Assignment: Riot vs. Revelry: News Bias Through Visual Media

Full assignment/download available here: http://pubs.lib.umn.edu/tmq/vol4/iss1/6/

Course: Broadcast News

“During a six-month period in late 2014 to early 2015, two events occurred in the Midwest of the United States that led to mass public disturbances. This teaching exercise examines visual media coverage of two distinct types of public disturbance: disturbances that are sometimes framed as “riots” while similar disturbances are framed as “revelry.”

The disturbances that occurred in Ferguson, Missouri (after the shooting of Michael Brown in late 2014 with primarily black protesters) were labeled “Riots” by the mainstream media such as ABC, NBC and CBS, while the disturbances that occurred in Columbus, Ohio (following the Ohio State football national championship in early 2015 with primarily white participants) were labeled “Revelry.” Both included large numbers of protestors, arson, destruction of property, and gunfire.

The visual record of these two events presented on news sites show photographs that are difficult to distinguish. The focus of this class project is to present visual images from each disturbance to see if students can identify and classify the photos relating to the legal definition of a riot. Based on the news photos published, test subjects generally could not distinguish the two events, yet the media framed the two events very differently.

This exercise challenges students to look at the visual record for these two different disturbances and rate them on items relating to the definition of “riot” (without knowing the context or background prior to the disturbance). After the “reveal” that one disturbance was from Ferguson and one was the aftermath of a sporting event, several possible assignments emerge:

1) a class discussion, or

2) a paper, or

3) a combination of class discussion to provide multiple viewpoints, followed by a paper that requires the student to distill the discussion and formulate an argument, followed (perhaps if time permits) by another discussion to present students’ viewpoints.” (Joel Geske, Iowa State University)

Keywords: analysis, journalism, race, theory and practice