PCJ362 students research media representation of Indigenous people in Canada
How are Indigenous people in Canada represented by the media? Third-year PCJ students Madhurie Dhanrajh, Annie Ding, Alexander Lawson, and Lily Yu analyzed news coverage of the Wet’suwet’en and Coastal GasLink Pipeline conflict by nine Canadian media outlets shows.
The research was conducted as part of their group placement with the World Association for Christian Communication (WACC) for PCJ362H: Service Learning, led by Dr. Dylan Clark.
A rally in Vancouver expresses solidarity with Wet’suwet’en peoples opposed to the Coastal GasLink pipeline.
Their research analyzed 1,683 stories “to understand how Indigenous people are portrayed, what themes might be problematic or beneficial, and how news agencies can improve their reporting on Indigenous issues to ensure it is unbiased, fair, and just.” Professor Paola Salardi, Director of the Trudeau Centre, guided students with processing the data to draw conclusions and recommendations.
The study was inspired by WACC’s Global Media Monitoring Project, which looks at the portrayal and representation of gender in the news.
