South Asian stereotypes in the Vancouver press | Asia Pacific Dispute Resolution

ID:	HARP-241
Title:	South Asian stereotypes in the Vancouver press
Source:	Ethnic & Racial Studies; Apr79, Vol. 2 Issue 2, p166, 24p
Parties:
Dispute Resolution Organ:
Year:	1979
Pages:	0
Author(s):
Keywords:	Canada, human rights, multi-culturalism, non-discrimination, ethnic minorities, civil and political rights, print media, media, minority rights
Abstract:	Newspapers provide people with much of what people use to make sense of their world. Lacking first-hand experience, people rely on the media to disseminate information on many issues confronting their society, especially those outside their immediate involvement. This places the media in a powerful ideological position, for those who determine contents of a newspaper are also shaping our reality. In selecting and displaying particular events and omitting others, they are setting the agenda – deciding which issues of the day will receive readers’ attention. In effect, the press structures what people will be thinking about, even though it may be somewhat less successful in telling people what to think. In addition, they provide concepts and imagery through which the events and phenomena found in the press will be understood . In this way newspapers provide intellectual limits to those ways in which the social problems they have defined are to be solved. It is therefore reasonable to suggest that an understanding of media presentation is necessary if one is to explain the way individuals conceive of their social environment. One of the most important areas in which this is so is urban race relations. For many individuals the newspapers and other mass media constitute the most important informational inputs which they have about those of different ethnic backgrounds. Alternative insights derived from interaction are difficult to achieve, for interaction between members of different ethnic groups is often severely limited. When it is frequent, such interaction is commonly restricted to a narrow range of situations, with the consequence that an accurate understanding of another’s ethnicity rarely materializes.
Secured:	False
Download Article:	harp-241.pdf