Conflation and Misrepresentation in News Coverage of Politicized School Board Issues

• In Event: School Districts in Precarious Times: The Extreme Politicization of School Board Governance and the Superintendency

Abstract

Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to examine how media coverage of school board policies conflated COVID-19, critical race theory (CRT) , and LGBTQ+ issues. We discuss how agitators who spoke at school board meetings, school board members, and politicians obscured issues of masking and CRT through issue conflation, and draw attention to how such conflation can perpetuate inequitable educational conditions for students. We also examine how misrepresentation of parents occurred through discursive practices that emphasized the voices of those against CRT in schools and in support of book bans.

Theoretical Framework
Our study is grounded in critical discourse analysis (CDA; Fairclough, 1989; Gee, 2011; Luke, 1996; van Dijk, 2003) and its commitment to examining language alongside ideology. Considering the ideology of language, Luke (1996) explained that, “all texts are normative, shaping, and constructing rather than simply reflecting and describing” (pp. 18-19). This framework allowed us to identify instances of issue conflation in news media coverage.

Methods
This paper is part of a larger study where we conducted a qualitative CDA ( van Dijk, 2005) to analyze publicly available newspaper coverage of school board decisions related to masking and CRT. Coverage of LGBTQ+ issues also surfaced in our data sources, which allowed us to identify the conflation of issues. We focused on Texas and Arizona, two states that represent the locale of the research team participants, and localities where state governments have been particularly vocal about school board policies. To focus on the narratives and discursive strategies that were most widespread, we included the newspapers in these states with the largest readership–The Houston Chronicle and The Arizona Republic. Additionally, we looked to news outlets New York Times and New York Post to examine how discursive strategies in national media contrasted or reinforced the narratives that were being told at the local levels.

Preliminary Results
We found that issue conflation in newspaper coverage occurred in the following ways: 1) CRT, LGBTQ+ issues, and COVID-19 precautions; 2) diversity, equity, social justice, and CRT; 3) sexuality, gender, and LGBTQ+ communities; and, 4) discussion of parents/parental concerns that ignored racial and ideological differences (e.g, through debates around book bans). Boykoff (2011) argued that, “issue conflation squanders opportunities to provide critical inputs for more informed decision-making…” (p. 58). We found that through issue conflation, hegemonic perspectives received more media attention.

Scholarly Significance
Soroka and Wleizen determined that “media attention is a source or indicator of the public salience of issues, where the greater the attention, the greater the salience” (p. 8). This media attention connects directly to agenda-setting and policy framing (Soroka and Wlezien, 2018, pp. 8-10). In their analysis of anti-CRT efforts, Pollock et al. (2022), found that media coverage framed CRT in various ways, including the use of caricatures, combative language, and conflation with “mask”, “equity”, “antiracism, “cultural competence” and LGBTQ rights. Through addressing issues of conflation and media framing, this paper provides a crucial critical analysis of the stories shared via mainstream media which impact educational policy priorities.

Authors

• Alfonso Ayala, University of Texas at Austin

• Ruth María López, University of Arizona

• Justine Dacia Parnell, Arizona State University