Title: <i>Troubled Pasts: News and the Collective Memory of Social Unrest</i> (review)
Abstract: Reviewed by: Troubled Pasts: News and the Collective Memory of Social Unrest Lisa M. Burns Troubled Pasts: News and the Collective Memory of Social Unrest. By Jill A. Edy. Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 2006; pp viii + 205. $73.50 cloth; $24.95 paper. The 1965 Watts riots and the 1968 Democratic National Convention in Chicago are two events often recalled in the media as examples of the social unrest of the 1960s. However, as years pass, the specific details of what happened fade in favor of what reporters consider the symbolic meaning of each incident. What happened in Watts and Chicago persists in public memory and in the press because of what each event has come to represent. Yet the meanings of these memories are largely constructed both in the media and by the media. In Troubled Pasts: News and the Collective Memory of Social Unrest, [End Page 127] Jill A. Edy traces how the mediated collective memory of each case study developed, illuminating the role of journalism in shaping a shared past. Edy is interested in how the meaning of past events is negotiated in the media. Her study explores "how news practices, relationships between actors who make the news, expectations of news audiences, and the impact of current events affect the development of collective memories in a mass society" (5). She selects the Watts riots and the '68 DNC because, in both cases, several disparate narratives emerged in the contemporary coverage, with various actors seeking to construct (and contest) the meaning of these events. Edy then traces how the meaning and memory of each event is negotiated over the years by looking at how some narratives survive, some are modified, and others are forgotten in a variety of print news stories. She also discusses how the memories of the Watts riots and the '68 DNC are invoked by journalists in coverage of subsequent events and the implications of reporters' reliance on these mediated memories. One of the strengths of this study is Edy's skillful combination of several theoretical strands. She shows how agenda-setting and framing affect the narrative structure of news stories, which in turn shapes the way memory is construed and constructed in news narratives. Her work is grounded in previous studies of collective memory and the media, yet she also draws upon memory studies in psychology to illuminate the differences between individual memories, which often shape contemporary press coverage of an event, and the media-constructed collective memory that evolves over time. All of these theoretical traditions are combined with a rhetorical understanding of social movements, a historical appreciation of context, and a critical perspective on race, power, and political ideology. This approach provides a solid framework for her textual analysis of newspaper and news magazine coverage of both events. The book is arranged in a chronological order, tracing coverage of the Watts riots and the Chicago convention from the initial news stories about each event to recent media references. Edy begins by examining the contemporary coverage of each event in the leading news magazines. She identifies the "major narratives and iconic incidents and events that emerged at the time the Watts riots and Chicago convention occurred" (23). In the case of the Watts riots, Edy finds four dominant narratives: "lawlessness," "insurrection/conspiracy," "police brutality," and "economic deprivation." While the "lawlessness" frame was primarily promoted by city officials, the "police brutality" and "economic deprivation" frames challenged the government perspective and provided possible reasons for the rioting. Coverage of the Chicago convention was more fragmented because the activities in the convention hall and the protests in the street were initially covered as distinct events. Edy argues that convention coverage was "remarkably traditional," featuring candidate profiles and summaries of the events leading up to the nomination of Hubert H. Humphrey. Reporters [End Page 128] inside the convention hall also covered the credential challenges of Southern delegations and the heated debate over the Vietnam War plank, but those stories were framed as examples of political strategy and were not tied to the demonstrations outside the hall. Meanwhile, according to Edy, the narratives about the protests "changed dramatically" as the week went on (52). Similar to coverage of...
Publication Year: 2009
Publication Date: 2009-03-01
Language: en
Type: article
Indexed In: ['crossref']
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