| This dissertation is an anthropological case study that demonstrates the benefits of a structural anthropological program to examine media representation. It takes the media coverage of the 1995 Gustafsen Lake standoff as the example to explore the merits of this holistic perspective on media research. The theoretical approach draws from Levi-Strauss' structural theory, with additional applications from anthropological linguistics, situational analysis, and Foucault's conceptualization of power. The data include 561 news stories from 18 newspapers across Canada, plus radio, and television news stories, as well as ethnographic interviews with 26 journalists, RCMP officials, Native leaders and people from the local communities.;The narrative reconstructs the event from the time it was a local civil dispute and news story to its evolution as a massive RCMP operation and a national news event. The study identifies the relations and organizational processes between the media and their sources in their struggles to influence the media representations. Three aspects of the media event constitute the central analyses. Responses from two Native chiefs, a defense lawyer, the RCMP Superintendent in charge of the operation, as well as from members of the local audience provide contrasting views and impacts of the media coverage. Next, journalists' discussions of news production practices and policies during the standoff offer a contextual backdrop for the quantitative analysis of invective stereotype labeling in the Canada-wide sample of newspaper stories. Last, a structural analysis of the media contexts explores how RCMP misinformation, media competition, cooperation, bias, resistance, and cultural misperceptions contributed to the media portrayals.;The dissertation culminates with a critique of textual analysis as a singular approach to media studies, and outlines the benefits of a structural anthropological program. I employ the findings to suggest law enforcement and media policy recommendations, making explicit the structural power within law enforcement and the media that can either subvert or support a democratic pluralist society. This research builds on theories of stereotype construction, media stereotyping and contributes to the body of literature regarding the study of media, and media representations of minorities. |
