Latinos in the Media

In this article we offer a detailed examination of CNN's documentary Latino in America and of the ways in which a particular group of viewers responded to it. Our goal is to show how we can explore the nature of hegemonic processes in a way that more fully incorporates the role of material reality in the reproduction of a particular social order. Thus, our analysis will shed light on how the material conditions of a specific segment of the Latino population interact with the dominant representations of this group in ways that need further exploration. As this analysis shows, a closer look at this interaction reveals that the embracement—or not—of the ideological messages embedded in a particular text is not only based on the rhetorical aspects of these messages, but also on the extent to which their implications are in consonance with the material needs, wants, and priorities of those interpellated by it.

Given the popularity of comedy, humor is an important avenue for examining the racial=ethnic stereotyping effects. Grounded in social identity theory, this study explores the effects of stereotypical comedy on Latino audiences. A 2 Â 2 Â 2 factorial experiment was conducted to explore how Latino participants' (N ¼ 150) racial=ethnic identification level (high=low) and comedians' race=ethnicity (Latino=White) influence evaluations of a target alleged offender (Latino=White) in subsequent scenarios. Findings revealed that participants rated the comedy more favorably when the comedian was Latino compared to when the comedian was White. Moreover, participants with high levels of racial=ethnic identification rated the comedy script as significantly more stereotypical and the White target alleged offender as significantly more culpable than the Latino alleged offender.

The portrayal of salsa dance on So You Think You Can Dance relies on stereotypical tropes long employed to depict Latinxs in media and popular culture. Viewers receive these racialized narratives through three lenses: dance performance, reality television, and social media. The show utilizes the commodification of salsa as a cultural product in a neoliberal context to render this imagined version of Latinx identity profitable. This commodification skews the power relationship between those who profit from the culture of marginalized groups and those who create that culture. Yet salsa has powerful meanings beyond the narrow descriptors the show employs.

During the 2014 fiscal year, the United States saw a dramatic increase in Latin@ child immigration in hopes of parent-child reunification. The United States mainstream media reacted by reporting heavily on the child arrivals during the summer of 2014. The current study follows a Critical Discourse Studies approach to unveil the ideologies communicated through this media coverage by analyzing the lexical and grammatical representation of Latin@ immigrant children in two of the most read newspapers nationwide: The New York Times and the Los Angeles Times. The results corroborate many previous studies concerning the representation of immigrants in mainstream media by demonstrating how the use of a water-based lexicon and particular verbal processes of members of the majority group vis-à-vis immigrant children communicates an ideology of dealing with and removing the 'problem', rather than, for example, providing aid to the children.

This article traces the conditions that made possible the legislation of police surveillance of schools as a “solution” to the “problems” of convivencia in school, during a period of social and racial diversification of Spanish society. During the 1980s and 1990s, convivencia—the ideal of living together in harmony–served as a discourse for producing a new imaginary of conviviality in a new liberal-democratic political culture after a long dictatorship. However, since 2000, the “problem” of convivencia reassembled in Spain’s public sphere as a “problem” of diversity, violence, and public safety. But what is it about convivencia in diverse schools and society that has made it seem reasonable to have police surveil schools and students as a solution to the “problems” of convivencia?  Through the critical encounter of historical and ethnographic analysis of educational policy and printed media, I interrogate the notion of convivencia by tracing the ways in which “problems” of convivencia have been deployed in Spain’s cultural politics to produce and differentiate citizens both within and outside the educational field. I argue that convivencia has functioned as a moving target in forming the ideal citizen and has embedded a division that differentiates human bodies by gendering and racializing their attributes through a civilizing agenda.

The contributors to this edited volume by mostly young Millennial and Generation X Caribbean Latinos, who mostly define themselves as non-white or “black,” discuss the issue of white Latino privilege as it operates in the United States, the Spanish-speaking Caribbean and the rest of Latino America with a focus on academia, politics, family relations, dating, housing and other areas in addition to advertising, fashion, television, film, marketing and media in general.

The underrepresentation and misrepresentation of Latina/os on U.S. English-language television dates back several decades to the beginning of TV programming, and has been documented by media scholars. As television series become more culturally diverse, the images of Latina/o families are gradually becoming more multidimensional to reflect their bicultural, and often bilingual, lifestyle with a greater sense of authenticity. However, the degree to which Latina/o Americans choose to interact with Latina/o culture or with the Spanish language varies depending on their generation and how assimilated they are into American culture. This is very relevant to the success of the hit CW show Jane the Virgin. The series presents viewers with contrasting Latina perspectives in its depiction of the Villanueva women. While they are all part of the same bicultural, bilingual family, the women represent different views on topics like religion, immigration, gender norms, and sexuality, which influence the way that they act in certain situations. Through a textual analysis of select episodes from seasons 1 and 2 of the show, this thesis report illustrates the highly intersectional nature of Latina gender and cultural identity in Jane the Virgin and for U.S. Latinas more generally. An exploration of this topic through discourse analysis also demonstrates how the show is unique in its treatment of a Latina/o multigenerational family that allows for both Latina/o and non-Latina/o viewers to identify with its characters.

This essay analyzes the hypermedia staging of the late Puerto Rican boxer and former world champion Héctor "Macho" Camacho (1962-2012) through four decades of sporting and artistic career-80, 90 and 00-where the boxer toured the ring and he entered the world of entertainment as a dancer, entertainer and object of study of special series. The article looks at Camacho's cultural transfiguration, a concept that reinterprets the anthropological notion of cultural transfiguration (Bartolomé, 2008) defined as the process of adopting material and symbolic features of the surrounding society and its reformulation within a new context to do so, intelligible. In the case of Héctor "Macho" Camacho, the socio-cultural contexts and the hypermedia platforms in which his image circulates complicate the transfiguration process. In this way, the inventory of material and / or symbolic features varies, depending on the circularity of this between Puerto Rico and its diasporas, especially New York and Miami, places where the boxer lived part of his life. On the other hand, this project investigates the narratives that occur in spaces that challenge and reproduce simultaneously, class inequality and ethnoracial exclusion of the racialized colonial subject, embodied in the figure of Héctor "Macho" Camacho articulated sometimes Boricua, to sometimes Nuyorican, sometimes Latino, sometimes all of the above

Developments in contemporary Latina/os media are the result not only of an exponential­ ly growing Latina/o population in the United States but also of the synergy between trans­ formations in the global political economy and the emergence of new media platforms for production, distribution, and consumption. To reflect upon the emergence of the industry is to consider the politics of the labeling of the Latina/o community and the eventual con­ figuration of a market audience. It also requires a confrontation with the cultural history of representations and stereotypes of Latina/os, particularly in radio, TV, film, and the in­ternet, and the transnational aesthetics and dynamics of media produced by and/or for Latina/os in the United States. If the notion of media revolves around a technological means of communication, it also encompasses the practices and institutions from within which the Latina/o communities are imagined, produced, and consumed. At the start of the 21st century, the idea of Latina/os in media revolved around a handful of Latina/o stars in Hollywood who often performed stereotypical representations, a racialized and marginal Spanish-language radio industry, and two Spanish television networks, Univi­sion and Telemundo. A more complex constellation of representations has evolved in both mainstream and Spanish-language media, among them new platforms for production and resistance, including social media (e.g., Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat), radio podcasts and streaming services (e.g., Hulu and Netflix), and a more active and engaged audience that consumes media in Spanish, English, and even Spanglish.

This paper studies Netflix’s algorithm of prediction, recommendation and mediation to promote audiovisual consumption and symbolic mediation of Latino images in global markets. I explore some of the mechanisms used by Netflix for cultural symbolic construction of a global, transnational, Latino discourse. I focus on Netflix’s audience engagement through the appropriation of Telenovelas’ operating rules for the development of a global transnational community of producers and consumers which reuse the elaborate production and interpretative process of Latino codes, meanings and contents. I argue that Latino culture, through its diverse cultural contacts functioning like a global Rio Grande, serves Netflix as a mechanism of textual production, distribution and consumption that operates through the conflicts between three latino global market geographies.