The perception of the african-american community through the eyes of the hispanic media in the U.S.: a discourse analysis of the reporting of the death of Michael Brown

In this paper, 36 English and 38 Spanish news articles were selected from English and Spanish newspapers and magazines published in the U.S.A. from August 2014 to November 2014. All articles discuss the death of Michael Brown, the ensuing protests and police investigations. A discourse analysis shows that there are few differences between reporting by the mainstream and the Hispanic media. Like the mainstream media, the Hispanic media adopts a neutral point of view with regard to the AfricanAmerican minority. However, it presents a negative opinion with regard to the police. It de cort, de schutter and vangehuchten: hispanic media 52 appears that the Hispanic media does not explicitly side with the African-American community, but rather agrees more with the mainstream media’s opinion and is substantially influenced by it.

In August 2014, the black teenager Michael Brown was shot by a white police officer in Ferguson.In the months afterwards, the media in the U.S. reported on many similar events and the growing social debate on this topic.This study examines how the ethnic media of the Hispanic community (this is, the Spanish-speaking community with Latin-American roots) in the U.S. reports on police violence by white police officers against the African-American community.To be more specific, the ethnic media's reporting is compared to that of the English-language mainstream media.To achieve this, a corpus was composed of English mainstream and Spanish ethnic newspaper and magazine articles, all published in a four-month period after Michael Brown's death.A discourse analysis based on the theories of Fairclough (2001) and van Dijk (2008) combined with the subdivision of social actors according to van Leeuwen (2008), was performed on this corpus in order to analyze whether the Hispanic media has a negative, positive or neutral point of view compared to the mainstream media with regard to the second most important ethnic community in the U.S., African-Americans.clac 66/2016, 51-85 de cort, de schutter and vangehuchten: hispanic media 54 Due to several reasons, such as increasing migration and the consecutive political influence of Hispanic Americans, the amount of Hispanic media in the U.S. has risen considerably over the past thirty years.In 1990, there were only fourteen daily Hispanic newspapers while in 2004, there were forty newspapers serving the Hispanic community (Wilson, Gutiérrez and Chao 2013).In that same period, the Hispanic community in the U.S. grew from 19.8 million in 1990 to almost 36 million in 2005.In their last estimate in 2013, the US Census Bureau (2015) reported that there were around 54 million Hispanics in the U.S., representing 17% of the total population.This makes the Hispanics the most important ethnic group in the U.S. The Bureau expects this number to increase to 128.8 million by 2060, meaning that the Hispanics will then represent 31% of the population.
A consequence of this increase is the capitalization of the Hispanic market by the mainstream media.To increase their profit, they often acquire Spanish media in order to integrate it into their own businesses.A few examples are the acquisition of the Spanish Telemundo by NBC or the Hoy! Newspapers by the Tribune Company.Consequently, this ensures more financial stability for the Spanish media, however a takeover can also mean that the content is more in line with the mainstream media, losing its own voice in the process (Dávila 2014).
According to Alba and Nee (2003), the term mainstream in its social meaning refers to "that part of society where the origin of ethnicity and race have a minimal impact on chances and opportunities in life".This implies that the ethnic majority in a society belongs to the mainstream, but that the ethnic majority and the mainstream are not identical.After all, the borders of mainstream society are not fixed as the newcomers who stay will eventually further expand the mainstream (Matsaganis et al., 2010).In this study, the mainstream media is defined as the media produced by and for the society's majority, where the Hispanics are not excluded.Contrarily, the Hispanic media targets only the ethnic Hispanic minority.Thanks to easier connections between migrants and their home countries and growing globalization (travelling is less expensive and faster and the Internet has improved accessibility), immigrants nowadays have more means to foster their own identities.In doing so, they create a hybrid identity because they feel connected to their home countries as well as the country they have immigrated to.These hybrid -or hyphenated-identities allow people to identify clac 66/2016, 51-85 themselves with other cultural identities, such as Chinese-American, African-American and many others (Alba & Nee, 2003).The following section presents an overview of research on the role of the media in a multicultural context related to ethnic minorities.

Media in a multicultural context
Research on intercultural communication in Western society has been expanding at the same pace as the development of the multicultural society, due to globalization and migration.With respect to the role of the media and its influence on society, a study carried out by Van Dijk back in 1987 concluded that ethnic prejudices are rarely based on personal, unique experiences or opinions, but instead formed from what people read and hear on the news.More specifically regarding immigration, Hart (2010, p. 16) states that "knowledge of certain social and political realities is not formed from first-hand experience but rather on basis of texts to which we are exposed".Furthermore, it seems that it is mainly the mainstream media that affects the public's attitude, including that of minorities, albeit often indirectly.Koller (2005, p. 205) notes that primary texts, and as such also the ideologies they contain, are discussed and distributed by secondary texts: "Commentary constitutes a secondary text which acts as a lens through which the primary one is simultaneously reified and modified".For that reason, the mainstream media has the power to decide "on the selection, extent, frequency and nature of their reporting" (Hart, 2010, p. 17) and to determine which issues are important.As a consequence, the mainstream media has an impact on the ethnic media's content.This ensures that the mainstream media unknowingly or knowingly influences the attitudes of the entire readership and, therefore, the thoughts and ideas of society.
Regarding the Hispanic community in the U.S., Wilkinson and Earle (2013) empirically investigated to what extent social, economic and political power influences the perceptions of commonality of the Hispanic community with Blacks and Whites.They state that, on the one hand, Hispanics will identify themselves more with African-Americans than whites, given their similar socio-economic background and experience with racism.On the other hand, they will also react against them, precisely because of these similar socio-economic difficulties that engender rivalry.The attitude of the Hispanics with respect to the African-American population thus seems, ambiguous, as concluded by Wilkinson and Earle (2013, p. 811): clac 66/2016, 51-85 Latinos who identify pan-ethnically and perceive commonality with other Latinos sense greater commonality with Blacks and Whites.This finding challenges previous suggestions of commonality with Black in that Latino group consciousness may actually lead to more favorable perceptions of other minority groups and the majority group.Hence, increased group consciousness among Latinos will lead to more positive views of Blacks and Whites possibly leading to more sustained coalitions between Latinos and those who have substantial social and economic power and those who have less.
The idea of "united we stand" seems to be crucial to this debate.The more Hispanics living together in the same city or place, the stronger they will feel to reach out to other communities.California and Florida are known for their large Hispanic communities.
Therefore, it can be argued that the Spanish speakers living in Los Angeles and Florida experience a greater sense of commonality with the black community in Ferguson, which will translate itself in the Hispanic reporting in these aforementioned states.The next section explains how this hypothesis will be examined.

Corpus composition
The corpus is composed of 74 online news articles published between August 2014 and November 2014, comprising 38 Spanish and 36 English articles (see appendices A and B).The English articles were chosen from well-known American newspapers and magazines such as NY Times, USA Today, LA Times, Chicago Tribune, NY Post and TIME.The Spanish articles were taken from the newspaper websites of El Nuevo Herald,Diario Las Américas,Hola Noticias,El Vocero Hispano,20 Minutos,La Opinión, Hoy Los Ángeles, Impacto USA and El Mensajero.The selection of Spanish newspapers is based on three criteria: language, location and accessibility of the website.More than 55% of Hispanics live in only three states of the United States: California, Texas and Florida (Brown & López, 2013;CDC, 2015).The Spanish newspapers used in this research are mainly from California and Florida.These states have a significant Hispanic population: respectively 14.4 million and 4.4 million Hispanics out of a total of 37.7 million and 19.1 million.In addition, the geographical clac 66/2016, 51-85 location of the selected Spanish newspapers-respectively the West and East coast-is sufficiently dispersed to expect that the local press has a certain uniqueness.
Furthermore, all databases of the newspaper websites were freely accessible and free of charge.All chosen newspapers meet the three criteria, except for El Vocero Hispano and 20 Minutos.The first is located and distributed in the state of Michigan and the latter is the American version of the Spanish 20 Minutos, which also has a Mexican edition.

Research methodology
The research methodology followed in this research is a discourse analysis based on the theories of Fairclough (2001) andvan Dijk (2008) in combination with the subdivision of social actors according to van Leeuwen (2008).Discourse analysis is known for its variety in methodological approaches.What characterizes all of them is the fact that they are not based on one conceptual frame, but rather proceed by points of interest.
"Discourse" is defined by Van Dijk as "text in context", meaning that the linguistic and narrative features of a text are always related to the social and political context wherein it was written.This relationship is dialectical or bidirectional, as confirmed by Fairclough.A discourse is influenced by the social relations, norms and conventions of the structure wherein it is produced.On the other hand, discourse is also a reality that influences this social structure.Thus, as stated by Van Dijk, a text is both a product and a producer.Within this frame, Van Leeuwen's subdivision of social actors is a research methodology that focuses on how the social participants are included or excluded in the social discourses.
In the concrete, the research methodology we followed in this study consists of three levels and will be explained in the following subsections.

Level 1: The description of the text
The description level focuses on how the Spanish and English media present and refer to the social actors of the news facts; in this case, the white majority of government officials and the African-American community.Van Leeuwen (2008)  The specific scope concerns the impersonalization of the social actors: they are presented as less general, but still belong to a large group.This impersonalisation can be obtained through genericization (example 3) with mass nouns denoting a group of people, or through collectivization (example 4) when a plural form and or a numerical clause refers to a particular group of social actors.

3.
When the decision came, the crowd was visibly upset, but many said they

Louis.]
When journalists add standard titles or rank to proper names, this is considered as honorification (example 8), whereas affiliation (example 9) explicitly mentions the social actor's position in a particular organization.On the interpretation level, the relationship between text and interaction is key.More concretely, the specific events and sociocultural knowledge of the readers will be described and examined through van Dijk's Knowledge Device (K-Device) , that "takes as input the current knowledge of speaker and calculates how much of this knowledge is already shared by recipients, consists of personal, interpersonal, group, institutional or organization, national and cultural knowledge" (as cited in Strom, 2013, p. 255). Van Dijk (2008, pp. 84-88) states that there are three types of knowledge: personal knowledge, specific social knowledge and general sociocultural knowledge; and, within these types, five different levels: K-1 to K-5.
This research focuses on the third and fourth level of the K-device, because these concern journalists and their specific readership, namely the mainstream and the Hispanic communities.specific social knowledge is accessible even for people that we do not know.Van Dijk (2008, p. 86) cites that "journalists (and many other writers) are daily confronted with the task of figuring out what their readers know even when they do not know these readers personally".The corresponding level is "K3: Assume that recipients know what we (e.g. the newspaper) told them before".Level K-4 refers to general sociocultural knowledge, which does not talk about specific events, but has a rather abstract nature.The following example explains the difference between K-3 and K-4, "assume that readers have the same sociocultural knowledge as I (we) have"."The journalist may report about new events in Iraq and such news will usually not be assumed to be known to the readers.However, the journalist does presuppose that most readers know that Iraq is a country, what a president is, what an army and soldiers are, as well as a vast amount of other 'general world knowledge'" (van Dijk, 2008, p. 87).

Level 3: The relation between interaction and social context
The third and last level of the analysis examines how texts relate to the broader sociocultural context, and how this context can influence the interpretation of a text (O'Halloran 2003).More specifically, this level focuses on how the reporting of the Hispanic media in the U.S. about police violence by white police officers is influenced by the mainstream media and its sociocultural context.Concretely, this analysis was performed on the word level, since words are the prime carrier of connotations in a text.
For the Spanish and English newspaper articles, a table with five columns was created in which all words and synonyms referring to the events (e.g.death), the acts (e.g.shot dead), the offender (e.g. the white police officer Darren Wilson), the victim (e.g. Michael Brown, the 19-year-old teen of African-American origin) and other events and people (e.g.racial riots) were categorized.Then, an explanatory dictionary that mentions possible connotations (Merriam-Webster) was used to verify whether the English words used were neutral or have a positive or negative connotation.The same procedure was followed for the Spanish words (RAE).Afterwards, the Spanish words were compared to the English terms to analyze which point of view the Spanish media adopted and whether or not it differed from the English mainstream media.

Synthesis of the three levels
Putting these three levels together resulted in an evaluation form, which was used for the analysis of all newspaper articles.An example of a filled-in evaluation form can be found in Appendix C. The results of the analyses will be discussed in the following section.

Description of the social actors
As stated in section 3.2.1, the first level of the discourse analysis, the description level, divides all social actors into three scopes: a broad, a specific and a narrow scope.The broad scope includes two categories that refer to a general class: plurals without article and singulars with article.The mainstream media refers in these categories mainly to the clac 66/2016, 51-85 de cort, de schutter and vangehuchten: hispanic media 63 people participating in the demonstrations and uses both protesters and demonstrators.
There is a small difference in meaning between the terms, since protesters describes those who protest against something, while demonstrators can also protest in favor of something.The mainstream media refers only once to the demonstrators as agitators or activists, both terms with a negative connotation because they imply a more active role in the demonstrations.Moreover, the reporters combine these terms with words such as to incite violence, armed protesters and riots.The Hispanic media, which mainly uses neutral terms, prefers the term manifestantes [demonstrators], but also uses activistas Furthermore, the focus of both types of media lies on the police force and the government as a whole.The governmental institutions are frequently mentioned in the media, and in the Hispanic corpus they even outnumber the references to the demonstrators, which may indicate that the Hispanic media considers the government responsible for the current situation.In the mainstream media, the term police is the most frequent, followed by authorities and officials.Authorities denotes the government in a general sense, while officials refers to unknown individuals or police officers as part of a larger whole.These terms appear even more frequently if the alternative forms with adjectives are included: the mainstream media distinguishes the different government powers into federal, state, local, county and government.Hence, we can deduct that the mainstream media places great importance on the official titles of the governmental institutions.The Hispanic media prefers to use the term policía [police] when referring to these governmental institutions as a whole, but also uses the synonyms agentes [cops] and policías [police officers] to refer to unknown individuals.
At the same time both the mainstream and the Hispanic media also refer to eyewitnesses, for which they mainly use the terms witnesses and testigos [witnesses].
Although these witnesses are important to the investigation, since their testimony contradicts that of Wilson, they are not further discussed in detail and remain unknown.
clac 66/2016, 51-85 de cort, de schutter and vangehuchten: hispanic media 64 When referring to the black community, both media almost exclusively use the term black/negros.These terms focus mainly on skin color, in contrary to the term African-American/Afroamericano, which emphasizes their origin.
In sum, the broad scope analysis shows that both media mainly refer to a group of social actors, such as demonstrators and police officers.Therefore, it is obvious that the Hispanic media reports are similar to the mainstream media.
The specific scope focuses on the genericization and collectivization of the social actors, as explained in section 3.2.1.In the first category, genericization, it is important to mention that both media make a clear distinction between the local police and the national authorities, since both parties started an independent investigation after Brown's death.Additionally, the term African-American/Afroamericano is used in this category by both the Hispanic and the mainstream media.Since this scope is more specific, the group of social actors becomes smaller, which leads to both media looking beyond skin color and at the hybrid identities of the social actors.In the second category, collectivization, only small differences can be observed between the Hispanic and the mainstream media.The mainstream media uses quantifiers when mentioning the demonstrators and only mentions exact numbers when they report on the number of arrests that took place.There is a small difference when comparing this information with that of the Hispanic media which uses cardinal numbers when referring to the demonstrators, as in 3.000 personas [3000 people].When mentioning the police officers, both media intertwine cardinal numbers and quantifiers.To conclude, few differences are to be noticed in the reporting of the demonstrators and police officers as social actors in the specific scope by either the mainstream or the Hispanic media Within the narrow scope, the personalization category consists of two subcategories: indetermination and determination.With regard to the indetermination subcategory, which consists of anonymous groups or individuals, it is clear that both media use indefinite articles and cardinal numbers such as some and many.The analysis shows that the demonstrators are, once more, the most frequently cited.The mainstream media refers to this group in no less than four different ways: 1) quantifier + people, 2) indefinite pronouns used as a noun, 3) indefinite article or cardinal number + protester(s), demonstrator(s) or activist(s), but also 4) as a few members of a group of people, e.g.some members of the crowd.The narrow scope also barely releases the clac 66/2016, 51-85 identities of the witnesses.A possible explanation might be that journalists often do not have a choice, given that the police do not always announce the names of the witnesses in order to protect the investigation.A second possible explanation is that some witnesses prefer to give an anonymous statement to the press in order to protect themselves from further media attention.There is no room in this country for hyphenated Americanism.When I refer to hyphenated Americans, I do not refer to naturalized Americans.
[…]The one absolutely certain way of bringing this nation to ruin, of preventing all possibility of its continuing to be a nation at all, would be to permit it to become a tangle of squabbling nationalities.(Wikipedia, 2015) The second subcategory determination in the nomination section, is similar in both media: the full name and job title of the social actor are mentioned the first time to introduce the person to the audience.The second time the social actor appears only with his last name.The NY Times exclusively uses the honorific title Mr. or Mrs. followed by the last name.Both media refer mainly to the victim and then to the offender.There is a persistent preference for only mentioning the last name, given that both social actors were introduced to the readership in the first days and weeks after the incident.
Moreover, both the mainstream and the Hispanic media refer to Michael Browns' parents and other black victims of similar incidents.The analysis shows that both media clac 66/2016, 51-85 not only mention several activists' names to epitomize the demonstrations, but also those of people who play an important political role in the investigation.When assigning titles to people, both media operate in the same way: first, they mention the corresponding title followed by the social actors' full name.Both the mainstream and Hispanic media refer to Police Chiefs and Reverends with regard to their role in society.
One possible explanation is that religion still occupies an important role in the everyday life of Americans.The Hispanic media also frequently refers to the Attorney General, since his decision is important in the Michael Brown murder investigation.Regarding the affiliation subsection, it is worthy of note that the mainstream media refers mainly to the numerous professors with expertise on similar subjects who share their point of view regarding the situation, but also refers to members of specific organizations.Contrary to the mainstream media, the Hispanic media gives more importance to these members of specific organizations.Furthermore, the Hispanic media also mentions other newspapers, such as The Washington Post and The Huffington Post.This indicates that the Hispanic articles obtain their information from the mainstream media, which might explain, once again, the few differences and the numerous similarities in reporting by both media.
The categorization section within the determination category has two subsections: functionalization and identification, based upon the occupation and identification of the social actors.With regard to functionalization, both media primarily point out police officers, and more specifically, officer Darren Wilson.For this purpose, the mainstream media uses both definite and indefinite articles, such as the officer or an officer.
Nevertheless, they do not mention any adjectives or proper nouns.The Hispanic media mainly focuses on the profession and the skin color of the police officer(s) to emphasize that the victim had a different skin color and that the police departments are too homogeneous.
In the identification subsection, with respect to classification, both mainstream and Hispanic media consider the age of the victim more important than his skin color.Both media also report repeatedly that the victim was unarmed.The second social actor is the offender Darren Wilson, whose profession and skin color are put into the spotlight, while his age is barely mentioned.For the remaining social actors, both media also primarily mention their skin color, focusing indirectly on the years of racial tension clac 66/2016, 51-85 between the blacks and whites in the US.What is also worth noticing is that the Hispanic media persistently mentions the origin of the police officers.In the relational identification subsection both media mostly refer to the family members of the victim, e.g.his mother Lesley McSpadden, who played a leading role in the memorial demonstrations.It is noticeable that the Hispanic media never mentions Michael Browns' stepfather Louis Head, while the mainstream media refers to both Browns' father and stepfather.With respect to physical identification, there are many differences.
The mainstream media focuses on the description of the local police officers and the riot police, who are described as aggressive as they carry extra weapons and wear special armour.The mainstream media also mentions the demonstrators, who nevertheless represent a minority of the examples.On the contrary, the Hispanic media focuses in this subsection on the demonstrators, and even exemplifies that they do not avoid violence or aggression.Furthermore, the Hispanic media also refers to the graduation The analysis of the narrow scope reveals that the references to the witnesses, although anonymous, are of great importance in both the mainstream and the Hispanic media as their testimonials, contradictory to Wilson's declaration, form an essential part in the investigation.Furthermore, it seems that Brown is primarily identified by his skin color and his young age.It is possible that in doing so, both media try to influence the feelings of their readers, especially those who have children themselves.With respect to the identification of the offender, the mainstream media occasionally mentions Wilsons' skin color, the main focus remaining on his profession, whereas the Hispanic media emphasizes his color.It is also noticeable that both media often mention that Brown was unarmed, while a police officer always wears his weapon on duty.On the one hand, this could create the impression that Brown was utterly powerless against Wilson, while on clac 66/2016, 51-85 the other hand the news articles doubt the reason for and the progress of the incident between the teenager and the police officer.
To conclude the analysis of the first level; the description of the text, it can be said that both the mainstream and the Hispanic media mainly focus their coverage on the demonstrators and the police officers in the events following Michael Browns' death, considering them to be opposing parties.Furthermore, since journalists choose to explicitly mention their skin color, they indirectly shift the focus to the years of tension between the whites and blacks in the US.It seems important to highlight that this is even more the case in the Hispanic media, as they systematically mention the fact that the police officers are white.Finally, no noticeable differences were observed between either media regarding the naming of the social actors.The reason for this may be that with regard to the naming of the social actors, it appears that most Hispanic media may have simply translated the mainstream media.

The analysis of the relation between text and social interaction
The second level analyses the relationship between text and interaction according to the Knowledge Device of van Dijk (2008).As stated in section 3.2.2, this research is limited to the two levels K-3 and K-4, since these levels account for journalists and a specific reader audience.The level K-3 consists of five subjects: the death of Michael Brown, the investigation, the verdict of the jury, the demonstrations and other occurrences.The first subject, namely the death of Michael Brown, is highly present in both media in the articles published shortly after the incident, but becomes gradually secondary as the focus shifts to other events brought on by Browns' death.Both the mainstream and the Hispanic media also point out that Browns' body remained in a pool of blood on the street for hours, which evokes an emotional image with their readers and indicates that the media is criticizing the police.They also emphasize that in contrast to the offender the victim was unarmed.
With respect to the second subject, there are some differences between the mainstream and the Hispanic media concerning to the way in which the investigation is referred to.
The mainstream media divides its information into four phases of examination: 1) criticism of the local police department and the start of an independent forensic investigation and autopsy by the Department of Justice, 2) a second investigation into clac 66/2016, 51-85 the possible violation of the victim's civil rights by the Ferguson police, 3) the contradictory testimonials of officers and eyewitnesses and 4) the announcement of the results of the forensic investigation from phase 1.This indicates that the mainstream media differentiates between the actions of the local police and the national government.The Hispanic media, on the contrary, seems to attach less importance to who leads the investigation, preferring to discuss the nature and the results of the investigation in greater detail.
The third subject at the K-3 level is the verdict of the jury, which is reported in greater detail in the mainstream media.Here, the mainstream articles list that the demonstrators demand the arrest of the police officer, that Wilson advocates self-defense and that the jury decides not to condemn him.The Hispanic media, on the contrary, only mentions the jury's decision not to arrest Wilson and only one article mentions that there was not enough evidence for his arrest.
The penultimate subject, the demonstrations, gets the most attention in the mainstream articles.There are both peaceful and violent demonstrations, in which the riot police was ready to interfere.The Hispanic media distinguishes between the demonstrations in the city of Ferguson and those in other American cities.In both cases, people were arrested by the police.
Lastly, this research briefly describes the other occurrences, only present in the mainstream media.These other occurrences include the suspension of a police officer from Elgin who made a negative comment on Facebook about Michael Brown; a police officer who told the story about his intervention in a family with a white father, Hispanic mother and their son who was aggressive towards the police because of what happened to Michael Brown; and the role of the media, which has the power to decide if local news becomes national news.
The analysis at K-3 level shows that the coverage of Michael Brown's death is similar, as both media provide transparent information about the circumstances in combination with a critical stance regarding the police and their examination.When it comes to the investigation, it is clear that the mainstream media focuses more on who does what, while the Hispanic media is more focused on the nature and results of the investigation.
The same is true when examining the jury's verdict: there are more details and extra clac 66/2016, 51-85 information in the mainstream articles, while the Hispanic articles only deliver the jury's verdict.A difference can be noticed when looking at the demonstrations: here, the mainstream media mainly reports on the demonstrations that occur in Ferguson, while the Hispanic media reports with a broader attitude and mentions the protests in other American cities.To conclude, the mainstream media also mention their power to influence the public opinion, in a metadiscursive occurrence.
The level K-4 refers to several elements: past news reports, institutions, factions and people, the baseball match between the San Francisco Giants and the St. Louis Cardinals, the death of other black teenagers by police officers, the ethnic composition of the police and the Ferguson community and localization.Past news reports in the mainstream media included a racial profiling report, which showed that blacks were more likely to be forced to stop at a vehicle checkpoint.Moreover, it was reported that the Obama government was not doing enough to try to calm down racial tensions and there were even rumors that it was funding the protests.The Hispanic media referred to past elections, which showed that there were many blacks and Hispanics are in national politics, while, on the contrary, their presence in local politics remained scarce.Both Furthermore, both media discuss the ethnic composition of the police departments and the Ferguson community, as the unequal distribution of power causes racial tensions.
The mainstream media focuses on the police forces who are making an effort to employ clac 66/2016, 51-85 African-American officers, but also gives sociocultural information such as the average wages, the poverty line and the unemployment figures in Ferguson.The Hispanic media does not mention exact numbers when discussing the ethnic composition in Ferguson, yet it does discuss the proportions between blacks and whites in other cities.The last subject of the K-4 level reviews the location of Ferguson and is present in both the mainstream and the Hispanic media in the same way: city name, official abbreviation (primarily in the mainstream media) or full name of the state (primarily in the Hispanic media) and sometimes followed by a broader geographical location, e.g.Ferguson, Mo., in suburban St. Louis.In some cases, the mainstream media even gives street names.
The Hispanic media, on the contrary, assumes that its readers do not have sufficient knowledge of the American cities, states and geography.Consequently, the Hispanic media occasionally mentions the country where Ferguson is located: the United States of America.
Considering the K-4 level sociocultural knowledge, there are both differences and similarities between the mainstream and the Hispanic media.The (African-)American institutions are considered familiar within the mainstream readers, while the Hispanic articles prefer to give more information about a persons' specific role orjob.The same explanation can be given when looking at the location of Ferguson, since the Hispanic media even mentions the country where the events took place, something inconceivable in the mainstream media.The baseball game between the San Francisco Giants and the St. Louis Cardinals, a national sports game, is present in both the mainstream and the Hispanic media.Moreover, similar cases with black victims are mentioned in both media since these incidents resemble the Michael Brown case.Like the K-3level, the discussion of the ethnic composition in Ferguson in the mainstream media only refers to the police force and the inhabitants of Ferguson, while the Hispanic media goes further and also examines other American cities.
In sum, with respect to the second level of analysis, it can be concluded that there are no considerable differences between the Hispanic and the mainstream media.Although they sometimes look at the news from different angles, both media emphasize the fact that Michael Brown's death is not an isolated occurence, and that the ethnic composition of the police is not representative of the society it has to operate in.
clac 66/2016, 51-85 4.3.Analysis of the explanation level The explanation level of the analysis consists of an analysis of the vocabulary used in the article for the incident, the action, the offender, the victim and the demonstrations.
The Hispanic and the mainstream media mainly refer to the incident with neutral terms, The third vocabulary element looks at all the ways of referencing the offender, to a large extent discussed in the first level of the analysis.Both the mainstream and the Hispanic media mainly focus on the offenders' position as a police officer.Additionally, the mainstream media also emphasizes the name of the offender, yet refers less to his skin color.The Hispanic media, on the contrary, repeatedly stresses the offender's skin color.
The fourth vocabulary element, the victim, shows that the name and the age of the victim are considered supremely important in both the mainstream and the Hispanic media.In this way, the media manages to the victim an identity: Michael Brown died young while he still had a long future to look forward to.Additionally, the mainstream media also mentions his skin color, while the Hispanic media refers to both his skin color and ethnic origin.Both types of media also emphasize the fact that the victim was unarmed and did not form a life-endangering threat to the police officer.
clac 66/2016, 51-85 The last vocabulary element are the demonstrations.The mainstream media distinguishes the peaceful demonstrations from the more violent protest actions.The articles mainly refer to the protesters using neutral terms, but nevertheless also use some pejorative terms such as the hotheaded troublemakers.The Hispanic media swaps from neutral terms such as las protestas [the protests] to negative terms as in los disturbios [the disturbances].Furthermore, it is remarkable that in some of the Hispanic articles, besides the term manifestantes [demonstrators], the term personas [people] is mainly used and that the word protestantes [protestors] only appears in one article.
To conclude, the analysis of the third and last level demonstrates that both the mainstream and the Hispanic media mainly prefer an objective choice of words in all cases.However, in some cases they prefer a negative term, which shows their disapproval of the situation.Both the mainstream and theHispanic media stress the importance of the job of a police officer, as well as the fact that the victim was unarmed.
Furthermore, the mainstream media emphasizes that the victim was young, while the Hispanic media focuses on the skin color of both the victim and the offender.

Discussion
The analysis of the three levels indicate that the Hispanic media's coverage in the US of black victims of police violence by white police officers is substantially similar to that of the mainstream media, apart from some subtle differences.The hypothesis that the Hispanic media would condemn the violence against African-Americans and would sympathize with the victim and his surroundings out of solidarity with the second largest minority in the United States can therefore not be corroborated, although it insists, more than its mainstream counterpart, on the black-white ethnic opposition between the victim and his offender.
One possible reason for this lack of uniqueness of the Hispanic media, could be the power of the mainstream media, which reaches the majority of the population, while the Hispanic media is much smaller and consequently has less influence.Moreover, Hispanic media enterprises are being continually procured by American media enterprises, which leads to increasing identification with the mainstream media.
Furthermore, the analysis of the knowledge device K3 and K4 shows that the clac 66/2016, 51-85 mainstream media explicitly wishes to focus the debate on the problem of racism.
Journalist Barry Latzer (Mainstream N°11, NY Post) argues that the mainstream media has the influence to decide if local news will become national news.Latzer explains, for instance, that the mainstream media did not write one word about the number of Neither the mainstream nor the Hispanic newspaper articles referred to this incident.
It seems, thus, that the extensive reporting about black police victims in the mainstream media is due to the belief that it is time American society gave racism the attention it deserves.Hence the numerous references to institutions and governments, implying that they have a great responsibility to alter the current situation.

Conclusion
This research investigated whether the perspective of the Hispanic media towards the black victims of police violence by white police officers was equal to the perspective of the mainstream media.
To investigate this, 36 mainstream and 38 Hispanic articles were analysed through a discourse analysis of the social actors, based on the theories of Fairclough (2001), van Dijk (2008) and van Leeuwen (2008).
The analysis exposed few differences between the reports of the mainstream and the Hispanic media.More concretely, the Hispanic media proved itself similar to the mainstream media by remaining neutral towards African-American society and by adopting a negative attitude towards the police.Furthermore, it became clear that the news reports from both the mainstream and the Hispanic media quickly shifted from a clac 66/2016, 51-85 Palabras clave: medios étnicos, análisis de discurso, comunidad hispánica, comunidad afroamericana, Michael Brown Contents 1. Hispanic media vs. mainstream media in the U.SThe description of the text 57 Level 2: The interpretation of the relation between text and interaction 61 Level 3: The relation between interaction and social context 62 clac 66/2016, 51-85 de cort, de schutter and vangehuchten: hispanic media 53 Synthesis of the three levels 62 4. Analyses 62 4.1.Description of the social actors 62 4.2.The analysis of the relation between text and social interaction media vs. mainstream media in the U.S.
200 efectivos de la Guardia Nacional-fuerza conformada por militares de la reserva y que se utiliza para contener emergencias-acudieron el martes a Ferguson para ayudar a la policía a reprimir los actos de violencia.(Hispanic N°1, El Nuevo Herald) [About 2,200 members of the National Guard-a force assembled of soldiers from the military reserve used to contain emergenciescame on Tuesday to help police quell the violence.]Finally, a social actor is classified into the narrow scope if it refers to just one person or to some-often unknown-persons.The first process is indetermination through which (examples 5 and 6), groups or individuals are presented anonymously or are not referred to in a specific way."Indetermination is typically realized by indefinite pronouns ('somebody,' 'someone,' 'some,' 'some people') used in nominal function[…]  and can also be aggregated, as, for example in 'many believe…,' 'some say…,'" (vanLeeuwen,   2008, p. 39).ese relato y aseguran que el joven, al que su familia describe como tranquilo, tenía las manos en alto cuando el agente le disparó en repetidas ocasiones.(Hispanic N°6, 20 Minutos) [Some witnesses deny that story and say that the young man, whose family described him as calm, had his hands up when the officer shot him repeatedly.]Thedetermination or individualization of social actors is achieved in two different ways.People are introduced as unique individuals (nomination) or more in terms of identity and functions they share with other social actors (categorization)(van Leeuwen,   2008, 40).Nomination entails mentioning the person's name.The proper names (examples 7a and 7b) are subdivided into a formal, semi-formal or informal address.7 a. Brown was shot and wounded when reaching into the vehicle, then fatally shot after the officer exited.(Mainstream N°11, NY Post) b. "Todo lo que quiero es paz", dijo Michael Brown Sr. el domingo durante un evento por la paz en St. Louis.(Hispanic N°30, El Mensajero) ["All I want is peace", said Michael Brown Sr. this Sunday during an event for peace in St.
Jesse L. Jackson arrived at the protest on Friday night.(Mainstream N°25, NY Times) 9. Según explicó Lamont Cole, director de iniciativas y desarrollo educativo para la organización Urban League, que se dedica a ofrecer apoyo, recursos y educación para la comunidad afroamericana e hispana, manifestó que el incidente de Michael Brown es la historia repitiéndose.(Hispanic N°14, El Vocero Hispano) [Lamont Cole, Director of Development and Educational Initiatives for the Urban League which provides support, resources and education for African-American and Hispanic communities, said that the Michael Brown incident is history repeating itself.]clac 66/2016, 51-85 de cort, de schutter and vangehuchten: hispanic media 60 When social actors are not nominalized, they are categorized and presented according to their job activity (functionalization) or personal characteristics (identification) (van Leeuwen, 2008).According to van Leeuwen, the journalist opted for functionalization in example 10, defining the social actor based on what he does rather than who he is.10.The medical examiner for the St. Louis County is investigating to determine how many times Mr. Brown was shot, the police said.(Mainstream N°24, NY Times) Identification distinguishes three types: classification, relational identification and physical identification.The first type classifies the social actors by age, sex, race, religion, ethnicity or social and legal status (example 11).The media can emphasize personal and family relationships (example 12) to evoke the readers' sympathy and empathy.They are often paired with possessive determiners to indicate the relationship between social actors, "signify the 'belonging together,' the 'relationality' of the possessivated and possessing social actors" (van Leeuwen, 2008, p. 43).Other possibilities are the genitive -s or relative clauses.11.Michael Brown, un joven afroamericano de 18 años, falleció el pasado sábado en Ferguson, Misuri, a manos de un policía cuando estaba desarmado.(Hispanic N°6, 20 Minutos) [Michael Brown, a young African-American of 18 years old, died last Saturday in Ferguson, Missouri, at the hands of a policeman when he was unarmed.]12. Her daughter Deja, Michael's sister, leaned on her shoulder as a cousin, Eric Davis, described the family's anger at the Ferguson police, who he said called today for the first TIME.(Mainstream N°32, TIME) The third possibility are references to the social actors' physical characteristics (example 13), but this often carries connotations placing the person indirectly into a certain category.Van Leeuwen (2008) emphasizes that "the borderline between physical identification and classification is therefore far from clear-cut, as is obvious from the use of skin color for classification, or from the connotations inherent in representations of women as 'blondes' or 'redheads'".clac 66/2016, 51-85 de cort, de schutter and vangehuchten: hispanic media 61 13. "Están intentando asustarnos", indicó a Efe un manifestante encapuchado y con el rostro parcialmente cubierto.(Hispanic N°3, Hoy Los Ángeles) ["They are trying to scare us", said a hooded protester with his face partially covered.]Level 2: The interpretation of the relation between text and interaction

[
activists].According to the Real Academia Española (RAE), the term manifestantes [demonstrators] is more passive: it consists of people who simply participate in the manifestation.Activistas [activists] are, on the contrary, more active and consist of people who participate actively in the demonstrations and are prepared to use violence to impose their (political) vision.
gown which Michael Brown was wearing and to Thomas Jackson, the Ferguson police chief who appeared in his civilian clothes while giving a press conference.Another description worthy of note is that of the black demonstrators who support Wilson, which is contradictory to the other demonstrators in which both black and white were demonstrating against Wilson.According to the Hispanic N°17 article, El Vocero Hispano, the demonstrators supporting Wilson were wearing black T-shirts with the slogan "Yo soy Darren Wilson" ["I am Darren Wilson"].
media also refer to institutions, factions and people who -especially in the Hispanic media-are given extra background information as an introduction.The mainstream media assumes that many of these groups and factions are well-known to its audience, e.g.NAACP [National Association for the Advancement of Colored People], and therefore leaves out the extra information.Furthermore, both the Hispanic and mainstream media mention the baseball game between the San Francisco Giants and the St. Louis Cardinals, since they feared that protestors were planning to organize a demonstration at the stadium.The next element of the K-4 level is the death of other black teenagers by police officers.This element is highly present in both the mainstream and the Hispanic media, since there were many similarities between the cases of MichaelBrown (2014), Trayvon Martin (2012), Eric Garner (2014) and Vonderrit   Myers Jr. (2014).The death of the black teenager Vonderrit Myers Jr. gave rise to a new series of protests, since it happened shortly after the death of Michael Brown.
such as the shooting or el tiroteo [the shooting].These terms give more information about what exactly happened, and gives the articles the opportunity to express the cause of death in one word.References such as the killing and el asesinato [the murder] on the contrary are less neutral and considered pejorative.Furthermore, more vague terms appear, such as the incident or el caso [the case].Both the mainstream and the Hispanic media also use negative terms, in which the adjectives show they disapprove of the events, e.g. the coldblooded execution or un polémico caso [a controversial case].As for the action words, the analysis of the verbs proves that both the mainstream and the Hispanic media strongly resemble each other.They mainly use neutral verbs that can be divided into three perspectives.The first perspective is that of the victim, in which verbs such as died and morir [to die] are used.The second perspective looks at the situation through the eyes of the offender, with the emphasis on the killing, with the verbs to kill or matar [to kill].The third and last perspective emphasizes the way in which the victim died with verbs such as to be shot or ser tiroteado [to be shot].
wounded or deceased police officers in the United States, which according to the Dutch NRC Handelsblad has increased from 27 police officers in 2013 to 51 officers in 2014 (Van der Hee, 11 May 2015).Thus, the mainstream media prefers to give the Brown case extra attention by comparing it to similar cases.On the other hand, the mainstream media does not report about reversed situations in which white victims die following police violence by black police officers.On August 11 th 2014, only two days after Michael Browns' death, the white teenager Dillon Taylor was shot in Utah by a black police officer who thought the victim was armed.Even though this case can be compared to that of Brown in many ways, the news only appeared in the local press.
The only name widely known is Dorian Johnson, the boy walking next to Michael Brown at the moment of the incident, because he decided to give an interview to tell his side of the story.Furthermore, the Hispanic media often uses the quantifiers algunos [some], otros [others], aquellos [those], varios [several] and muchos [many] to refer to random people.In addition, the indefinite article un [a(n)] appears various times, e.g.Adam, un residente de 25 años [Adam, a 25-yearold resident of], in which the first name and the age of the person is given, but the individual still remains anonymous.He is only one of the residents of the village, an 'average Joe'.Moreover, here again, the mainstream media prefers to use a persons' hyphenated identity instead of referring to skin color, which might indicate that the usage of the term African-American is now generally accepted in American society, in spite of the fact that it was rejected in the past by several important American politicians, among whom the former President of the United States Theodore Roosevelt, who declared in 1915: