This is an extended activity where participants research the media to evaluate its biases.

If you are not careful, the newspapers will have you hating the people who are oppressed, and loving the people who are doing the oppressing.

Malcom X

Issues addressed

• Stereotypes and prejudice, and how they are multiplied and spread in society
• The quantity and quality of information fed to us by the media
• Recognising bias in the media

Aims

• To enable participants to explore the images of and information about minority groups
• To analyse the role of mass media in the creation and dissemination of stereotypes and social prejudice

Preparation / Materials

• Part A: Flip chart, marker pen
• Part B: Depends on the resources available
• Part C: Flip chart and markers for each group and the facilitator

Instructions

This activity is developed in three stages:

Part A: Preparation

1. Ask the participants to get into teams.
2. Explain that, during the course of the coming week, participants will be investigating how news about immigrants is reported in the media.
3. Brainstorm where participants get their news from, and then decide which media to include in the investigation.
4. Divide the media you have chosen between the teams and ask them to organise their work. For instance, they should decide which specific social media and online newspapers they will investigate, and whether members will work independently or together. A week later (when they next come together), they will have time to share their findings and produce a team report.
5. Brainstorm what participants can look for and be aware of when looking for news stories, for example,

• How much time or space given to the stories in the news media? Are they headlines, footnotes or full articles? Which section are they in: culture, education, politics, international or social affairs?
• Are people treated or portrayed according to their origin? Is it different for different groups?
• What sorts of photos and other images are used? Are they “positive” or “negative”?
• How many stories relate to immigrants?
• How are the stories presented? As “good news” or “bad news”?
• What words are used to describe immigrants? Are they mostly positive, mostly negative or mostly neutral?
• Is the story written to appeal to the readers’ emotions or to provide factual information?
• Is the reporting one-sided, or is there an attempt to be balanced?
• Are there any openly racist statements? If so, are these made by public figures, or are they the “opinion” of the journalists?
• Who owns and funds the media you are investigating? Do they have any political affiliations or vested interests? If so, what?
   

Part B: Field work

Participants carry out their research between the two meetings of their group.

Part C: Findings

1. Give the members of the teams 45 minutes to share their findings and write a summary on a flip chart.
2. In plenary, ask each group to present the results of their research.

Debriefing and evaluation

• Did you enjoy the activity? Why? Why not?
• Did this activity lead you to read stories you would not normally read? What sort of stories do you usually read?
• Is it possible to make generalisations about immigrants and the way they are portrayed in the media? For instance, are the stories about immigrant doctors different from stories about immigrant fruit-pickers?
• Did you find the same stories across all the media? If not, why not?
• What are the general differences within and across the media in the way the stories are presented?
• Are the stories based on facts and data, or upon assumptions, judgments or opinion? How can you tell? How did you check?
• How often did the story go beyond “the facts” and present some sort of perspective or analysis?
• Were any of the stories distorted? Was information manipulated? How? Why?
• Were there stories in the online news that did not crop up on social media? Why do you think this is?
• The main news media often report quotes from social media, especially Twitter. Does Twitter undermine investigative journalism?
• Do you get the same stories on your social media feeds as your friends? If not, why not?
• News reports, articles, items and posts on social media are often referred to as “stories”. What do you understand by the word “story”? Does there have to be an element of truth in a story? In these days of fake news, should we continue to talk of news as stories?
• What is your usual response to a story that you read? How often do you “like”, re-post or add a comment? Why do you respond? What may be the consequences?
• What are our responsibilities as readers regarding fake news or news that reproduces stereotypes and prejudices? What can we do? Give specific examples.

Tips for the facilitators

When planning to use this activity, you should consider the ages of the participants because how we get the news varies with age. People of generation Y, also known as millennials, and who are roughly 25-34 years old, use TV, mobile phones and radio as sources of news. However, generation Z, born after the mid-1990s and aged 18-24, primarily use their mobile phones and social media. Thus, you will have to decide whether to ask the teams to investigate some or all of the following: TV, radio, printed newspapers, magazines and social media. The article: ‘How Young People Consume News and the Implications for Mainstream Media’ at www.digitalnewsreport.org is useful.

If working with exclusively young people, because much of their media use is on-demand and algorithmically curated / personalised, it will be most relevant for you to focus on and compare the different social media. It is recommended, however, that you encourage participants to include online newspapers and to watch TV news channels as a basis for comparison.

You may of course adapt this activity according to the interests of the group. For instance, you might like to look at the reporting of a racist incident, a hate crime against a religious group, or perhaps a case before the courts in relation to equal opportunities for women.

Variations

Find reports from a variety of media, including print and social media, of a short news story about a specific event. Ask participants in small groups to read, analyse and comment. You can use many of the questions as above for the debriefing.

Suggestions for follow-up

Take action: Depending on the outcomes of the activity, the group could decide to create positive stories about immigrants and post them on their social media. Alternatively, they may consider setting up a “watchdog” group to regularly review the media for examples of misreporting and distortion. This could be followed by writing collective letters to the newspapers, TV or radio concerned.

Move on to another activity: If you wish to explore further the relationships between ideas, words and images, a fun way to do it is to play ‘Cultionary’. Alternatively, you might enjoy playing the board game ‘Path to development’, which raises many social, economic and political issues covered regularly in the media.