Front Page Analysis of Immigrants’ Rights Movements and Farm Worker Movements
This blog will cover my final project for the Introduction to Civic Media course, which will consist of a front-page analysis of notable events and occurrences in contemporary immigrants’ rights movements and the farmworker movement from the 1960s. My particular front page analysis will look at the front page of several newspapers in order to determine the amount of coverage that is given to a particular event or topic. In essence, this front page analysis operates under the premise that the front page of a newspaper as a space is reserved for issues deemed most pressing and important. Following this logic, the amount of physical space allocated to news stories signals their significance, with more space given to more important stories. Regardless of the size of a story that appears on the front page of a newspaper, appearing on the front page at all signals a certain level of significance to those stories. I intend to examine the front pages of major newspapers in order to identify how major newspapers present coverage relating to social movements.
The context for this study is informed by a project that examined the role of media in social movements. In a series of interviews that I conducted, youth immigrant activists and media practitioners expressed a better working relationship with alternative media, such as ethnic media and independent media sources. With a front page analysis, I will be able to map such relationships between news sources and social movements and determine and trends over time. What’s more, comparisons can be made across newspapers in order to understand differences in how coverage related to social movements is provided. For the immigrants’ rights movements, I will limit my analysis to the decade from 2001 to 2011. These parameters are set partly to allow for a manageable project, but also because 2001 was an eventful year for immigration reform with the introduction of the The Dream Act and 9/11.
In addition to an examination of contemporary immigrants’ rights movements, this work will also provide a front page analysis of the farm workers movement in the 1960s. Specifically, I will be looking at the coverage that the United Farm Workers (UFW) were getting in major newspapers in the decade of the 1960s. Led by leaders Cesar Chavez and Dolores Huerta, the UFW made history when it successfully unionized grape workers in the United States for the first. Countless works have examined the unique approaches to organizing that gave the UFW their strategic advantages that ultimately led to victory. One such scholar has been Marshall Ganz at the Harvard Kennedy School, who based his book Why Goliath Sometimes Wins on his personal experiences as an organizer with the UFW in the 1960s. In his book, Ganz covers how the UFW had advantages over other unions because of its unique organizing style that transformed a labor struggle into a social movement and welcomed countless volunteers into its ranks, among other key methods.
Another major difference in the UFW’s approach was the role that different types of media and technology played in its efforts. For example, the UFW was very intentional about obtaining media coverage through acts of civil disobedience and nonviolence, and relationships with journalists were highly valued. With a front page analysis, I would like to map the type of f coverage that the UFW was getting through its efforts. Similar to contemporary immigrants’ rights movements, the front page analysis of the farm worker movement will span a timeframe of ten years, from 1962 to 1972. However, one of the greatest challenges that I will face when looking at the 1960s might be a lack of digital copies of major newspapers. While content may be digitized, it may also be difficult to to find actual scans of newspapers in order to code them for analysis.
What newspapers will be examined? How will they be examined? The newspapers that will be examined for this study are the New York Times, Los Angeles Times, La Opinion, and an additional ethic newspaper with reach and prominence. La Opinion is the largest Spanish-speaking newspaper in the United States, so it provides a great example for comparison with mainstream papers. Much of the research of news coverage may take place using academic search engines, but the actual coding of newspaper scans will be done using a tool called PageOneX. PageOneX is a tool that allows users to code scans of newspapers and visualize them in meaningful ways. More information about PageOneX can be found at the tool’s website: here.
As of now, I will begin the actual research process of finding front page news coverage of major milestones and events in both the immigrants’ rights movements and the farm worker movement. I have not completely defined the specific events in each social movement that I will be looking for, but I have a general sense of direction. For example, the introduction of the Dream Act in 2001 and the demonstrations in 2006 against H.R. 4437 are likely to have front page news coverage in several newspapers. Other major events will have to be determined as the study progresses.