Location
CCI Auditorium, 321 Communications Building
Abstract
Terms such as “rags to riches,” “Horatio Alger,“ and pulling one’s self up by one’s “own bootstraps” are important to American self-identity. Several analyses, however, show social and economic mobility in the United States is in trouble. It is less frequent than in past generations, the U. S. now trails many nations in measures of movement, and one mechanism of mobility, education, is losing its effectiveness in that regard.
The researcher conducted a content analysis regarding social mobility terms in transcripts from NBC Nightly News, CBS Evening News, ABC World News, MSNBC and Fox News. By various measures U. S. TV news almost exclusively presented unchallenged the mythology of mobility, rather than any debunking of it. What little debunking occurred largely was on MSNBC. Both MSNBC and Fox frequently presented social and economic mobility (and persons who are examples of it) in partisan terms, while network TV newscasts did not.
Included in
Broadcast and Video Studies Commons, Journalism Studies Commons, Mass Communication Commons
Horatio Alger is Dying: Has U. S. TV News Noticed?
CCI Auditorium, 321 Communications Building
Terms such as “rags to riches,” “Horatio Alger,“ and pulling one’s self up by one’s “own bootstraps” are important to American self-identity. Several analyses, however, show social and economic mobility in the United States is in trouble. It is less frequent than in past generations, the U. S. now trails many nations in measures of movement, and one mechanism of mobility, education, is losing its effectiveness in that regard.
The researcher conducted a content analysis regarding social mobility terms in transcripts from NBC Nightly News, CBS Evening News, ABC World News, MSNBC and Fox News. By various measures U. S. TV news almost exclusively presented unchallenged the mythology of mobility, rather than any debunking of it. What little debunking occurred largely was on MSNBC. Both MSNBC and Fox frequently presented social and economic mobility (and persons who are examples of it) in partisan terms, while network TV newscasts did not.