Suchergebnisse

When citizens take to the streets, pack assembly halls or share their ideas through the press, they give voice to truths and logic that have otherwise been given little or no airing through available institutional channels. This collection explores the tensions between democratic states and the dynamics of citizen voice.

Drawing upon Jürgen Habermas's discourse-based theoretical approach, this article argues that his thesis regarding the bourgeois public sphere needs to be redirected so as (1) to show how sources of communicative action may have dried up within the bourgeois public sphere and (2) to explore real emancipatory alternatives that spring up as oppositional voices of subaltern groups, oriented to understanding, and expressed in contexts wherein people's upward struggles against power and domination have not yet been completed. In support of the argument, a stereoscopic analysis is conducted that focuses on public sphere practices and counter-practices – specifically those of The New York Times as exemplar participant of bourgeois publicness and the black-owned and operated New York Amsterdam News as its oppositional counterpart.

Provides a brief account of the police shooting of Tyisha Miller and its aftermath and then uses the oppositional thesis to analyze critical differences in the coverage of the two newspapers. Explores the social and political significance of the black press and offers a critical, theoretically informed way of analyzing white press practices. Analysts who view the black press as one among many instances of difference also fail to mount a sufficient critique of white mainstream practices. If one press excludes, suppresses or otherwise contains disadvantaged social groups, while opposing a counterpart committed to expressing popular voice, one invites criticism in ways the other does not. Concludes with a discussion of the significance of the black press as social force and site for critical media study. (Original abstract - amended)

The historical separation of the black press & white press in the US is described, considering how their respective coverage of news events is tailored to their readerships & their biases. The function of the black press as a carrier of "oppositional meanings" that both reflect & challenge class divisions is discussed, along with the potential for these meanings to "resonate" with readers of the white press. This oppositional perspective is illuminated via a case study comparing coverage by 2 southern CA newspapers -- the mainstream white Riverside Press-Enterprise & the black-focused Black Voice News -- of the 1998 police shooting of a young African American woman, Tyisha Miller. Critical differences between the two papers are revealed in their representation of the facts of the shooting & its aftermath; the specific "linguistic packaging" utilized by each paper is described. The significance of the black press as a medium of social & political criticism is explored. 1 Table, 65 References. K. Hyatt Stewart

Examines complaints of abuses committed by US law enforcement officials, principally in southern California, on Mexican and US citizens. Complaints include illegal searches, verbal, psychological, and physical abuse of persons, child abuse, deprivation of food, water, and medical attention, torture, theft, use of excessive force, assault and battery, and murder.

The issue of human & civil rights violations on the US-Mexico border in CA by law enforcement agents is studied, drawing on complaints levied against various law enforcement agencies by undocumented immigrants & citizens (N = 204) & interviews with 63 individuals who experienced human & civil rights abuses. (1) Individuals experienced physical punishment whether they surrendered or fled law enforcement officials. (2) Officials used the gaze to identify an individual's ethnicity. (3) Intense interrogation tactics were employed. (4) Lawless behavior by law enforcement officials is becoming a pattern rather than an exception. (5) A certain law enforcement logic underlies officials' behavior. Explanations for the apparent increase in lawless behavior include the escalated buildup of military & police personnel in southern CA & law enforcement officials' ability to circumvent certain constitutional restraints. It is concluded that an external review board is needed to evaluate complaints of human & civil rights violations, & such violations should be publicly discussed. 17 References. J. W. Parker