Sunday, October 19, 2014

Invisible Narr


Before discussing invisible narratives with the class, I wasn't aware of how common they actually are.  Due to the fact that everything that is said has some sort of ideology behind it, it makes it almost impossible for language not to come across a certain way.  When discussing where we see invisible narratives, the news channels were brought up.  The news is a great example because they are so biased, almost every story or report is crafted to send a certain message to the viewer. Many of these invisible narratives involve race and crime, two people who commit the same crime but are from different races will be portrayed differently on the news.  


Why is this? Because ideologies about race are so instilled into American culture, it is almost impossible to escape this  mindset. Therefore, our beliefs and opinions are reflected in everything we do and say.  This isn’t always necessarily a bad thing but it steers viewers away from the heart of the issue if everything is one-sided.Now when I tune into the news I’m more aware of the words that are chosen and how exactly they’re being used.  In doing so I’ve realized that the media is even more twisted than I originally thought. 

People tune into the news to learn about what is happening in their community, country and the world, and it’s a bit unfair when a story is being swindled to satisfy the news outlet.  I’ve learned that It’s important to be aware of how someone says something and why it is being said. There are so many ways in which to deliver one message and I was able to witness this firsthand when we were given the option to rewrite our articles as a fable.  By manipulating the text but maintaining the content I was able to see how a text can be altered and shifted to fit the authors perspective.

3 comments:

  1. Same here. I was never really aware of invisible narratives. I have no idea if its because I am actually used to being oppressed in that way or just that i never cared. But now that we have actually sat and analyzed different things in search of IN i see that almost everything does even the news. You make a great point news ire one sided and can even be racist. It makes it so hard to find good news now in days because news are biased.

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  2. The "news" is the WORST. I heard a statistic recently that something like 60% of what you hear on Fox is completely false, and something like 40% of what you hear on MSNBC is completely false. Terrifying.

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  3. I hate the news! Haven't watched the news in years since I found out how fake it was. Spanish news is pretty bad. I always tell my mom to change it because they know what attracts the most to the latino viewers is what's happening in the hollywood, famous people world, really sad. Every news station has it's specific views and knows what will attract their viewers and what's hot out there. Like the big topic now is Ebola. I sometimes see the news like a fashion magazine with a big ol' title saying "What's Hot Now". To get the real deal a person has to do their own search. Al Jazeera is a good website

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