Criminology Emergency Remote Learning - Media Literacy #3

This entry will address some of the issues that you'll need for your Highway of Tears blog post. We start this section of the course off with Media Literacy. I placed three documents in the Criminology Teams site (access through your school district Office 365 account). For this activity, please review Mass Media Theories & Crime. Also, please review page 32-33 of the text (in the pdf it's page 68-69/694)  Media &Culture: Mass Communication in a Digital Age which deals with developing a media literate critical perspective (see picture below). You should also spend some time looking at various Communication theories from University of Twente (specifically: Agenda Setting, Priming, Framing, Cultivation, Medium, and Uses and Gratifications).

I would like you to try and understand how media reports crime and try to take a theoretical perspective on what you've viewed so far in the course. What crimes the media choose to cover and how they cover those crimes can influence the public’s perception of crime. From the Canadian Resource Center for Victims of Crime...Editors and assignment editors make complex decisions about what crime stories they will cover (or not) and what the headline will be. Journalists and reporters, in partnership with their assignment desks and producers decide what information about those crimes they will include or leave out, what experts they may go to for input, what quotes from that expert they will include, and where in the story these facts and quotes appear.


The way in which the news is brought, the frame in which the news is presented, is also a choice made by journalists. So, a frame refers to the way media and media gatekeepers organize and present the events and issues they cover, and the way audiences interpret what they are provided. Frames influence the perception of the news of the audience, this form of agenda-setting not only tells what to think about, but also how to think about it, so the media can't tell us what to think but it can tell us what to think about:



Like I mentioned in the previous post:

Media are constructions - Media products are created by individuals who make conscious and unconscious choices about what to include, what to leave out and how to present what is included. These decisions are based on the creators’ own point of view, which will have been shaped by their opinions, assumptions and biases – as well as media they have been exposed to. As a result of this, media products are never entirely accurate reflections of the real world – even the most objective documentary filmmaker has to decide what footage to use and what to cut, as well as where to put the camera – but we instinctively view many media products as direct representations of what is real...

So, I would like you to watch the 48 Hours Mystery episode on the Highway of Tears. From CBS:

Since 1969, at least 18 women have gone missing or have been murdered along Canada's infamous Highway 16. Locals call it "The Highway of Tears." The Royal Canadian Mounted Police's Highway of Tears task force, Project E-PANA, consists of 13 homicide investigations and five missing peoples investigations. 

Watch the episode and then and compare it to other forms of coverage (On the blog below...Vice, Al Jazeera, or How Stuff Works or the CBC's Missing and Murdered website).

Should this have been the documentary?

For some more recent coverage check out the CBC Virtual Reality documentary on Ramona Wilson and the Highway of Tears...
 

or Vice TV's Searchers: The Highway of Tears


or Al Jazeera...


or How Stuff Works on the Highway of Tears


or if you get VICELAND as a television channel there is a great show called WOMAN and there is an episode on murdered and missing Aboriginal women; here's a preview:

Highway of Tears from Natanael Johansson on Vimeo.

And of course don't forget the REDress project

You have some questions you need to work on:

1. What main story do you think Investigative Reporters Bob Friel and Peter Van Zant wanted to tell? How can you infer that? How much of the episode focused on the actual missing women from the Highway of Tears?
2. Why did the show focus on Madison Scott first, Loren Leslie next and then the victims along the Highway of Tears afterwards? 
3. What audience do reality crime shows appeal to & why do you think so (think demographics - age or gender or social class or occupation - and Psychographics - personal attitudes and values like security or status or caring or exploration/growth) What can Uses and Gratification Theory do to help explain the audience for True Crime stories? What techniques did the editors and storytellers of the 48 Hours Mystery show use to get you invested in the story of the episode?
4. What "values" does the 48 Hours Mystery on the Highway of Tears communicate to its audience? Why do you think the producers and editors framed the story the way that they did?

FYI: The province of British Columbia has a higher number of missing and murdered indigenous women and girls than any other province or territory in Canada. British Columbia accounts for 160 cases, 28% of NWAC’s (Native Women’s Association of Canada) total database of 582 and is followed by Alberta with 93 cases, 16% of the total. NWAC has found that only 53% of murder cases involving indigenous women and girls have led to charges of homicide.This is dramatically different from the national clearance rate for homicides in Canada, which was last reported as 84%. (From Inter-American Commission on Human Rights Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women in British Columbia, Canada). Some websites to help with your questions:

Time Magazine (article) "Murder Shows—The New Soap Operas for Women?" and "Why We Are Drawn to True Crime Shows?"

Washington Post (article) "My Favorite Murder’ and the growing acceptance of true-crime entertainment" and the My Favorite Murder Instagram site
Entertainment Weekly (article) "Confessions of a Court TV Addict"
New York Times (article) "Is True Crime as Entertainment Morally Defensible?"
Globe and Mail (article) "Our addiction to true crime has a human cost"
CBS News This morning (article) "Why women are fueling the popularity of true crime podcasts"
The Guardian (article) "Serial thrillers: why true crime is popular culture's most wanted"
Quartz (article) How “true crime” went from guilty pleasure to high culture
The Atlantic (article) The New True Crime
Vulture (article) "The Ethical Dilemma of Highbrow True Crime"...from the article

Network news magazine shows like Dateline and 48 Hours are somber and melodramatic, often literally starting voice-overs on their true-crime episodes with variations of “it was a dark and stormy night.” They trade in archetypes — the perfect father, the sweet girl with big dreams, the divorcee looking for a second chance — and stick to a predetermined narrative of the case they’re focusing on, unconcerned about accusations of bias. They are sentimental and yet utterly graphic, clinical in their depiction of brutal crimes.

Consuming Television Crime Drama: A Uses and Gratifications Approach

TV Insider (article) Why Viewers Love True-Crime Shows
Psychology Today (article) The Guilty Pleasure of True Crime TV True crime TV is addictive to viewers.
Martinis & Murder podcast (Oxygen)
Oxygen True Crime TV Channel
Investigation Discovery True Crime TV Channel
Real Clear Life (article) The Current State of True Crime TV
Ad Age (article) You Are What You Watch, Market Data Suggests
What Your Taste in TV Says About You (interactive web)
Viacom (media company!) What's Most Important to Young Audiences
Viacom (media company!) Gen Z How Well do you Know Your Teen Audiences? (quiz)
CBC news (article) Highway of Tears murders probed by CBS '48 hours'
CBS 48 Hours Mystery "The Texas Killing Fields"...From Bustle

"The Texas Killing Fields are part of a 50-mile stretch that runs along Interstate 45, between Houston and the Island city of Galveston, Texas, dubbed the “highway to hell.” There have been 30 bodies found in this haunted place since the early ‘70s" - This show aired the previous fall and again in the summer before the Highway of Tears was aired (on Nov 17, 2012)

AND...If you would like some academic reading check out "Theorizing Media and Crime" which is chapter one of Media and Crime written by Yvonne Jewkes.

OR you could check out the video on Agenda Setting and Framing to help with question #4 above

 AND I loved the show the Newsroom...more on it when we look at the portrayal of women in crime media...but here's a discussion on what is newsworthy