Original proposal

The following was an original project proposal written on April, 2009.
However, it will be altered since my project will be conducted in Korea.
It will be changed as much as it fits to Korean media, not to U.S. media.
Revised version will be posted here.



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Professional Project proposal
Joon Hyoung Kim

Representation of Poverty
How do news photographs in the U.S. media portray poverty?



Introduction
When it comes to photographing people, my biggest interest is in people who are part of a social minority, such as the disabled or the poor. They get, I think, less than they deserve in life. Although there are different degrees of how fairly they are treated, varying from nation to nation, all societies in this world have this same problem. No matter what makes people poor, I personally feel sympathy for them. If people have poverty forced upon them, that is, that they didn’t freely choose to live this way, then I am interested in finding out what circumstances or situations made them poor. I believe, personally, that this is caused by certain circumstances, such as the lack of a welfare system, rather than to what they have done themselves. In addition, even if people appear not to work very hard, or seem to have no desire to try to get out of poverty, I am interested in knowing what their thoughts are as to why they remain poor. This interest of mine in poverty is entirely personal.
An intriguing survey was conducted by National Public Radio, the Henry J. Kaiser Family, and Harvard University's Kennedy School of Government in 2001. The finding revealed that no matter who has friends or family who are poor, the degree of feeling sympathy for them is the almost same. According to the telephone survey, only 37 % of 1,952 respondents not having friends or family who are poor say poor people lead hard lives because government support is not enough to stop poverty. Thirty-nine percent of people having friends or family who are poor say poor people lead hard lives.
In addition, my belief that the news media has little sincere intention of reporting on poor people and their lives encourages me to study this theme. The media does not seem to have any reasons to report about poor people because these people are generally not involved in affecting major decision-making that the media pays so much attention to in society. The media is not moved to report on poor people accurately and fairly. Consequently, the media simply keep reproducing the same stereotypes or prejudices which exist in society about the poor.
For these reasons, I somehow feel an obligation to report on the poor, for whom I feel sympathy, more accurately and fairly than the media usually seems ready to do.
Stories in newspapers and other media sources are thought to be based on fact, being accurate and not favoring one party or another. News photographs, as one of the elements of media, are believed to portray the truth about events due to the old belief that it is possible for news photographs to be manipulated to portray wrong information. As a result, readers expect news photographs to be presented in an objective way.
However, much of mainstream media is owned by a few powerful corporations with the result that there is the strong possibility that their voices will show the interests of dominant social groups who influence mainstream media itself or the corporations who own media. As a result, less powerful groups, such as the poor, as well as women or people of color, are either not featured or are stereotyped by the media, even though they are given a certain degree of secondary attention.
The media has such a powerful voice with the breadth and scope of readers' experience taking them to places most people never experience first hand. Combining this fact with the consolidated control of the traditional media allows them tremendous influence in forming our opinions. Highly politicized issues are likely to be defined by dominant social groups who put subgroups, like the poor, at risk of being stereotyped and undervalued. (Bullock, Wyche, Williams, 2001) The main-stream corporate media reinforces this perception by presenting the topics of interest of those people who are well-off financially (topics such as stocks, financial news, leisure time, etc.) as general concerns while often ignoring themes such as poverty.
In the United States, "classic stereotypes concerning the characteristics and behaviors of poor people are pervasive." (Bullock, Wyche & Williams, 2001) In particular, "women receiving public assistance are stereotyped as lazy, disinterested in education, and promiscuous." (Bullock, Wyche & Williams, 2001)
This study will examine how news photographs in the U.S. continue these stereotypes through media's portrayal of poverty.


Theoretical frame
Media Frames
"Mass media creates meaning by presenting symbols and common experiences within an ever-evolving context according to the social construction of reality theory, " initially proposed by Berger and Luckmann (cited in Kim & Kelly, 2007). ‘News is a socially created product, not a reflection of an objective reality’ (Shoemaker and Reese, 1996, cited in Peng, 2004). Behind the social construction of news, one of the most important factors in news coverage is framing. Norris (1995) says "frames are used in the media as a way of conveying an opinion, and journalists frequently use these frames to make the story easier to understand, show the ranking of importance of items and organize the way elements flow in the story." "News frames are embodied not in overt evaluative statements, but rather in ‘key words, metaphors, concepts, symbols and visual images emphasized in a news narrative’" (Entman, 1991, cited in Peng, 2004).
The way poverty is covered in visual images by the U.S. media and how this coverage affects audiences’ understanding of poverty cannot be approached without directly confronting the issue of race. "Because of the centuries old “framing” of Africans (and, by implication, African-Americans) as the 'Other'" (Fair, 1993), poverty is most usually represented in media photography as affecting African-Americans, although in fact they comprise less than a third of the U.S. population living in this condition. (Clawson, Truce, 2000). "Poverty in the U.S. is portrayed as a “black” problem." (Clawson, Trice, 2000). Sadly, this works to both negatively label blacks stereotypically, and also overlooks poverty among whites, Hispanics and Asians. And with an unbalanced pictorial presentation, the definition of poverty in the U.S. becomes wrongly defined and misrepresented. Studies of the five news magazines - Business Week, Newsweek, New York Times Magazine, and U.S. News and World Report - show that they perpetuate and reinforce the idea that the majority of those in poverty in the U.S. are black people. (Clawson, Trice, 2000). Also, the period of time examined, 1993-1998, was during a period of time of intense debate over welfare reform, which could, in part contribute to the overemphasis on blacks. Although there is data to support the argument given in the article 'Poverty As We Know It' (Clawson, Trice, 2000) that the media unfairly portrays blacks as poor, un-wed, drug-taking, welfare-abusing and criminals, the conclusiveness of the argument is, however, weakened by no significant study of geography and population density.
Again it needs to be emphasized that if the whole visual setting were switched, where large groups of whites were hanging out on street corners during business hours, with boarded up windows, old abandoned cars lined up for blocks on end (imagine a white Camden, NJ) and blacks were just managing to survive in Appalachia (imagine the “hill people” of West Virginia), because of the much stronger visual effect of the urban setting, there would be much more photography of white poverty. This aspect figure into the conclusion by Clawson and Trice that blacks were disproportionately portrayed in magazine pictures of the poor between 1993 and 1998.
In “Media Images of the Poor” (Bullock, Wyche, Williams, 2001) 412 newspaper articles about poverty published during a three-month period in 1999 were analyzed. It was found they did little to put poverty into its context or explain its causes. Instead of accounting for causes of poverty, the poor are portrayed as outsiders, and the black poor portrayed as the outsiders of the outsiders, for they have committed the sins of being both poor and of the wrong skin color. This portrayal is not only seen in the news media, but also in popular television. Show like Friends and The West Wing depict the “normal” lives of young, white, middle-class professionals, whereas Jerry Springer presents the poor as dysfunctional losers to be laughed at as losers. (Bullock, Wyche and Williams, 2001).
Entman(1995) identified "two distinct categories used by local and national television to tell stories about poverty stories that depicted poverty as behaviors that threaten community well-being, for instance, crime, drugs, and gangs, and then other stories which focused on the suffering of the poor." Of the 239 stories analyzed, Entman(1995) found that "39% depicted poverty as a source of a threat, whereas 61% portrayed poverty in terms of suffering, for instance, racial discrimination, poor health, and inadequate medical care".
"Other research shows that television news programs tend to frame poverty in one of two ways: as either any episodic, or, as a thematic issue" (Iyengar, 1990). Episodic framing illustrates poverty in terms of personal experience by concentrating the circumstances of a poor individual or family. On the other hand, thematic framing takes an abstract, impersonal approach to poverty by concentrating on general poverty situations and public assistance. Iyengar (1990), in a report of television news stories on poverty between 1981 an 1986, showed the use of frames to report a story as an episode was more common than using them to report on a theme. Framing affects more than the method of telling the story; it also influences how problems in society such as poverty are thought about. Iyengar (1990) also found people who watched stories about episodes were more likely than those who watched stories about a theme to attribute poverty to single factors and to think of the poor as being the ones who should fix their economic situation. People who watched theme-based stories usually thought poverty was due to reasons of structure and thought the government should try to fix the situation.
In 1935, F.D. Roosevelt named Columbia University economist and Brain Truster Rexford Guy Tugwell to head the Resettlement Administration(RA), a New Deal agency formed to deal with the problem of rural poverty, which was changed to the Farm Security Administration(FSA). Tugwell believed visual images could be used well to make a stronger point in its efforts in Congress. From 1935 to 1943, Roy Emerson Stryker, head of the Historical Section of the agency's Information Division created a massive photographic file of images devoted to showing the impact of the Depression on American life and to publicize New Deal efforts to fight against rural poverty. Stryker hired Walker Evans, Dorothea Lange, Russell Lee, Arthur Rothstein, Ben Shahn, Marion Post, John Vachon, and John Collier Jr. These FSA photographers produced more than 250, 000 images. Finnegan (2003) assumed that "documentary photographs, including FSA photographs, were not just 'evidence,' but were by the nature of what they were themselves, 'rhetorical'." Finnegan noted that the FSA photographs can not be considered to be 'evidence' in terms of being 'objective' documents about a certain time, but are made under the influence of certain situations at the time, and must be seen this way. These photographs are meant to show "real" and "natural" views of the world but when seen as taken under certain unique settings and framing. This is due to the nature of documentary photographs. Paul Rotha noted that documentary photographs are not 'objective' themselves, but are a product of 'interpreting' the 'real' world. (Finnegan, 2003) As a result, the consequence to construe 'real' world which contains a variety of settings is diverse.
In this sense, both news photographs of poverty in current media and FSA photographs are the same when it comes to lack of 'objectivity'.

Research Question.
How do photographs in the news multimedia reinforce the stereotype of poverty in the U.S. media?

Hypothesis
1. African Americans are stereotyped in the news multimedia associated with news photographs of poverty shown in the New York Times.
2. Females, whether black or white, are stereotyped in the news multimedia associated with news photographs of poverty shown in the New York Times.

For this study, only domestic poverty in the U.S. will be considered for analysis. Homeless people who have not chosen to live in this situation will be considered due to lack of means for them to get by, as opposed to people who have a job and do not suffer from these financial difficulties.

Four different types of homeless persons will be photographed for this project.
1. A black male of middle age
2. A homeless family, including parents, who may, or may not, have children.
3. A white male, age 40 or younger.
4. A female of middle age who is either black or white.

Four different types of homeless people will be chosen because these types of homeless will reflect my project goals which will illustrate how they live and what caused them to live under these circumstances and, then, beyond this to discover the way our communities can alleviate homeless people's difficulties.

Method

Sampling
The New York Times has been chosen due to its prominence and influence. It is generally believed to not only lead with subjects which other U.S. news media follow, but also has a strong influence on American leaders and U.S. foreign policy (Peng, 2004). The New York Times will be used for analysis from October of 2007 to April of 2008.
In order to examine how the U.S. media reinforces the stereotype of blacks and females, the current economic downturn which this country is now going through should be excluded since all types of people and businesses are suffering in this bad economy, making it hard to know whether blacks and females are still being stereotyped in through this current economic turmoil. However, for the time duration from October of 2007 to April of 2008, there were no severe economic concerns which interfered with the U.S. media continuing to use the stereotypes of blacks and females.
A sample population of photographs will be analyzed. This sample population refers to all the news stories which include photographs in multimedia when covering poverty. It will be created by a key word search (mainly, poverty and job loss, homelessness, bankruptcy, economic crisis and layoffs) through the online Nexis Lexis database where news stories from the New York Times will be searched. Due to the absence of photographs in news stories themselves in Nexis Lexis and the indication of whether these news stories include photographs, the actual web site which is the only a way to find the multimedia will be examined in order to identify the news photographs.
In order to investigate how photographs in the news multimedia reinforce the stereotype of poverty in the U.S. media, the following method will be used in the research component. Each photograph of poverty in multimedia will be examined to evaluate how poverty is portrayed in the U.S. media. An in-depth analysis of each photographs of poverty will provide us insights into how poverty is depicted in these images.

Textual analysis and Semiotics
"The object of analysis in media studies is to understand the meaning of a text, which could be a novel, an article, a film, TV program scripts and images."(Lacey, 1998)
Larson(1991) mentioned media texts are believed to be historically decided upon to the extent that they represent the social inclinations of a given period. Thus, analyzing media texts also shows what was going on socially at the time the media text was written.
As Larson shows, "textual analysis contains the 'semiological heritage,'" Lacey(1998) agrees that "semiotics has shown itself to be a 'fruitful way of looking at texts of all kinds.'"
Cormack's method(1995) of "ideological analysis will be conducted on elements such as structure, absence and style". In terms of structure, one of the types, 'synchronic structure', will be examined. This particular type of structure includes "'binary oppositions between two elements, such as good and bad, capitalist and communist, powerful and weak, etc.'" Elements that are left out of the photographs (whether consciously or unconsciously) will be discussed as an absense. The multimedia story commonly consists of a series of single photographs and sometimes the addition of video so that viewers are able to tell which images seem to have been missed in telling the whole story.
Regarding style, composition, camera lens choice and camera angle will be investigated using Lacey's image analysis model as explained below. (Cormack, 1995, cited in Kim, 2005),

Lacey's Image Analysis Model
According to Lacey (1998), "unlike pure text materials, such as novels or news articles, there are several additional codes to consider when analyzing images." Codes can be any elements in the images or symbols such as words, which contain certain meanings. Codes in the photographs such as angle, distance and lens type are called denotation. What 'codes' actually means is called connotation. Therefore, the object of this study is to find out what the connotation in the news photographs is. As Lacey suggests, several technical features in this study are to be applied in analyzing news photographs such as angle, distance between the object and the camera, composition, depth of field, lens types, film stock and lighting. For instance, a high angle means having a place under other groups while a low angle means a position of strength. In terms of the make up of photographs, a conventional grouping allows viewers to feel calm while an less conventional make up, such as a documentary style, makes audiences feel real life as it happens. In addition, Fiske showed that "camera distance is used by visual media as a technical code to make a distinction between 'us' and 'them' so that the normal camera distance is mid-shot to close-up, which 'brings the viewer into an intimate, comfortable relationship' with the image."(cited in Kang & Heo)


Professional Component
Project goals
In this profession project, depicting various homeless people, I want to provide insights into what has led to these people living in their situations and how our communities or government give them the help they need.
The official definition of poverty was developed by Mollie Orshansky in 1965 for the Social Security Administration. "Poverty lines or family income needs were based on the cost of a nutritionally adequate diet for households of a given size and composition, multiplied by three". (Sawhill, 1988). Sawhill showed that "the multiplier was derived from a 1955 survey showing that, on average, families of three or more spent 35 percent of their after-tax income on food". According to an operational definition of poverty, 'to be poor is to be deprived of those goods and services and pleasures which others around us take for granted.'
According to United States Department of Housing and Urban Development, homelessness is considered as a common phenomenon in urban poverty. Therefore, photographing homelessness will reflect poverty occurring in the U.S.

For this project, four homeless people need to be photographed to illustrate what the condition of people in poverty looks like in terms of what they have experienced. Each person will have his/her own history which he/she has lived through under poverty. In order to depict the people's stories, a multimedia presentation would be the most efficient option for this project. For instance, videos accompanying still photographs and, or, audio slideshows will be conducted. This is because the audible story will add more insights into homeless people’s personal tales, which otherwise cannot be fully developed using still images. I believe it is apparent that audio makes viewers feel that we can learn the story better and I am interested in the story more due to the power audio has to help understand who they are; the identity of people’s voices draws viewers into the story.
Why do I will use multimedia?
Multimedia will be examined as a research component because it provides viewers with more accurate and real reporting associated with audio, due to the nature of audio, which is considered to add more realism to the story.
This project will be a multimedia photo story incorporating four different people’s stories. The multimedia consists of an in-depth video interview and photographs. The final project, of course, will be a mixture of video and photographs. Basically, the four interviewees will tell their own stories, each one of which will take up its chapter in the multimedia piece. This means that there will be four chapters, accompanying its own story.
For the multimedia presentation of my project, a summary will be provided with a general description about the four chapters with texts. And, a short version using video clips, (called an 'overview') will be given to help viewers get an outline all four videos. After the overview, four videos will follow.
Below is a sample presentation I might use in my multimedia project.


For this project, the research for locating the multimedia in the New York Times will be conducted and at the same time, the homeless people whom I will photograph will be identified through June and July, 2009. As a next step, photographing and videotaping the homeless people will start from August and go to October, 2009. Finally, editing the videos and photographs will be carried out in November, 2009.
In order to keep field notes, planning by communicating with my committee members will be utilized. The committee members will be informed of what I’m planning to do and of what I have been doing on a regular basis through a blog I will create when I start to do research of the multimedia.



References


Entman, R. M. (1991). Framing U.S. coverage of international news: Contrasts in the narratives of the KAL and Iran air incidents. Journal of Communication, 41(4), 6_/27.

Entman, R. M. (1995) Television, democratic theory and the visual construction of poverty. Research in Political Sociology, 7.

Eric Hiltner (2005), ‘Insurgent Media’, Radical History Review, Issue 93

Iyengar, S. (1990) Framing responsibility of political issue: The case of poverty, Political Behavior, 12(1).

Kim, Sun-A (2005) Images of U.S. soldiers in non-combat situations : Time portrayals from the Iraq war in 2003.

Lacey, N.(1998) Image and Representation: Key Concepts in Media Studies. New York: St. Martin's Press. Inc.

Larson, P.(1991) Text Analysis of Fictional Media Content. In Jesen, K. B & Jankowski, N.W.(Eds.). A Handbook of Qualitative Methodologies for Mass Communication Research. Londo, UK:Routledge. P. 121-134.

Peng, Zengjun(2004) Representation of China:An across time analysis of coverage in the New York Times and Los Angeles Times, Asian Journal of Communication, Vol. 14. p. 53-67

Heather E. Bullock & Karnen Fraser Wyche & Wendy R. Williams (2001), Media Images of the Poor, Journal of Social Issues, Vol. 57, No 2, 2001

Sawhill, Isabel (1988), Poverty in the U.S.: Why Is It So Persistent? Journal of Economic Literature; Vol. 26 Issue 3.

Trice, Rakuya and Clawson, A Rosalee (2000), ‘Poverty as we know it’ – Media portrayals of the poor, Public Opinion Quarterly Volume 64:53-64