February 5, 2016: Applications

This week in one of my communications classes I did a presentation on why some bullying victims are more newsworthy than others. In my presentation I compared two bullying victims that had been studied by the authors of the textbook for the class. Newsworthiness is dependent upon race, gender, ethnicity, etc. A white teenage girl living in a suburban area was more newsworthy than an African-American boy who people thought was gay, even though he never identified as gay. According to the book, in mainstream media, stories are more likely to be big if it is about victims that fit the role of being white and straight. There are so many different aspects to bullying, it is interesting to find what research is out there.