A Niagara of Intemperance and Vice: Newspaper Reports on Immigrant New York, 1800–1900
ISBN: 978-1-78769-670-9, eISBN: 978-1-78769-669-3
Publication date: 30 November 2018
Abstract
This article examines the framing of immigrants in nineteenth-century New York City. A content analysis of local and national newspapers on the Lower East Side of the borough of Manhattan that included the infamous Five Points neighborhood demonstrates that the contemporaneous media narratives constructed a discourse of fear and contempt about residents of the area by emphasizing their alleged vice-ridden lifestyle. This discourse framed immigrants as a threat to the existing social order and diagnosed their moral failings on their cultural alienation. We argue that this process can be seen as an example of the exercise of symbolic power that sought to maintain existing social and cultural hierarchies by denigrating the disadvantaged sections of the population.
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Acknowledgements
Acknowledgment
The authors would like to acknowledge the research assistance of Rory Hayford and Natasha Young.
Citation
Ghatak, S. and Moran, N. (2018), "A Niagara of Intemperance and Vice: Newspaper Reports on Immigrant New York, 1800–1900", The M in CITAMS@30 (Studies in Media and Communications, Vol. 18), Emerald Publishing Limited, Leeds, pp. 81-95. https://doi.org/10.1108/S2050-206020180000018006
Publisher
:Emerald Publishing Limited
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