Protecting Teachers or Protecting Children? Media Representations of Vergara v. California

• In Event: 72.038 - Framing Educational Discourse in Contested Political Terrains

Abstract

Over the past five years, the laws governing teachers’ employment have been at the center of legal and political challenges across the United States. One of these is the case of Vergara v. California, a lawsuit challenging a set of California state statutes that provide employment protections for teachers. Drawing on the theory of political spectacle, we conducted a media content analysis of the 72 national and California print news media articles about the Vergara case published between May 2012 and early November 2014. We assess how metaphors and the illusion of rationality functioned within these print news media articles to present a largely one-sided perspective of the lawsuit that was aligned with the student plaintiffs’ claims.

Authors

• Jeanne M. Powers, Arizona State University

• Kathryn P. Chapman, Arizona State University - Tempe