Uncovering the protest paradigm through visual framing: A media literacy lesson for college students

Abstract

Much is made of the proliferation of fake news in media literacy education. With good reason, we worry about unreliable news reporting and its effect on political participation. However, instruction that focuses on the most sensational attempts to hijack political discourse misses the more routine way in which reliable news reporting influences the political process. From horse race journalism to social justice movements, news professionals frame issues in particular ways, and those representations affect public opinion. Entman (1993) defines framing as the process of selecting “some aspects of a perceived reality and making them more salient in a communicating text in such a way as to promote a particular problem definition, causal interpretation, moral evaluation, and/or treatment recommendation” (p.19). In our presentation, we share an interactive lesson plan demonstrating how to teach students to make sense of media framing, social justice movements, and the protest paradigm. Using Associated Press images taken from the Black Lives Matter protests of 2020, we teach students how to use framing theory to uncover protest paradigms in mainstream media. This lesson plan will foster a deeper engagement with social justice movements and the news media ecosystem. Teaching students about framing theory will equip them to unpack news stories in any medium and to critically engage in the subtleties of news production and its effects.