Media Text Inquiry Introductions

Text 1: https://www.nytimes.com/2017/11/11/opinion/sunday/sick-of-racism-literally.html

 If the text had been written in a different time or place or language or for a different audience, how and why might it differ?

In the opinion column, "We're Sick of Racism, Literally" the author depicts what life as a minority might be like as they are consistently getting discriminated against. The diction that is being used in the headline is a clear depiction of the type of ideology that will be evident in the column. Using diction such as "sick" invites an unwanted mood to the reader suggesting that this column will be asking for a shift in society or raising awareness on this negative issue. Had this have been written at a time when society was much more segregated this column would not have been popular and would stir up much controversy. The information that was used in the article will have much more bias as it will need to do much more persuasion, opposing to something written in the modern era. 

Text 2: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V7_xaOq_lQ0

Which social groups are marginalized, excluded, or silences within the text?

In Tomi Lahren's news report, "Trip to U.S.-Mexican Border", strong language is used to portray a negative message of the situation that is occurring on the borders with families being divided. The blame is heavily placed on one side of the issue and the other side is very much glamorized as being "humanitarian" and not in fault. This marginalizes the group with Mexican decent as it is generalizing them to all be "drug-dealers" and "criminals". This report introduces many examples of bias mainly using, bias by selection and bias by diction. As only one point of view is being shared, the other side of the story is rarely looked at or analyzed making this source heavily leaning towards one side on the political and social spectrum. 

Written Task Intro Paragraphs

1. If the text had been written in a different time or place or language or for a different audience, how and why might it differ?

In the article, "For Women Under 30, Most Occur Outside of Marriage", the authors portray their conservative ideology by the use negative connotations and derogatory diction to portray children outside of marriage or single-mothers as an activity for minorities and those in poverty. The article was written in a time where this is openly discussed. If the article were to have been written before first-wave feminism, it would be very carefully articulated. When giving this article a feminist reading, it can be considered to be anti-feminist as it is using bold and negative diction combined with source control bias to discourage women to be single-mothers. Before, first wave feminism this article would have been much more conservative than it already is. It would not include the ideas of women and be mainly male-dominated and their opinions of this phenomenon. This means that it would contain more bias by source control and bias by selection.

2. Which social groups are marginalized, excluded, or silences within the text?

In the article, "For Women Under 30, Most Occur Outside of Marriage", the authors portray their conservative ideology by the use negative connotations and derogatory diction to portray children outside of marriage or single-mothers as an activity for minorities and those in poverty. The article uses source control throughout as the authors only choose to represent single mothers whose story of raising a child out of wedlock was not successful. This introduces bias to the article and renders the readers a non-holistic view of the issue. This raises the concern of the perspective of different groups that were not represented and were quite important to the discussion. For example, single-fathers. This could really influence the way the text was written as it would create a more balanced discussion.