Developing my research topic has been the toughest thing of all. I have so many ideas, but finding the best one is the biggest problem. I am interested in studying how media delivers, frames and in general handles missing person’s cases. I have recently begun to find a way to do this, perhaps by doing a case study or a compare and contrast of cases http://www.missingkids.com/missingkids/servlet/PublicHomeServlet?LanguageCountry=en_US. Or by perhaps studying the Amber Alert system and how the media figures into all of it.
I originally became interested in this topic about 2 ½ years ago. I believe it started in my media ethics class, at least for myself. In the class before that (not sure which one), one of my classmates did a paper on the overabundance of missing person’s cases in the media that fall into the category of what can be called, “the pretty missing white girl syndrome” http://www.capitolhillblue.com/artman/publish/article_7711.shtml.
It wasn’t until I heard Cassondra’s presentation that I even realized a problem like this existed. I began to ask her a lot of questions about the topic and decided to follow-up on it during the ethics class. After that, it became my obsession/passion. As a parent, I can’t imagine that any one person could be more important than another. Much of my research and realizations came during the heaviest media coverage of the Natalee Holloway disappearance http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Natalee_Holloway.
About 2 months after Natalee disappeared, a young, pregnant Philadelphia mother went missing. Her name was LaToyia Figueroa; she was 5 months pregnant with, I believe a 6 or 7-year-old daughter. She was of African and Hispanic descent. Her case actually paralleled much of the Laci Peterson case( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laci_Peterson ), but LaToyia was not granted the same type of coverage.
In order to graduate with my bachelor’s, I had to do what could be called a “mini-thesis.” I chose to do a content analysis of Nancy Grace since this “monster of a woman” (sorry, I have very strong opinions of her) claims to be an advocate for missing people. She also claims that she makes sure to cover “other” people http://www.onthemedia.org/transcripts/2005/07/01/06 (see her comments towards the end of the interview). Anyhow, Cassondra and I teamed up and presented what we found which was that in over 70% of Nancy Grace’s stories regarding missing persons were of white women and that much of her information was inaccurate.
I realize that Nancy Grace is not the end-all of anything, but it was enough to open my eyes to bigger implications in the media field. Race and culture are things we always talk about, but race and culture are not always things we concentrate on properly in the media. Much of my current research is involved in framing and media portrayals of blacks as criminals (http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=ufh&AN=16668573&site=ehost-live) and (http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=ufh&AN=24904743&site=ehost-live) are just a couple of examples of research that I have found useful so far.
As far as the theories I have looked at regarding my topic, I have used agenda-setting theory, framing, cultural studies and gatekeeping.