Book Description

"Instead of examining the impact of media on society, Tilted Mirrors explores the impact of society on media. How do communities affect the way media build different issue perspectives or frames? Introducing an unusual composite "Media Vector" score, the book adopts an innovative "community structure" approach, using modern national databases to link selected city characteristics and nationwide newspaper reporting on critical issues. Several media frame-building patterns emerge. The "Buffer Hypothesis" connects larger proportions of privileged groups "buffered" from economic uncertainty in cities to more favorable reporting on human rights claims or scientific advances (e.g., Anita Hill, physician-assisted suicide and embryonic stem cell research). Other frame-building patterns - Violated Buffer, Vulnerability, Protection and Stakeholder - also illuminate critical issues (e.g., banning smoking advertising to children, the Supreme Court stopping presidential vote counting in 2000, capital punishment, Patient's Bill of Rights, gun control, Arctic oil drilling, trying juveniles as adults, gays in the Boy Scouts, and those with HIV/AIDS). Positioned at the crossroads of communication/journalism, political science and sociology disciplines, Tilted Mirrors is a supplemental text for courses in mass media, media effects, communication or journalism research methods, political communication or sociology of communication."--BOOK JACKET.