In general, the way that we have conversations affects the actions that are taken.
I found the readings a lot to take in tonight. I chose to read in hopes to answer the question of ‘In what ways do these ideas uphold the status quo and prevent changes to the system? And why - who benefits from the status quo?’ For this question, I really analyzed the Ideology piece.
From this particular article, it’s easy to understand that the capitalists are the ones who benefit from the status quo, while workers are the those who suffer. (I think the author actually directly says something along these lines) The status quo is our current capitalist system today, it’s so ingrained in our society - there are many ways in which preventatives are put in place to stop any changes from this system. Page 2 quotes “Capitalist system is inherently unequal.” along with “ideologies are created to protect the capitalist system.” In the authors eyes, ideologies are key components in what prevents change in our society. Unless you’re wealthy, you don’t have much power. The wealthy continue to enforce capitalism through their power, which only makes them more powerful, and makes it harder to break free from itself. This article was particularly tough to read purely because it leaves a large sense of hopelessness after. To me, it just displays how much we do not have control over our lives, even if we want to say we do.
After tonights readings, I feel like there is much to think about and reflect on. To start, prior to tonight I had not thought about this idea of “framing”. However, now to the best of my understanding, framing is a technique/method that enables a reader to act and it has the ability to add meaning to different stories. Thus, in many ways the framing of stories is similar to engaged journalism. Engaged journalism is a specific journalistic technique in which the author will write a story in a way that enables the reader to act after. Thus, I suppose that engaged journalism in and of itself cannot really classify as “engaged journalism” without a specific frame. Snow and Benford talk about in their piece “Framing Processes and Social Movements” this idea of “collective action frames”. These are specific frames that focus on taking action. Thus, I feel as if it intersects with activist journalism.
Since we are focussed on the massive issue of guns in schools, I feel it is important to think about how this topic is framed in the media. I feel like since Columbine, the way that the media has reported about guns in school’s has changed massively. The frame was originally lacking as when these events started happening, nobody really knew why. Additionally, nobody could understand why. Because of this, the media was essentially in a frantic, chaotic frenzy, and therefore were not enabling their audiences to make change. Now however - and tragically - the media has had practice discussing and presenting these stories about guns in schools to the country. Like we talked about in class last week, the media essentially follows a protocol today when there is a massive shooting. They explain who it was, how they did it, etc. Additionally, the media has sparked a bigger conversation on gun control. We did not see this with the “original” school shooting in Columbine. Thus, I assume that the frame has changed. Because now, people of all ages, especially students like the ones we have seen in parkland are taking action. The #NeverAgain movement was sparked and walkouts and marches happened across the nation. This in part can be attributed to the frame of the way the media portrayed the events (including social media sites like Twitter and Facebook).
Furthermore, tonights readings reiterated the importance of taking into consideration a news source’s biases and how they are influence by companies that own them. The article “Media images and the Social Construction of Reality” by Gamson expressed how media should influence the public vs. how it is influencing the public. Gamson says that the media should promote citizenship, but instead it is currently just promoting apathy. Additionally, Gamson makes the important distinction between an audience and a reader. An audience is a generalization of a group of people, whereas a reader is an individual who comes into a situation with their own thoughts and beliefs. Thus, we must consider this thought when thinking about guns in schools and how that issue is interpreted by individuals. The media is currently failing miserably and because of new technology, the quality and diversity isn’t changing, but the production is.
In standard media coverage of school shootings, the pressure to be “breaking” often seems to overpower pressures and intentions to be completely accurate and respectful to the victims involved. Diagnostic frames are prevalent and usually feed the early coverage of shootings. Traditional media’s diagnostic frame tends to focus in on the shooter and what went wrong with them. Other diagnostic frames that are often later identified are lack of attention on mental health, accessibility of weapons, improper safety procedures, and inattention to warning signs.
The prognostic framing of school shootings is where immense polarization sets in. Finding a solution to the issue is so polarizing that most news outlets do not discuss concrete possible solutions at all. If they do discuss possible solutions, the coverage becomes inherently politically biased in the eyes of the viewer. As the Gamson piece emphasizes, media can end up promoting cynicism and apathy instead of action from citizens in coverage—especially with a topic that becomes as polarizing and as heated as gun control. In the eyes of the left, the solution is more gun control. In the eyes of the right, the solution is more attention on mental health of students—increased focus on noticing the “bad eggs.” These two solutions have become binaries that separate the right and left to an extreme.
Motivational frames did not start to be used in the coverage of these shootings until pretty recently with the Parkland shooting. By giving us bits of the perspective of the teenaged activists who are angry and fed up with the huge amounts of pain that school shootings have caused them as well as other students who have dealt with them, citizens finally begin to feel this fire as a result of hearing the voices of the students who have wronged by school shootings. Hearing their empowered voices inspires us as viewers to take action and work alongside them to make things better.
Clear from the Benford article, framing and shifts in framing lead to shifts in the public’s reaction to an event or type of event. Evident in the coverage of the Parkland shooting—where framing in all three of these areas seems to have been shifted (diagnostic frame being switched from the focus on what went wrong with the shooter to the issue that shootings are still happening at all and prognostic frame switched to visions of the students)—shifts in framing in coverage kept the event in the minds of Americans for much longer than most other school shootings.
The readings tonight were a lot to take in and contextualize; when addressing the issue of perspectives, especially how many perspectives there are when we are talking about guns in schools. Personally I at least am trying to be very ambivalent about my position and my project’s position in order to get the best information, but at the same time, there is still a frame to it. Diagnostic: guns in schools are seeming to increase and policy is slow to change; children are dying, fear and misconceptions are being spread, a political divide is increasing. Prognostic: increased focus on helping students before they become the threat of school shooters: anti-bullying programs, increased counseling, see-something-say-something programs; local gun restriction laws have also been put in place in a few states; student demonstrations. Motivational: children are the future of our nation, and if they cannot even feel safe in schools, what will we do next? This frame seems to not necessarily resonate, but echo in our culture where frustrations seem to be louder the more that school shootings happen and then the sentiments bounce around, but then eventually become silent. In interviews, there’s been an interesting expression of helplessness as the cycle continues and the public doesn’t seem to know what they can do to help. Media portrayals have kept up this illusion of hopelessness in their coverage by continuing to show weeping victims and a stoic shooter. The intent seems to be to unite, against this “other”, this evil who could only be capable of committing such an act because they are somehow not human. The everyday citizen does not necessarily seem to be empowered by this coverage, but there are still some who do rise up to demonstrate and push against this perceived inability to contribute; one example would be the Parkland demonstrations. In my opinion, there isn’t much empowerment at all to this coverage. It’s a very macabre stating of facts. The “natural” setting is set as thus; crying families, a question of “why” and “how”, and the face of the shooter, typically a young white man. The “contested” ideal is what Parkland started: angry students, direct calls on politicians, not mourning but grief where the public is more active and allowed to be frustrated. This “status quo” so to speak benefits gun holders, but it also extremely benefits the NRA, which has a great hand in Congress. They have been under little pressure, most of the blame going towards individual politicians when it has risen because it is easier and they are the ones to speak out at tragedies. This is another thing Parkland protests changed: pointing out the NRA as an “enemy” for young people. Contesting has thus raised more as well. The coverage does, for one part, provide a breadth of knowledge which we can use in debate, however; this debate has become more of a divide, I believe, wherein several important facts are left out: types of guns, how to differentiate between them, etc. This causes not only panic but misconception where gun holders and anti-gun citizens come to argue.
The story line behind guns in schools always seems to follow the same script of events. First, news media attempts to pull as many facts together to answer the question of “what” and then in the next few weeks the question of “why” is raised. The problem gets addressed through looking into an individual's past instead approaching the problem through looking at the larger forces at play. The shooter is always a white angry male, and the casualties suffered numerous. However, through our research we know that this rampage type school shooting is not the only type that occurs. So, why do we so often only see one narrative being reported regarding guns in schools, and how has it hindered the public?
According to Benford, “frames help to render events or occurrences meaningful and thereby function.” However, the way guns in school continuously gets framed contributes to a sense of numbness within our culture and an inability to address the issue beyond a few ways of thinking about it. Later on in Benford’s article he mentions that the “more inclusive and flexible” frames are, the more likely they will be to transform into “master frames.” While the term “master frame” was never followed by a definition, I believe Benford meant a fuller idea of the events. The more angles covering a story, the more comprehensive the understanding. According to Foucault, “knowledge and power” are “intertwined.” Therefore, not only is using one frame limiting to the audience, it also disenfranchises them to act. Gamson also uses the idea of frames in his article about media, routine and how it contributes to our reality. Gamson argues that the absence of different narratives in the American media leaves less room for discourse. Everyone believes guns in schools is a travesty that needs fixing. However, because we only tend to look at the solution in the polarized sense of either “more guns” or “no guns”, we have stopped the conversation on other solutions regarding school shootings.
Last night, our group conducted our dialogue with students from the Air Force Acadamy, UCCS, Pikes Peak Community College and CC. I saw firsthand what Femia described in terms of hegemonic mindsets and I think that is the way that the topic of guns in schools is framed. Hegemony reinforces polarization in the way in which internal biases and mindsets from individuals represent their overall societal positionality. We saw this especially with the student from the Air Force, as he felt as though he needed to represent the group he identified with and was very defensive about dissenting opinions. The way the topic of guns and schools is framed has to do with media coverage and direct reporting on the incident. We see an emphasis on the shooter instead of the survivors, and an almost obsession with these mass shooters. The students in our dialogue, regardless of their stance, emphasized their frustration with how politicized these mass school shootings become immediately afterwards, and that has to do directly with how they are framed. Prevailing ideas about Guns in Schools is advanced by the media, politicians, and every individual who tunes into the conversation as well as the ones that tune out. Because the issue has become so politicized, people feel the need to validate their own political beliefs through hegemony and refuse to compromise. Something we spoke about last night was that if there was a simple answer to this problem, someone would have figured it out by now. The answer to guns and schools is undoubtedly tricky and must be solved through compromise and humility; values that the American people aren’t best known for.
I think the issue of gun control is framed as trying to immediately find an answer. This manifests in a few ways. With the immediate coverage, there is a need to identify all of the facts from who the shooter was and why they did what they did. There is also a need to find the root cause to the problem, and usually this means breaking gun violence down to one factor. As a result I think this fuels the solution discussion around gun violence. This is usually present in the polarized debate between pro-gun advocates and gun control advocates. This then shows the motivations of both sides. Pro-gun advocates take the 2nd amendment, or argue that a good guy with a gun is sufficient.
The 'framing' also creates the conversation to be very reactive. We only freak out in the aftermath of a shooting— this changed somewhat after Parkland. Similar to conversations on privacy, we see to only care about or privacy rights until we know that our rights were breached. This also affects the methods and policies we put in place to prevent mass shootings. Gun violence policies are reactive in their nature; they hope stop a shooting from having mass results rather trying to address the potential causes affecting these events.
Furthermore, due to how the issue is framed by the media its life is short meaning it is cover for 3 weeks then falls out until another mass shooting. I think that the media seriously under covers a lot of other communal stories and experiences that could shed light on issue of gun violence in different ways, lengthening the conversation. And I think what we are hoping to do in this class is to transcend and work past this typical trend in media coverage of gun violence.
Michel Foucault’s work on the dynamic between power and knowledge really stood out to me from last night’s readings. In Gamson et al’s paper, they conclude by making the argument that the media “allows plenty of room for challengers such as social movements to offer competing constructions of reality and to find support for them from readers whose daily lives may lead them to construct meaning in ways that go beyond media imagery”. I took this to mean that, while the American media forms a flawed outlook on the reality of contemporary happenings. However, even if media’s subjects are framed in ways that are not entirely objective, the consumer is not necessarily bound to that outlook. Foucault posits that every individual is the “subject and object of his own knowledge”. Though they are each presented with many conflicting and potentially inaccurate ways of viewing the world around them, they still have the agency afforded to them by knowledgeability. Individuals can be informed about how to view the news and what they choose to accept as the truth.
This is certainly true in the context of guns in schools. As soon as a school shooting happens, American media consumers are instantly inundated with multiple different news sources coverage of the event. Each focuses on different aspects of the event and on the political atmosphere that contextualizes it. Watching Fox News’ coverage of an event will give a viewer an entirely different outlook than CNN. In short, each outlet chooses to frame the event, without explicitly acknowledging the biases inherent to framing. However, according to Foucault’s principles of knowledge and power, the viewer is not necessarily bound to any one of these methods of framing. If a consumer is knowledgeable about the media they are consuming, they have agency over their own understanding that they will take away from the event. Awareness translates into an individual’s power over the way that they will perceive the event and the issue as a whole. It is essential to the American understanding of guns in schools that every individual is educated on the subject and thus able to exert agency over what they glean from the news coverage in order to minimize the impact that framing can have.
There readings were a good extension on our discussion of Journalism v activism, objectivity, framing, and methodology. Reading the piece from the Niemen report about where Jouranalism ends and Activism starts had me continuing to reflect on how engaged journalism and activism relate. Rebecca Schneid's perspective makes sense to me - that just by raising the voices of those unheard, journalism acts as activism. However, I also understand the motivation for defining journalism and activism as distinctly separate, like all the journalists who spoke to our class did. Jenni Monet’s quote “As a marginalized writer or color, I can’t afford to be called an activist” makes sense to me as much as Rebecca Schneids. I think that it should be up to journalists to describe themselves as activists or not. I think that if journalism is created with an intended outcome beyond getting the truth out there, it is inarguably activism, and it is still journalism, but that journalism doesn’t have to be activism. I think that high ground news’ aims to help marginalized communities prioritize problems and strengthen connections could be interpreted as activism in and of itself, but that it is also valid to separate it from activism because the journalists don’t go in with an agenda beyond this, there’s no pre fabricated story, and the journalists aren’t out to promote a specific or pre determined ideology or narrative. I think it’s okay for the lines to be a bit blurry between journalism and activism, because in many ways journalism is what you make of it. The article on objectivity helped me develop this mindset. Since perspective will always be subjective, to some people the mere act of telling the narrative of a community might be considered activism and to some it won’t. I understand the idea that issues such as racial segregation or LGBTQ rights don’t have two sides, but however wrong I think it is and despite it not being an equal balance, there ARE people on the other side. Thinking about this leads me to think that there are just so many ways of understanding journalism and it’s purpose. Due to the impossible nature of objectivity, I think understandings and interpretations of what activism is, what journalism is, and how they intersect will continue to not be uniform, and that arguments for both sides or valid. I suppose this means I haven’t quite figured out where I stand. Thinking about the line between journalism and activism connects to the framing of an issue. I chose to write about the framing of the issue of guns and schools to continue thinking about where activism begins - Diagnostic - It seems like the problem is usually identified as one of two things - either access to guns/lack of gun control or mental health. These views divide the left and right and I think they prevent us from getting to the point and collaborating the problem solve. Another way to describe this binary is that the problem can be identified as the individual who committed the crime, or as the situation and society that enabled, or to some caused, them to do it. Prognostic - directly stemming from the most common diagnoses, usually gun control/reform or increased support for mental health are commonly advocated for as solutions to stop the problem from occurring (up the stream). Downstream solutions such as arming teachers and strengthening protocol are also commonly identified. Motivational - I think that articles about school violence aren't motivating enough. They are often sensationalist and driven by our desire to know more about the shooter. I think the main force for motivation in coverage would morality - children are dying. I do not think this is extremely effective. -Since there is some discrepancy in how school shooting are reported, is choosing one way over the other a form of activism?
In what ways do these ideas uphold the status quo and prevent changes to the system? And why – who benefits from the status quo? (Ideology, Hegemony)
The United States operates under many hegemonic forces that are often invisible to the naked eye. Due to their entrenchment in our society and overall ideals, many of these unspoken American values are rarely questioned or problematized by the public. One of these “invisible” forces is the lovely concept of capitalism. By oddly picking and choosing political and economic theory from the big thinkers of earlier centuries, such as the Wealth of Nations, our concept of capitalism is a bit tainted to say the least. When Adam Smith spoke of the “invisible hand” that would guide and moderate capitalism, he was not actually proposing that we allow deregulated markets to rule our everyday life. However, this concept has become colloquially tied to our current economic system in the United States. From the rising cost of health insurance to the widening wealth gap, there has started to be some anti-capitalistic and anti-neoliberal (deregulation, privatization, etc) sentiment growing throughout the American continent.
Within the context of guns in the United States, it would be ignorant to not discuss how the ideology of capitalism is so deeply tied to this issue. Gamson notes that “If all we have learned is that reality construction takes place in a commercialized space that promotes a generalized ‘ feel good about capitalism,’ this does not take us very far” (pp. 380). He additionally writes how capitalism has become “uncontested” and that if “they conflate democracy with capitalism or matter-of-factly state that the United States is attempting to nurture and spread democracy abroad, they express images from this realm” (pp. 382). The hegemonic reality of capitalism within the United States conscious is shocking and must be critically examined.
So, how are guns so related to capitalism anyways? As we have noted, guns are inherently a political issue due to the dominance of the political sphere that is committed to either side of this issue. Although the economics of guns in the United States is a far larger issue than I have time to discuss, the reality is that many politicians remain funded by National Rifle Association (NRA). Many of these politicians have helped maintain the status quo by demanding “thoughts and prayers” rather than policy change or other concrete measures of addressing this issue. Senator John McCain, a very powerful republican presence during his time, received $7.7 million towards his reelection campaigns and other political fundraising over his lifetime. Does this seem like a fair and just democracy untied from the bonds of capitalism? It does not to me.
Due to our political system allowing corporate control over our political system (due to Citizens United), it becomes difficult to foresee any radical change on this issue. When the NRA is able to fund and control the political side of this, through the exchange of legal monetary support, there seems to be an ever growing issue as to how this system can change. The NRA controls who is in office, what they do in office, and how they benefit from our political system. The NRA also has an extremely wide membership (they claim to have around 5 million members) which can be mobilized to achieve their overarching economic and political goals. Capitalism is almost synonymous with the United States, however, it almost seems that we’ve forgotten how connected capitalism is to politics is to many polarizing issues today.
Last night, we held our dialogue with eight local students. I’m trying to process all that was shared at our discussion, and how these students viewed the framing of guns in schools. We talked about the media, and came into an interesting discussion related to the coverage and framing of topics -- recently, there’s been a movement by some media groups to no longer say the name or show the photo of the shooter. On the one hand, this takes away from the ability to glorify the person (our participants were shocked by how many shooters had referenced Columbine since it happened). On the other hand, does it also take away responsibility from the shooter? Does it protect them? What’s better? Could a nameless, faceless shooter still be idolized (perhaps even because of the mysteriousness behind them)? There is a lot of power in names, and a lot of power is granted to a person by naming that. That power may not be good or bad, but it’s definitely an interesting concept. It also appears that this cover-up of the shooter is desired by some readers, but viewed as flawed/missing information others. In choosing who is named and who isn’t, the media decides to give sway and power to different entities. It is almost always the people who are named who are more likely to be remembered, to be viewed as part of the movement/event, etc. It also strips them of their privacy, and may jeopardize them for the rest of their lives without their immediate permission. Our discussion didn’t come to a conclusion, nor have I been able to fully form a thought about it, but I think that the main principle of who is the focus of a shooting, whose name is read, and which people are remembered play a huge role in the framing of guns in schools coverage.
In our readings from the other night Mantsios illustrated how news coverage can be exclusionary to those who are not in a certain class or wealthy. Ritzer in “Cultural aspects of capitalist society” explains how ideology is used, “to hide the contradiction that are at the heart of the capitalist system,” and “to hide contradictions that lead to social change,” (Ritzer). By upholding the status quo we are reinforcing social and economic inequalities. In addition, this only benefit those who are in the wealthier class that do not have to experience inequality in their day-to-day lives. Ritzer asserts that it is these ideologies that protect capitalism and the inequalities that come with it, “Portraying inequality as equality and unfreedom as freedom,” (Ritzer). By protecting and justifying these longstanding institutions in the name of capitalism we are unknowingly reinforcing inequality. This in turn, I believe, gives power to those who have money in terms of coverage. Ritzer explains this advantage, “money gives us our value,”. Those who have power get to dictate the stories and not focus on issue impacting others in our society. This continues to reinforce social and economic differences.
In light of this exclusionary nature of new coverage, it is important to understand how influential and impactful media is. Gamson illustrates this in his article, “Media images and the social construction of reality,”. Gamson states, “We walk around with media-generation images of the world, using them to construct meaning about political and social issues,” (Gamson). The media shapes how we inform ourselves and shape our opinions. If the media continually covers only certain things, they reinforce inequalities.
In terms of our class, I believe the ideas about Guns in Schools are advanced in a way that sometimes leaves out everyone’s narratives. When we learned about the Parkland shooting and the survivor's efforts to bring attention to the lack of movement by policy makers, we learned how marginalized groups don’t get the opportunity to voice their story. The Parkland survivors had a platform on which they could voice their story and anger, and not everyone gets this platform despite similar experience. The media’s decision to not focus on certain groups again reinforces social and economic differences and contributes to inequality.
I have seen the topic of guns in schools framed as an epidemic spreading across our country and capable of targeting us when we least expect it. We have come across the term "epidemic" in previous readings, and I think it is very relevant when we consider how the topic is framed. School shootings are viewed as some strange mutation of society that we can't quite understand, though we really do try to understand through long journalistic pieces dissecting the shooters' lives. In the US, we would likely try to solve a spreading epidemic not through addressing larger societal concerns regarding health and well-being, but rather through new medication. This may lead to another epidemic - such as the opioid crisis we are witnessing now. In the guns in schools debate, we are reluctant to tackle the larger societal concerns around students' health and well-being, and where their guns come from. Instead, it seems more straightforward to solve it through more guns in schools. This greatly resonates with our current culture, in which we don't seek to address issues downstream, rather we try to place a "band-aid", some quick fix solution on the issue in hopes that it doesn't make it worse. It's The motivational frame seems fairly straight forward - people should act or their children might be killed. It's an issue that resonates strongly because we don't see school shootings as a natural occurrence - one incident is one too many.
In thinking about how knowledge about the topic and how it governs/constrains our behavior and thoughts, and how this contributes to the status quo, I find myself wanting to know more about the actors behind this issue. On one side, I see the NRA and other pro-gun groups, and on the other, I can't think of many prominent organizations. I found Gramsci's thoughts regarding civil society and how elites control public opinion through intellectual or moral leadership very interesting. However, I don't really know who is benefitting from this status quo besides the gun lobby. What gives me hope is that in the digital age, with social media, readers have a greater capability to challenge what they are reading, as pointed out by Gamson et al. Hopefully we can channel feelings around this issue away from frustration and misdirected anger toward political activism and participation.
Femia’s musings on hegemony piqued my interest because they discussed the intellectual and moral leadership that underlies hegemony and infiltrates people’s mindsets, without them being aware of it. How does this unawareness shape the guns in schools debate that is so controversial and relevant right now? On a large scale, our country is deeply split into the political right and the left with very little middle ground. Hegemonical mindsets, derived from political leaders with power to make their voice be heard, pervade our debates, making people feel like they have to take side. Femia defines a state to be civil society and a political society, or hegemony armored by coercion. I interpreted this to mean that everyone who lives under some form of government is subject to some form of hegemony. Is voting a form of hegemony? Most people think voting is one of the most direct ways to exercise freedom but it’s the government, to an extent, that tells constituents to vote by labelling it as a powerful act.
ReplyDeleteGamson differentiated between the audience and the reader, noting that calling people the audience squished them together into a mass of people who all thought the same. Calling people the reader noted their individuality and different perspectives. Oftentimes people in power (even journalists) think about the people their voice will reach as a faceless mass whom they must convince of something, whether that thing be to believe an idea or buy a product. Gamson’s piece also mentions the exploitation of journalists by their official, elite sources, who feed them propaganda. We must all use more conscious effort in how our daily routines, specifically how the information we consume, informs our mindsets or ‘frames’ relevant issues.
It’s bizarre to think about how people’s incredibly diverse experiences and resulting perspectives guide them to the binaries on issues. For example, regarding gun control, most people either want armed teachers or security guards in schools or want stricter laws in place regarding the accessibility of guns. From what we have heard from interviewing people, the reality is different. People seem to place themselves on one side of the issue but remain torn on what the best decision really is. The hegemonic binaries we create ideologically and politically split the ‘civil’ society (aka real people) up into groups pitted against eachother.
When framing "Guns in Schools" I have thought about what we have heard from our surveys, questions, interviews, journalists, etc. and distinguished what appear to be the diagnostic, prognostic and motivational frames that our current news/media use or at least what I have heard/interpreted from it:
ReplyDeleteDiagnostic: the problems the media identifies from guns in schools appear to be a multitude of things including: the loss of children, security of schools, the accessibility of guns, and a lack of mental health awareness especially for "troubled" children.
Prognostic: solutions stem from creating awareness of mental health, destigmatizing mental health, reducing the prevalence of violence in mass media, toys, games, etc., arming teachers, more security in schools, harsher gun laws and regulations, and more extensive background checks.
Motivational: the safety and innocence of children while they are at school seems to be one of the root causes for action.
I think above all the matter of guns is schools is really framed around the tragedy of losing children. From there, the issue branches out to guns, mental health, violence, media coverage, etc. While our country tends to function on a strict binary between the left and the right, liberal and conservative, democrat and republican, I think the issue of guns in school is interesting because while there is this polarization of beliefs on most of the matters that stem from guns in schools, the central framing being the tragic loss of children is common ground for both sides. This makes the matter very charged and complex because while most people can sympathize for the loss of children, the various ways the topic is otherwise framed (gun control, mental health, prevalence of violence) can cause tension, pushback, and ultimately continue to enforce a binary between the left and right.
Also as a side note, I really enjoyed reading the Gamson piece, "Media Images and the Social Construction of Reality" because it tied nicely into what we have been talking about recently. By this I mean, the monopolization and weaponization of media. He also writes about the importance and impressionability of images in the media. We should keep this in mind as we continue to edit our videos and understand the power we have of selecting footage, images, etc. in the quest to shape our stories.
Much of the narrative around Guns in Schools focuses on the creation of a story. Who was the shooter? Where did they obtain the weapons? How did the events of the shooting unfold? Why did they do it? In asking and answering these questions, the media, and by extension society as a whole, try to understand what took place and hopefully aim to use this knowledge in order to prevent further tragedy.
ReplyDeleteAs “readers” who consume this media, it can be easy to construct an idea of what a “typical” school shooting looks like and this may even lead to perceptions that a mass shooting event in a school is much more likely to occur than in reality. Readers accept that this narrative created by the media is real, and they rarely contest what is being covered. In this barrage of information, knowledge can incite fear. Drawing from the ideas of Foucault, knowledge on the topic that is isolated to a consistent narrative constrains our thoughts on the issue. There is no space to change or reconstruct the story and this perpetuates a conversation without direction among members of the community. Without new information or creation of a new narrative, readers are told to accept a single story without question.
Much of the conversation being had on the issue is how we may be able to prevent further tragedy. I think it is fair to agree everyone wants to save the lives of children, but methods for preventing shootings vary greatly across different groups. One prevailing narrative is the creation of the “profile” of a school shooter. One tenet of structuralism is the creation of a binary. A structuralist would say that there are two types of people: shooters and non-shooters. While it is true that all people can be classified as either people who will never incite a school shooting and people who will, it is reductive to categorize people into these two groups. Seeking to categorize people as the kinds of people who will perpetuate violence in schools can harm those who are not actually at risk, while ignoring others who may actually be at risk. Trying to prevent by profiling can be detrimental. Another major narrative is the idea that “Guns Don't Kill People, People Kill People.” Because so much of the school shooting story focuses on the individual who committed the crime, it can be easy to focus on the individual rather than the institution. This focus upholds a system of widespread gun ownership which plays into the wider hegemony that exists in our society. Promoting gun control is much more challenging when this is the widespread message. In general, the way that we have conversations affects the actions that are taken.
I found the readings a lot to take in tonight. I chose to read in hopes to answer the question of ‘In what ways do these ideas uphold the status quo and prevent changes to the system? And why - who benefits from the status quo?’ For this question, I really analyzed the Ideology piece.
ReplyDeleteFrom this particular article, it’s easy to understand that the capitalists are the ones who benefit from the status quo, while workers are the those who suffer. (I think the author actually directly says something along these lines) The status quo is our current capitalist system today, it’s so ingrained in our society - there are many ways in which preventatives are put in place to stop any changes from this system. Page 2 quotes “Capitalist system is inherently unequal.” along with “ideologies are created to protect the capitalist system.” In the authors eyes, ideologies are key components in what prevents change in our society. Unless you’re wealthy, you don’t have much power. The wealthy continue to enforce capitalism through their power, which only makes them more powerful, and makes it harder to break free from itself. This article was particularly tough to read purely because it leaves a large sense of hopelessness after. To me, it just displays how much we do not have control over our lives, even if we want to say we do.
After tonights readings, I feel like there is much to think about and reflect on. To start, prior to tonight I had not thought about this idea of “framing”. However, now to the best of my understanding, framing is a technique/method that enables a reader to act and it has the ability to add meaning to different stories. Thus, in many ways the framing of stories is similar to engaged journalism. Engaged journalism is a specific journalistic technique in which the author will write a story in a way that enables the reader to act after. Thus, I suppose that engaged journalism in and of itself cannot really classify as “engaged journalism” without a specific frame. Snow and Benford talk about in their piece “Framing Processes and Social Movements” this idea of “collective action frames”. These are specific frames that focus on taking action. Thus, I feel as if it intersects with activist journalism.
ReplyDeleteSince we are focussed on the massive issue of guns in schools, I feel it is important to think about how this topic is framed in the media. I feel like since Columbine, the way that the media has reported about guns in school’s has changed massively. The frame was originally lacking as when these events started happening, nobody really knew why. Additionally, nobody could understand why. Because of this, the media was essentially in a frantic, chaotic frenzy, and therefore were not enabling their audiences to make change. Now however - and tragically - the media has had practice discussing and presenting these stories about guns in schools to the country. Like we talked about in class last week, the media essentially follows a protocol today when there is a massive shooting. They explain who it was, how they did it, etc. Additionally, the media has sparked a bigger conversation on gun control. We did not see this with the “original” school shooting in Columbine. Thus, I assume that the frame has changed. Because now, people of all ages, especially students like the ones we have seen in parkland are taking action. The #NeverAgain movement was sparked and walkouts and marches happened across the nation. This in part can be attributed to the frame of the way the media portrayed the events (including social media sites like Twitter and Facebook).
Furthermore, tonights readings reiterated the importance of taking into consideration a news source’s biases and how they are influence by companies that own them. The article “Media images and the Social Construction of Reality” by Gamson expressed how media should influence the public vs. how it is influencing the public. Gamson says that the media should promote citizenship, but instead it is currently just promoting apathy. Additionally, Gamson makes the important distinction between an audience and a reader. An audience is a generalization of a group of people, whereas a reader is an individual who comes into a situation with their own thoughts and beliefs. Thus, we must consider this thought when thinking about guns in schools and how that issue is interpreted by individuals. The media is currently failing miserably and because of new technology, the quality and diversity isn’t changing, but the production is.
In standard media coverage of school shootings, the pressure to be “breaking” often seems to overpower pressures and intentions to be completely accurate and respectful to the victims involved. Diagnostic frames are prevalent and usually feed the early coverage of shootings. Traditional media’s diagnostic frame tends to focus in on the shooter and what went wrong with them. Other diagnostic frames that are often later identified are lack of attention on mental health, accessibility of weapons, improper safety procedures, and inattention to warning signs.
ReplyDeleteThe prognostic framing of school shootings is where immense polarization sets in. Finding a solution to the issue is so polarizing that most news outlets do not discuss concrete possible solutions at all. If they do discuss possible solutions, the coverage becomes inherently politically biased in the eyes of the viewer. As the Gamson piece emphasizes, media can end up promoting cynicism and apathy instead of action from citizens in coverage—especially with a topic that becomes as polarizing and as heated as gun control. In the eyes of the left, the solution is more gun control. In the eyes of the right, the solution is more attention on mental health of students—increased focus on noticing the “bad eggs.” These two solutions have become binaries that separate the right and left to an extreme.
Motivational frames did not start to be used in the coverage of these shootings until pretty recently with the Parkland shooting. By giving us bits of the perspective of the teenaged activists who are angry and fed up with the huge amounts of pain that school shootings have caused them as well as other students who have dealt with them, citizens finally begin to feel this fire as a result of hearing the voices of the students who have wronged by school shootings. Hearing their empowered voices inspires us as viewers to take action and work alongside them to make things better.
Clear from the Benford article, framing and shifts in framing lead to shifts in the public’s reaction to an event or type of event. Evident in the coverage of the Parkland shooting—where framing in all three of these areas seems to have been shifted (diagnostic frame being switched from the focus on what went wrong with the shooter to the issue that shootings are still happening at all and prognostic frame switched to visions of the students)—shifts in framing in coverage kept the event in the minds of Americans for much longer than most other school shootings.
The readings tonight were a lot to take in and contextualize; when addressing the issue of perspectives, especially how many perspectives there are when we are talking about guns in schools. Personally I at least am trying to be very ambivalent about my position and my project’s position in order to get the best information, but at the same time, there is still a frame to it.
ReplyDeleteDiagnostic: guns in schools are seeming to increase and policy is slow to change; children are dying, fear and misconceptions are being spread, a political divide is increasing.
Prognostic: increased focus on helping students before they become the threat of school shooters: anti-bullying programs, increased counseling, see-something-say-something programs; local gun restriction laws have also been put in place in a few states; student demonstrations.
Motivational: children are the future of our nation, and if they cannot even feel safe in schools, what will we do next?
This frame seems to not necessarily resonate, but echo in our culture where frustrations seem to be louder the more that school shootings happen and then the sentiments bounce around, but then eventually become silent. In interviews, there’s been an interesting expression of helplessness as the cycle continues and the public doesn’t seem to know what they can do to help. Media portrayals have kept up this illusion of hopelessness in their coverage by continuing to show weeping victims and a stoic shooter. The intent seems to be to unite, against this “other”, this evil who could only be capable of committing such an act because they are somehow not human. The everyday citizen does not necessarily seem to be empowered by this coverage, but there are still some who do rise up to demonstrate and push against this perceived inability to contribute; one example would be the Parkland demonstrations. In my opinion, there isn’t much empowerment at all to this coverage. It’s a very macabre stating of facts. The “natural” setting is set as thus; crying families, a question of “why” and “how”, and the face of the shooter, typically a young white man. The “contested” ideal is what Parkland started: angry students, direct calls on politicians, not mourning but grief where the public is more active and allowed to be frustrated. This “status quo” so to speak benefits gun holders, but it also extremely benefits the NRA, which has a great hand in Congress. They have been under little pressure, most of the blame going towards individual politicians when it has risen because it is easier and they are the ones to speak out at tragedies. This is another thing Parkland protests changed: pointing out the NRA as an “enemy” for young people. Contesting has thus raised more as well. The coverage does, for one part, provide a breadth of knowledge which we can use in debate, however; this debate has become more of a divide, I believe, wherein several important facts are left out: types of guns, how to differentiate between them, etc. This causes not only panic but misconception where gun holders and anti-gun citizens come to argue.
The story line behind guns in schools always seems to follow the same script of events. First, news media attempts to pull as many facts together to answer the question of “what” and then in the next few weeks the question of “why” is raised. The problem gets addressed through looking into an individual's past instead approaching the problem through looking at the larger forces at play. The shooter is always a white angry male, and the casualties suffered numerous. However, through our research we know that this rampage type school shooting is not the only type that occurs. So, why do we so often only see one narrative being reported regarding guns in schools, and how has it hindered the public?
ReplyDeleteAccording to Benford, “frames help to render events or occurrences meaningful and thereby function.” However, the way guns in school continuously gets framed contributes to a sense of numbness within our culture and an inability to address the issue beyond a few ways of thinking about it. Later on in Benford’s article he mentions that the “more inclusive and flexible” frames are, the more likely they will be to transform into “master frames.” While the term “master frame” was never followed by a definition, I believe Benford meant a fuller idea of the events. The more angles covering a story, the more comprehensive the understanding. According to Foucault, “knowledge and power” are “intertwined.” Therefore, not only is using one frame limiting to the audience, it also disenfranchises them to act. Gamson also uses the idea of frames in his article about media, routine and how it contributes to our reality. Gamson argues that the absence of different narratives in the American media leaves less room for discourse. Everyone believes guns in schools is a travesty that needs fixing. However, because we only tend to look at the solution in the polarized sense of either “more guns” or “no guns”, we have stopped the conversation on other solutions regarding school shootings.
Last night, our group conducted our dialogue with students from the Air Force Acadamy, UCCS, Pikes Peak Community College and CC. I saw firsthand what Femia described in terms of hegemonic mindsets and I think that is the way that the topic of guns in schools is framed. Hegemony reinforces polarization in the way in which internal biases and mindsets from individuals represent their overall societal positionality. We saw this especially with the student from the Air Force, as he felt as though he needed to represent the group he identified with and was very defensive about dissenting opinions. The way the topic of guns and schools is framed has to do with media coverage and direct reporting on the incident. We see an emphasis on the shooter instead of the survivors, and an almost obsession with these mass shooters. The students in our dialogue, regardless of their stance, emphasized their frustration with how politicized these mass school shootings become immediately afterwards, and that has to do directly with how they are framed. Prevailing ideas about Guns in Schools is advanced by the media, politicians, and every individual who tunes into the conversation as well as the ones that tune out. Because the issue has become so politicized, people feel the need to validate their own political beliefs through hegemony and refuse to compromise. Something we spoke about last night was that if there was a simple answer to this problem, someone would have figured it out by now. The answer to guns and schools is undoubtedly tricky and must be solved through compromise and humility; values that the American people aren’t best known for.
ReplyDeleteI think the issue of gun control is framed as trying to immediately find an answer. This manifests in a few ways. With the immediate coverage, there is a need to identify all of the facts from who the shooter was and why they did what they did. There is also a need to find the root cause to the problem, and usually this means breaking gun violence down to one factor. As a result I think this fuels the solution discussion around gun violence. This is usually present in the polarized debate between pro-gun advocates and gun control advocates. This then shows the motivations of both sides. Pro-gun advocates take the 2nd amendment, or argue that a good guy with a gun is sufficient.
ReplyDeleteThe 'framing' also creates the conversation to be very reactive. We only freak out in the aftermath of a shooting— this changed somewhat after Parkland. Similar to conversations on privacy, we see to only care about or privacy rights until we know that our rights were breached. This also affects the methods and policies we put in place to prevent mass shootings. Gun violence policies are reactive in their nature; they hope stop a shooting from having mass results rather trying to address the potential causes affecting these events.
Furthermore, due to how the issue is framed by the media its life is short meaning it is cover for 3 weeks then falls out until another mass shooting. I think that the media seriously under covers a lot of other communal stories and experiences that could shed light on issue of gun violence in different ways, lengthening the conversation. And I think what we are hoping to do in this class is to transcend and work past this typical trend in media coverage of gun violence.
Michel Foucault’s work on the dynamic between power and knowledge really stood out to me from last night’s readings. In Gamson et al’s paper, they conclude by making the argument that the media “allows plenty of room for challengers such as social movements to offer competing constructions of reality and to find support for them from readers whose daily lives may lead them to construct meaning in ways that go beyond media imagery”. I took this to mean that, while the American media forms a flawed outlook on the reality of contemporary happenings. However, even if media’s subjects are framed in ways that are not entirely objective, the consumer is not necessarily bound to that outlook. Foucault posits that every individual is the “subject and object of his own knowledge”. Though they are each presented with many conflicting and potentially inaccurate ways of viewing the world around them, they still have the agency afforded to them by knowledgeability. Individuals can be informed about how to view the news and what they choose to accept as the truth.
ReplyDeleteThis is certainly true in the context of guns in schools. As soon as a school shooting happens, American media consumers are instantly inundated with multiple different news sources coverage of the event. Each focuses on different aspects of the event and on the political atmosphere that contextualizes it. Watching Fox News’ coverage of an event will give a viewer an entirely different outlook than CNN. In short, each outlet chooses to frame the event, without explicitly acknowledging the biases inherent to framing. However, according to Foucault’s principles of knowledge and power, the viewer is not necessarily bound to any one of these methods of framing. If a consumer is knowledgeable about the media they are consuming, they have agency over their own understanding that they will take away from the event. Awareness translates into an individual’s power over the way that they will perceive the event and the issue as a whole. It is essential to the American understanding of guns in schools that every individual is educated on the subject and thus able to exert agency over what they glean from the news coverage in order to minimize the impact that framing can have.
There readings were a good extension on our discussion of Journalism v activism, objectivity, framing, and methodology. Reading the piece from the Niemen report about where Jouranalism ends and Activism starts had me continuing to reflect on how engaged journalism and activism relate. Rebecca Schneid's perspective makes sense to me - that just by raising the voices of those unheard, journalism acts as activism. However, I also understand the motivation for defining journalism and activism as distinctly separate, like all the journalists who spoke to our class did. Jenni Monet’s quote “As a marginalized writer or color, I can’t afford to be called an activist” makes sense to me as much as Rebecca Schneids. I think that it should be up to journalists to describe themselves as activists or not.
ReplyDeleteI think that if journalism is created with an intended outcome beyond getting the truth out there, it is inarguably activism, and it is still journalism, but that journalism doesn’t have to be activism. I think that high ground news’ aims to help marginalized communities prioritize problems and strengthen connections could be interpreted as activism in and of itself, but that it is also valid to separate it from activism because the journalists don’t go in with an agenda beyond this, there’s no pre fabricated story, and the journalists aren’t out to promote a specific or pre determined ideology or narrative. I think it’s okay for the lines to be a bit blurry between journalism and activism, because in many ways journalism is what you make of it. The article on objectivity helped me develop this mindset. Since perspective will always be subjective, to some people the mere act of telling the narrative of a community might be considered activism and to some it won’t. I understand the idea that issues such as racial segregation or LGBTQ rights don’t have two sides, but however wrong I think it is and despite it not being an equal balance, there ARE people on the other side. Thinking about this leads me to think that there are just so many ways of understanding journalism and it’s purpose. Due to the impossible nature of objectivity, I think understandings and interpretations of what activism is, what journalism is, and how they intersect will continue to not be uniform, and that arguments for both sides or valid. I suppose this means I haven’t quite figured out where I stand.
Thinking about the line between journalism and activism connects to the framing of an issue. I chose to write about the framing of the issue of guns and schools to continue thinking about where activism begins -
Diagnostic - It seems like the problem is usually identified as one of two things - either access to guns/lack of gun control or mental health. These views divide the left and right and I think they prevent us from getting to the point and collaborating the problem solve. Another way to describe this binary is that the problem can be identified as the individual who committed the crime, or as the situation and society that enabled, or to some caused, them to do it.
Prognostic - directly stemming from the most common diagnoses, usually gun control/reform or increased support for mental health are commonly advocated for as solutions to stop the problem from occurring (up the stream). Downstream solutions such as arming teachers and strengthening protocol are also commonly identified.
Motivational - I think that articles about school violence aren't motivating enough. They are often sensationalist and driven by our desire to know more about the shooter. I think the main force for motivation in coverage would morality - children are dying. I do not think this is extremely effective.
-Since there is some discrepancy in how school shooting are reported, is choosing one way over the other a form of activism?
I did some of the wrong readings for this post! I’m sorry
DeleteW3D3 - Narratives/Hegemony - Isabella McShea
ReplyDeleteIn what ways do these ideas uphold the status quo and prevent changes to the system? And why – who benefits from the status quo? (Ideology, Hegemony)
The United States operates under many hegemonic forces that are often invisible to the naked eye. Due to their entrenchment in our society and overall ideals, many of these unspoken American values are rarely questioned or problematized by the public. One of these “invisible” forces is the lovely concept of capitalism. By oddly picking and choosing political and economic theory from the big thinkers of earlier centuries, such as the Wealth of Nations, our concept of capitalism is a bit tainted to say the least. When Adam Smith spoke of the “invisible hand” that would guide and moderate capitalism, he was not actually proposing that we allow deregulated markets to rule our everyday life. However, this concept has become colloquially tied to our current economic system in the United States. From the rising cost of health insurance to the widening wealth gap, there has started to be some anti-capitalistic and anti-neoliberal (deregulation, privatization, etc) sentiment growing throughout the American continent.
Within the context of guns in the United States, it would be ignorant to not discuss how the ideology of capitalism is so deeply tied to this issue. Gamson notes that “If all we have learned is that reality construction takes place in a commercialized space that promotes a generalized ‘ feel good about capitalism,’ this does not take us very far” (pp. 380). He additionally writes how capitalism has become “uncontested” and that if “they conflate democracy with capitalism or matter-of-factly state that the United States is attempting to nurture and spread democracy abroad, they express images from this realm” (pp. 382). The hegemonic reality of capitalism within the United States conscious is shocking and must be critically examined.
So, how are guns so related to capitalism anyways? As we have noted, guns are inherently a political issue due to the dominance of the political sphere that is committed to either side of this issue. Although the economics of guns in the United States is a far larger issue than I have time to discuss, the reality is that many politicians remain funded by National Rifle Association (NRA). Many of these politicians have helped maintain the status quo by demanding “thoughts and prayers” rather than policy change or other concrete measures of addressing this issue. Senator John McCain, a very powerful republican presence during his time, received $7.7 million towards his reelection campaigns and other political fundraising over his lifetime. Does this seem like a fair and just democracy untied from the bonds of capitalism? It does not to me.
Due to our political system allowing corporate control over our political system (due to Citizens United), it becomes difficult to foresee any radical change on this issue. When the NRA is able to fund and control the political side of this, through the exchange of legal monetary support, there seems to be an ever growing issue as to how this system can change. The NRA controls who is in office, what they do in office, and how they benefit from our political system. The NRA also has an extremely wide membership (they claim to have around 5 million members) which can be mobilized to achieve their overarching economic and political goals. Capitalism is almost synonymous with the United States, however, it almost seems that we’ve forgotten how connected capitalism is to politics is to many polarizing issues today.
Sources: https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2017/10/04/opinion/thoughts-prayers-nra-funding-senators.html
Last night, we held our dialogue with eight local students. I’m trying to process all that was shared at our discussion, and how these students viewed the framing of guns in schools. We talked about the media, and came into an interesting discussion related to the coverage and framing of topics -- recently, there’s been a movement by some media groups to no longer say the name or show the photo of the shooter. On the one hand, this takes away from the ability to glorify the person (our participants were shocked by how many shooters had referenced Columbine since it happened). On the other hand, does it also take away responsibility from the shooter? Does it protect them? What’s better? Could a nameless, faceless shooter still be idolized (perhaps even because of the mysteriousness behind them)? There is a lot of power in names, and a lot of power is granted to a person by naming that. That power may not be good or bad, but it’s definitely an interesting concept. It also appears that this cover-up of the shooter is desired by some readers, but viewed as flawed/missing information others. In choosing who is named and who isn’t, the media decides to give sway and power to different entities. It is almost always the people who are named who are more likely to be remembered, to be viewed as part of the movement/event, etc. It also strips them of their privacy, and may jeopardize them for the rest of their lives without their immediate permission. Our discussion didn’t come to a conclusion, nor have I been able to fully form a thought about it, but I think that the main principle of who is the focus of a shooting, whose name is read, and which people are remembered play a huge role in the framing of guns in schools coverage.
ReplyDelete
ReplyDeleteIn our readings from the other night Mantsios illustrated how news coverage can be exclusionary to those who are not in a certain class or wealthy. Ritzer in “Cultural aspects of capitalist society” explains how ideology is used, “to hide the contradiction that are at the heart of the capitalist system,” and “to hide contradictions that lead to social change,” (Ritzer). By upholding the status quo we are reinforcing social and economic inequalities. In addition, this only benefit those who are in the wealthier class that do not have to experience inequality in their day-to-day lives. Ritzer asserts that it is these ideologies that protect capitalism and the inequalities that come with it, “Portraying inequality as equality and unfreedom as freedom,” (Ritzer). By protecting and justifying these longstanding institutions in the name of capitalism we are unknowingly reinforcing inequality. This in turn, I believe, gives power to those who have money in terms of coverage. Ritzer explains this advantage, “money gives us our value,”. Those who have power get to dictate the stories and not focus on issue impacting others in our society. This continues to reinforce social and economic differences.
In light of this exclusionary nature of new coverage, it is important to understand how influential and impactful media is. Gamson illustrates this in his article, “Media images and the social construction of reality,”. Gamson states, “We walk around with media-generation images of the world, using them to construct meaning about political and social issues,” (Gamson). The media shapes how we inform ourselves and shape our opinions. If the media continually covers only certain things, they reinforce inequalities.
In terms of our class, I believe the ideas about Guns in Schools are advanced in a way that sometimes leaves out everyone’s narratives. When we learned about the Parkland shooting and the survivor's efforts to bring attention to the lack of movement by policy makers, we learned how marginalized groups don’t get the opportunity to voice their story. The Parkland survivors had a platform on which they could voice their story and anger, and not everyone gets this platform despite similar experience. The media’s decision to not focus on certain groups again reinforces social and economic differences and contributes to inequality.
I have seen the topic of guns in schools framed as an epidemic spreading across our country and capable of targeting us when we least expect it. We have come across the term "epidemic" in previous readings, and I think it is very relevant when we consider how the topic is framed. School shootings are viewed as some strange mutation of society that we can't quite understand, though we really do try to understand through long journalistic pieces dissecting the shooters' lives. In the US, we would likely try to solve a spreading epidemic not through addressing larger societal concerns regarding health and well-being, but rather through new medication. This may lead to another epidemic - such as the opioid crisis we are witnessing now. In the guns in schools debate, we are reluctant to tackle the larger societal concerns around students' health and well-being, and where their guns come from. Instead, it seems more straightforward to solve it through more guns in schools. This greatly resonates with our current culture, in which we don't seek to address issues downstream, rather we try to place a "band-aid", some quick fix solution on the issue in hopes that it doesn't make it worse. It's The motivational frame seems fairly straight forward - people should act or their children might be killed. It's an issue that resonates strongly because we don't see school shootings as a natural occurrence - one incident is one too many.
ReplyDeleteIn thinking about how knowledge about the topic and how it governs/constrains our behavior and thoughts, and how this contributes to the status quo, I find myself wanting to know more about the actors behind this issue. On one side, I see the NRA and other pro-gun groups, and on the other, I can't think of many prominent organizations. I found Gramsci's thoughts regarding civil society and how elites control public opinion through intellectual or moral leadership very interesting. However, I don't really know who is benefitting from this status quo besides the gun lobby. What gives me hope is that in the digital age, with social media, readers have a greater capability to challenge what they are reading, as pointed out by Gamson et al. Hopefully we can channel feelings around this issue away from frustration and misdirected anger toward political activism and participation.