Susan Dente Ross

Gambling with Identity: Self-Representation of American Indians on Official Tribal Websites

This analysis of 224 official American Indian websites examines how tribes with the incentive to attract tourists to casino gambling represent their identities on the Internet. The framing analysis found that nearly 4 out of 10 tribes with casinos represent their own identities using the historic relic frame—primarily relying on the exotic Other, such as tepees and stoic chiefs in headdresses, locked in the past. In contrast, only 1 in 10 of the tribes without casinos communicates the same identity, instead being more likely to display a voiced participant frame of modern images and assertions of sovereignty and resistance. Implications for ethnic tourism are discussed, including the continued marginalization and stereotyping of American Indians, in this case, by American Indians themselves.

Trial by media?: Media reliance, knowledge of crime and perception of criminal defendants

Previous research has linked extensive news media coverage of crimes and the criminal process to pretrial jury bias against defendants. Most research, however, has tested the effects of reading fab...

They Are Not Us: Framing of American Indians by the Boston Globe

This framing analysis of news, feature, and editorial texts identified the frames used to depict American Indians in the Boston Globe from 1999–2001. The results suggest that stereotypical good and bad Indian depictions are less frequent than in turn-of-the-century media but emerge more subtly through frames of degraded and historic relic Indians. Thus, whereas contemporary mores have produced a newspaper largely devoid of the most flagrant narratives of denigration that prevailed a century ago, todays newspaper continues to de-humanize and silence American Indians as it gives voice to the dominant culture. Furthermore, differences among the frames across story types support theories that structure and organization influence content frames.

“Their Rising Voices”: A Study of Civil Rights, Social Movements, and Advertising in the New York Times

This content analysis of the New York Times and review of NAACP records documents strategic use of advertising in the New York Times by the civil rights movement between 1955 and 1961. The advertisements are scrutinized in light of theories of social movements, communication, and sociology, and the history of the civil rights movement. The ads framed the civil rights movement to prime the audience to receive radical messages from marginalized speakers, to encourage media legitimization of the movement, to popularize movement goals, and to mobilize support and resources beyond the South.

Silenced Students: The Uncertain but Extensive Power of School Officials to Control Student Expression

This study scrutinizes two years of federal court of appeals school speech rulings in light of two recent Supreme Court decisions applying public forum analysis to determine the limits of government authority over student speech. The author found appeals courts have not uniformly applied public forum analysis nor have they consistently applied alternative tests. Instead, the courts have viewed school expression from widely discrepant contrast spaces that yield widely divergent outcomes. This area of the law will become more coherent when the courts consistently view schools as laboratories of democracy and evaluate school expression from the perspective of student liberty.

An Apologia To Radical Dissent And A Supreme Court Test To Protect It

Some framers of the Constitution of the United States, scholars and Supreme Court justices have argued that protection and encouragement of democratic deliberation are at the core purpose of the First Amendment. Most of these individuals would, nevertheless, exclude radical political dissent from constitutional protection. They seem to disagree with Thomas Jefferson, who believed in the salutary effects of revolutionary speech and even the occasional revolution. Government action targeting terrorist speech and association extends from this reasoning. This article argues that extreme political speech has benefit to society. Building on a varied body of First Amendment opinions, the author proposes a five-part test to better protect the radical speech vital to self-government and the search for truth.

In The Shadow Of Terror: The Illusive First Amendment Rights Of Aliens

Despite a sustained period of peace and prosperity in the United States, Congress has enacted considerable anti-terrorism legislation, which-like past laws based in fear of foreign threats to the national security-erodes freedom of expression. This article provides a political, historical and legal background before examining this legislation and its application in cases affecting the rights of First Amendment claimants. The article finds that most courts, including the United States Supreme Court, have tended to use a formulaic strict scrutiny analysis of the legislation that endorses the governments position that, for example, the Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act of 1996, is a content-neutral response to the important interest in reducing the threat of terrorism. The article argues that the courts instead should adopt an analysis based on the real intent and discriminatory effects of the law to find it is impermissibly content based, overbroad and vague.

Doors to diversity: The first amendment implications of telephone company video options under the telecommunications act of 1996

Video market entry options available to telephone companies under the Telecommunications Act of 1996 have First Amendment implications that will affect the constitutional value of telephone video. These entry options impose regulatory constraints upon providers and differ in potentials for provider speech, speaker access, and content diversity. The author concludes that the Acts open video system option best advances First Amendment interests in increased diversity of and access to speech.

The “strange power of speech”: The unprecedented but limited success of telephone company First Amendment arguments

The Telecommunications Act of 1996 rendered moot recent successful telephone company constitutional challenges to the Cable Act ban on telephone company provision of video. The cases, however, suggest the “strange power”; of the First Amendment to shatter well‐established structural regulations and present evidence that well‐heeled actors can gain through the courts regulatory concessions not readily attainable from Congress or the FCC. Neither precedent nor logic supports these court rulings, which eliminated economic regulation based upon speculative First Amendment gains rather than upon demonstrated abridgments of speech or changes in the video market