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Framing Canada's aboriginal peoples: A comparative analysis of indigenous and mainstream television news

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Abstract

While much of the scholarship on media representations of Aboriginal peoples in Canada has focused on newspaper accounts, this study examines the national television news discourse. A comparative news frames analysis contrasts content from the three mainstream English-language television networks-Global Television, The Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC) and CTV-with stories of the same issues and events that aired on the Aboriginal Peoples Television Network (APTN). The analysis reveals frames associated with longstanding colonial stereotypes of Indigenous people found in newspapers are also prevalent in television news, while frames of Aboriginal context occur at a much lower rate. APTN stories do contain some stereotypic frames but with a greater tendency to include frames of Aboriginal context.
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FRAMING CANADA'S ABORIGINAL PEOPLES: A COMPARATIVE ANALYSIS OF INDIGENOUS AND MAINSTREAM TELEVISI...
Clark, Brad, DComm
The Canadian Journal of Native Studies; 2014; 34, 2; CBCA Complete
pg. 41
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... The territorial intentions shaped political framing of Indigenous peoples by the DIA (later INAC/Crown-Indigenous affairs), which in turn provided the racialized stereotypes and tropes perpetuated by government officials (Clark, 2014;Environics Institute for Survey Research, 2016;Fisher, 1980;Francoeur, 2018;Mudde, 2018). Territorial acquisition legitimated by tropes or stereotypes of racial inferiority justified measures to remove Indigenous territorial claims in favour of settler society and white virtue (Carter, 1990;Harris, 1993). ...
... My analysis of these media platforms revealed public confusion, concern, and bias towards the IRSSA and TRC process. Recurring negative stereotypes and tropes emerge in the sources framing Indigenous leadership, people, and communities involved as depraved, inferior, and resistant to progress (Clark, 2014;Environics Institute for Survey Research, 2016;Francoeur, 2018). The recurrence of these pre-existing stereotypes is problematic as stereotypes come with material and immaterial consequences for those implicated in the stereotypes (Smith, 2009). ...
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