Haiti's identity crisis: Representation in United States newspaper coverage

Most newspaper articles in the United States paint a picture of Haiti as a failed state, the poorest country in the Western Hemisphere. These articles place the blame of the country's problems entirely on Haiti itself, with little regard for the outside forces that brought the country to its present day state. This study is a critical geopolitical analysis of Haitian representation in U.S. newspapers. I will empirically examine a year's worth of articles from 2004 written on Haiti in five major U.S. newspapers. From these articles I will analyze both the words used to describe Haiti and the emerging media frame. I will then compare the repetition of words and frame to scholarly sources on Haitian history. Critical media studies have shown that representation in the media can greatly impact the conventional wisdom surrounding a place and legitimize social inequalities. Through understanding the images used to describe Haiti, I hope to develop a means through which to redirect popular perceptions of it. I argue that it is only then that the problems of Haiti might be more effectively addressed and a new dialogue created, one that encompasses the entire story of this Caribbean country.