Content area
Abstract
In response to debates in the literature concerning the power of media to influence and the ability of viewers to resist, this study examines how 15 groups of viewers--five "Latino," five "black" and five "white"--make sense of the same media text. Local television news coverage of the 1992 Los Angeles "riots" assumes center stage in this case study. "Race" was a recurring theme in the discourses surrounding these events, but race remains an understudied area in the mass media field. Likewise, within sociology, few studies have focused on the role that mass media play in the formation and reproduction of racial subjectivity. This study pairs ethnographic methods with quasi-experimental ones in order to explore how discussion with important others frames the interpretation of a media text and shapes racial subjectivity.
Findings suggest that "raced" ways of seeing constitute an important component of the media encounter. Group discussions served as a forum for informants to "do-being Latino," "do-being black," or "do-being white"--to negotiate positions from which to make sense of the text and affirm their own subjectivities. These positions produced varying degrees and styles of opposition toward textual assumptions, suggesting that resistance to media is not a unidimensional phenomenon.
