Screening the Los Angeles 'Riots'
Race, Seeing, and Resistance

Examines TV coverage of Los Angeles riots and responses of viewers of different ethnicity.

Darnell M. Hunt (Author)

9780521578141, Cambridge University Press

Paperback, published 28 October 1996

332 pages, 38 tables
22.6 x 15.2 x 1.9 cm, 0.48 kg

"Darnell Hunt's noteworthy study presents an informed and detailed analysis of audience reaction to television news coverage of the civil rebellion in South Central L.A. that ultimately led to the death of 51 citizens, hundreds of injuries, and the destruction of more than a $1 billion in property." Dennis W. Mazzocco, Critical Sociology

On April 29 1992, the 'worst riots of the century' (Los Angeles Times) erupted. Television news-workers tried frantically to keep up with what was happening on the streets while, around the city, nation and globe, viewers watched intently as leaders, participants and fires flashed across their television screens. Screening the Los Angeles 'Riots' zeros in on the first night of these events, exploring in detail the meanings one news organisation found in them, as well as those made by fifteen groups of viewers in the events' aftermath. Combining ethnographic and quasi-experimental methods, Darnell M. Hunt's account reveals how race shapes both television's construction of news and viewers' understandings of it. He engages with the long-standing debates about the power of television to shape our thoughts versus our ability to resist, and concludes with implications for progressive change.

List of figures
List of tables
Preface
1. Introduction
Part I. Context and Text: 2. Media, race and resistance
3. Establishing a meaningful benchmark: the KTTV text and its assumptions
Part II. Audience: 4. Stigmatized by association: Latino-raced informants and the KTTV text
5. Ambivalent insiders: black-raced informants and the KTTV text
6. Innocent bystanders: white-raced informants and the KTTV text
Part III. Analysis and Conclusions: 7. Raced ways of seeing
8. Meaning-making and resistance
Postscript
Appendices
Notes
References
Index.

Subject Areas: Black & Asian studies [JFSL3]