Thursday, May 15 - Friday, May 16. 2025

Thursday's schedule is DCBA and Friday's schedule is ABCD. I will be on our 17th and final Mount Saint Helens trip and Ms. McDonald will be here to work with you over the next two days. 

B Block Criminology - Today we'll try to understand how media reports crime and try to take a theoretical perspective on what we've viewed so far in the course. Media outlets choose what they want to discuss. This agenda setting creates a reality that affects the way people think and act...how? What crimes the media choose to cover and how they cover those crimes can influence the public’s perception 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, Framing 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.  Episodic framing occurs when a story focuses on isolated details or specifics rather than looking broadly at a whole issue. Thematic framing takes a broad look at an issue and skips numbers or details. It looks at how the issue has changed over a long period of time and what has led to it. Episodic frames may create more sympathy, while a thematic frame may leave the reader or viewer emotionally disconnected and less sympathetic.

Try to answer the following:

1. Think of three examples of traditional or new media. What are the advantages of each type of media? What are the disadvantages?
2. How does traditional media cover crime news and how has the Internet affected the delivery of crime news?
3. How does citizen journalism use social media to increase coverage of crime news?
4. Do you believe that new media are more successful in its coverage of crime news than traditional forms? Why or why not?

To help with the questions...

Breaking News Consumer’s Handbook: Crime Edition

Crime Reporting: Last Week Tonight with John Oliver (*Warning Potty Mouth and Adult Themes so Watch with Care)

You'll get some handouts to help as well... they look like this

After a bit, we'll 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. 

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)

So we'll not only watch the episode, we'll 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.


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 (Is it about Madison Scott? Loren Leslie? Cody Legebokoff? Colleen MacMillen?  Pamela Darlington? Gale Weys? Bobby Jack Fowler? Ramona Wilson?) How can you infer that? How much of the episode focused on the actual missing women from the Highway of Tears? (Look at the Media Smarts article Media Portrayals of Missing and Murdered Aboriginal Women) compare that to the Gloria Steinem Woman episode and/or “Highway of Tears” film by Natanael Johansson
2. Why did the show focus on Madison Scott first, Loren Leslie next and then the victims along the Highway of Tears afterwards? (Look at the article NEWSWORTHY” VICTIMS? Exploring differences in Canadian local press coverage of missing/murdered Aboriginal and White women along with the NPR article What We Know (And Don't Know) About 'Missing White Women Syndrome' or the New Yorker article The Long American History of “Missing White Woman Syndrome") 
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? Compare that to the Gloria Steinem Woman episode and/or “Highway of Tears” film by Natanael Johansson
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? Compare that to the Gloria Steinem Woman episode and/or “Highway of Tears” film by Natanael Johansson

Maybe you could compare the CBS 48 Hours Mystery with the CBC / APTN show Taken: Highway of Tears

Some websites to help with your questions:

The Tyee: Idle No More’s Energizers

Carrier Sekani: Highway of Tears

The Canadian Encyclopedia: Highway of Tears

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)

5 Questions Students Should Ask About Media

Reporting in Indigenous Communities

And of course don't forget the REDress project

A Block Physical Geography - For those of you not joining us, Today we'll be working on an activity called “Sunlight and the Seasons” ("Solar energy and the reason for seasons"). After you have finished this activity you need to complete questions from your Geosystems Core textbook. If there's time we'll see what Bill Nye has to say about seasons. Below you'll find what the rotation of the Earth on its axis -giving us seasons-look like and mean for us?

Don't forget that every day we are going to start by looking at the synoptic forecast along with weather maps.

Envrionment Canada: Weather Office Courtenay

You have whatever time is left on Friday to finish the Weather package work:

1. Why is stratospheric ozone (O3) so important? Describe the effects created by increases in ultraviolet light reaching the surface. (Geo Core p. 20-21)
2. Summarize the ozone predicament and the present trends, and any treaties that intend to protect the ozone layer. (Geo Core p. 20-21)
3. Why are anthropogenic gases more significant to human health than are those produced from natural sources? (page 24 Geosystems Core text) *Remember* Prevalence and Persistence
4. How are sulphur impurities in fossil fuels related to the formation of acid in the atmosphere and acid deposition on the land? (pages 24-25 Geosystems Core text)
5. Summarize the commitments Canada has made to improve air quality. (page 25 Geosystems Core text)
6. List several types of surfaces and their albedo values. What determines the reflectivity of a surface? (p. 37 in Geosystems Core)
7. Define the energy concepts of: Absorption; Diffuse Radiation; Conduction; Convection (p.35 in Geosystems Core)
8. What are the similarities and differences between an actual green-house and the gaseous atmospheric greenhouse? Why is Earth's greenhouse changing? (pages 38-39 in Geosystems Core text)
9. Generalize the pattern of global net radiation. How might this pattern drive the atmospheric weather machine? (pages 10-11, 40, 42-43 in Geosystems Core text)
10. Explain the effect of altitude on air temperature. Why is air at higher altitudes lower in temperature? Why does it feel cooler standing in shadows at higher altitudes than at lower altitudes? (page 46 in Geosystems Core text)
11. Explain the difference between marine and continental temperatures. Give geographical examples of each from the text: Canada, United States and Norway, and Russia. (pages 47-49 in Geosystems Core text)
12. Describe and explain the extreme temperature range experienced in north– central Siberia between January and July. (page 53 in the Geosystems Core text)

Just consider Siberia this past December (2023)

versus Siberia last June (2023)

Siberia tends to see large monthly and yearly temperature fluctuations, but the last few decades have seen a strong warming trend. “Siberia is one of the fastest warming regions on the planet with hot extremes increasing in intensity,” Omar Baddour, chief of climate monitoring and policy services at the World Meteorological Organization

To help with Questions 1 and 2 check these videos out:

My Mount Saint Helens Fit...