Synopses & Reviews
Screening the Los Angeles 'Riots' explores the meanings one news organization found in the landmark events of 1992, as well as those made by fifteen groups of viewers in the events' aftermath. Combining ethnographic and experimental research, Darnell M. Hunt explores how race shapes both the construction of television news and viewers' understandings of it. In the process, he engages with longstanding debates about the power of television to shape our thoughts versus our ability to resist.
Review
"...Hunt's study will undoubtably become a definitive work on hegemony theory and the riots." Jane L. Twomey, Journal of Communication"...synthesizes important insights from British Cultural Studies, the sociology of race, social psychology, and ethnomethodology." Comunication Abstract"...a highly original, insightful, and essential piece of research." Contemporary Sociology"Darnell Hunt's noteworthy study presents an informed and detailed analysis of audience reaction to television news coverage of the civil rebellion in South Central L.A. that ultimately led to the death of 51 citizens, hundreds of injuries, and the destruction of more than a $1 billion in property." Dennis W. Mazzocco, Critical Sociology
Synopsis
Darnell M. Hunt explores how race shapes the construction of news and viewers' understandings of it, by examining televised coverage of the Los Angeles 'riots' and viewers' responses to it. A major contribution to the debates about the power of television and our power to resist it.
Description
Includes bibliographical references (p. 299-310) and index.
Table of Contents
List of figures; List of tables; Preface; 1. Introduction; Part I. Context and Text: 2. Media, race and resistance; 3. Establishing a meaningful benchmark: the KTTV text and its assumptions; Part II. Audience: 4. Stigmatized by association: Latino-raced informants and the KTTV text; 5. Ambivalent insiders: black-raced informants and the KTTV text; 6. Innocent bystanders: white-raced informants and the KTTV text; Part III. Analysis and Conclusions: 7. Raced ways of seeing; 8. Meaning-making and resistance; Postscript; Appendices; Notes; References; Index.