Media Framing during the Civil Rights Movement
Students identify an event that has occurred since 1945 in relation to the struggle for civil rights in America, and using the text analysis tool, Voyant, write an essay that analyses the media's framing of that event.
Overview
Early in the semester students will examine a variety of news articles regarding the murder of Emmett Till, whose death and subsequent media coverage was a major catalyst for the civil rights movement. Using this small sample, students will identify in class the various versions of the media’s accounting of this event. There are also a number of academic articles contemporary and historical that look at the media’s coverage of Till’s murder, which students will have access to. This will be the initial introduction to the text mining/analysis assignment I’ve laid out in the assignment prompt.
For the longer essay (4-5 pages), students will choose an event that occurred since 1945 in relation to the struggle for civil rights in America. They will identify four historical newspaper articles about that event--ideally from a variety of media sources (black, white, regional, national, liberal, conservative, etc.)--and utilize Voyant for a close reading of the texts.
For the longer essay (4-5 pages), students will choose an event that occurred since 1945 in relation to the struggle for civil rights in America. They will identify four historical newspaper articles about that event--ideally from a variety of media sources (black, white, regional, national, liberal, conservative, etc.)--and utilize Voyant for a close reading of the texts.
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HST317 Civil Rights Movement, Fall 2018
Notes
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Outcome summary
Students were challenged in three ways on this assignment:
1. Finding historical newspaper articles
2. Converting .pdf files into a doc format compatible with Voyant
3. Interpreting data on Voyant
Because of these challenges, most students were only able to offer a surface-level analysis of their findings. I received many emails the night before the assignment was due from students who a) couldn't find sources or b) couldn't convert their .pdf news articles into Word docs.
In the future, I will offer more in-class instruction with sample data sets, more in-class instruction on using digital databases to find historical newspapers, and require that students find their 4 news stories at least a week before the essay itself is due.