Colonialism and the media are intrinsically intertwined, helping create what we know as Canada, and the rest of the world today. When I first think of the media, I immediately think of television and movies, and how these forms of communication shape my view of the world. But, the media goes far beyond these forms and it can be used in many ways beyond promoting a product during the commercial break. The articles I will be discussing prove that the media was, and still is, perpetuating a hegemonic view of society that enables colonialism. To better understand the role the media plays in colonialism, I looked to the historic examples offered in Loomba’s work, Colonialism/Postcolonialsm. In these chapters, the idea of creating the image of
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Approximately 100 women have gone missing from Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside and the media coverage around these events continues to perpetuate the hegemonic ideology of the Other, meaning, those undeserving of our attention (Jiwani and Young 896). The news coverage of these events focused on the fact that these women came from the Downtown Eastside, were sex workers, and were Aboriginal, meaning they were deviant, and somehow deserving of violence (Jiwani and Young 899). Their hyper “visibility stems from their race, class, and gender”, but they were simultaneously invisible from the “lack of attention paid to their concerns by the police…and in the erasure of their histories as colonialized others” (Jiwani and Young 899). Once again, the media and society have deemed that these women were unworthy of our attention based these women being categorized as the Other. What’s also interesting to me, is that one of the alternative, yet still hegemonic, frameworks offered, was relating the missing women to our mothers, daughters or sisters, and therefore acceptable and worthy of our attention (Jiwani and Young 903). This framework however, still maintains the idea that there are only two categories people can fall into, “like us” or “other”.
This ties directly into Johnson’s work surrounding the media reporting of the Six Nations land reclamation and Savagism (Johnson 115). Countless articles were written regarding how the Six Nations claimed certain facts and viewpoints to be true, but then countered those claims with the non-Native viewpoint of “Savages as outlaws”(Johnson 122). What this did was continually undermine and delegitimize the Six Nations people, perpetuating the idea of the Other, and furthermore depicting the Other as
Approximately 100 women have gone missing from Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside and the media coverage around these events continues to perpetuate the hegemonic ideology of the Other, meaning, those undeserving of our attention (Jiwani and Young 896). The news coverage of these events focused on the fact that these women came from the Downtown Eastside, were sex workers, and were Aboriginal, meaning they were deviant, and somehow deserving of violence (Jiwani and Young 899). Their hyper “visibility stems from their race, class, and gender”, but they were simultaneously invisible from the “lack of attention paid to their concerns by the police…and in the erasure of their histories as colonialized others” (Jiwani and Young 899). Once again, the media and society have deemed that these women were unworthy of our attention based these women being categorized as the Other. What’s also interesting to me, is that one of the alternative, yet still hegemonic, frameworks offered, was relating the missing women to our mothers, daughters or sisters, and therefore acceptable and worthy of our attention (Jiwani and Young 903). This framework however, still maintains the idea that there are only two categories people can fall into, “like us” or “other”.
This ties directly into Johnson’s work surrounding the media reporting of the Six Nations land reclamation and Savagism (Johnson 115). Countless articles were written regarding how the Six Nations claimed certain facts and viewpoints to be true, but then countered those claims with the non-Native viewpoint of “Savages as outlaws”(Johnson 122). What this did was continually undermine and delegitimize the Six Nations people, perpetuating the idea of the Other, and furthermore depicting the Other as