The Failure of a Dream: A Critical Discourse Analysis of Television News Coverage of the DREAM Act of 2010

• In Event: Latino Immigrant Educational Experiences Across the Life Course: A Multidisciplinary Approach

Abstract

I examine the television news coverage of the Development, Relief, and Education for Alien Minors (DREAM) Act of 2010, a failed proposed policy that would have increased higher education access and created a path to legal residency for young undocumented immigrants in the United States. Following the 1982 Plyler v. Doe Supreme Court decision, undocumented children gained the right to a free public education in the United States (Olivas, 2012), but their immigration status and access to higher education were not addressed (López, 2004). In response to uncertainty faced by thousands of undocumented students upon high school graduation each year, the DREAM Act was introduced to Congress in 2001, and repeatedly over the decade that followed. Considering Haas’s (2004) argument that media influence how education policy issues come to be understood by the public, I examined the discursive practices used by television networks to frame the DREAM Act. These finding have implications for how such policies might not only be understood by educators, families, and students, but also implemented by educational institutions.

Omi and Winant’s (1994) theory of racial formation and Bonilla-Silva’s (2014) frames of color-blind racism provided the theoretical lens for examining immigration as a racial issue (Pérez Huber, 2009). Concomitantly, I used multimodal (Kress, 2011) critical discourse analysis (CDA) (Luke, 1996; van Dijk, 2002, 2003) to ground my methods. In this comparative analysis, I critically examined the visuals, texts, spoken words, and audio (Altheide, 1996; Erickson, 2006; Kress, 2011; Santa Ana, 2013) of 120 news stories from eight English- and Spanish-language networks.

I found that the DREAM Act was framed as both an immigration and education policy. On English-language news, it was often presented as “amnesty” for a population socially constructed (Schneider & Ingram, 1993) as undeserving of rights. Other common themes on these networks were arguments that securing the border should be the priority of the DREAM Act and communicating myths that made the policy appear unjustified. In turn, arguments in support of the DREAM Act as well as first-hand perspectives from the impacted population were more likely on Spanish-language networks. These networks also presented the “other side,” something that occurred only a handful of times on English-language news.

Patricia Hill Collins (2009) argues that people look to media as “another kind of public education” (p. 176). The education that the public received about the DREAM Act varied depending on the source. Comparatively speaking, English-language and Spanish-language news presented a completely different story to their viewers. Seven years after the failure of the DREAM Act in Congress, policies that could impact the educational opportunities and immigration status of undocumented students continue to be at the center of public debates. This public education through media is not only a source of information, but also promotes ideologies about immigrants, affecting whether people support or oppose policies such as the DREAM Act. This paper highlights the importance of critically examining and responding to media sources when they present policy information that directly impacts the lives of students, families, and communities.

Author

• Ruth María Lopez, University of Houston