It wasn’t the Natives who brought violence to the protest. It was the RCMP officers, said STU criminology professor Chris McCormick.
“They brought the guns, they brought the dogs, they brought the tear gas, they brought the rubber bullets and they brought the confrontation.”
McCormick said when covering the Rexton incident, the media focused too much on the violence.
“There’s a deeper story here – a deeper story about unemployment, quality of life and entrenching on parts of the government.”
In McCormick’s cultural criminology class last week they discussed the media as a third account of crime.
“We look at how we are being sold a message – not propaganda – but it seems that there is this idea that is being sold to us, such as natives being violent.”
McCormick said the media, as a third account of crime, can skew the information given to viewers. He said the mainstream media didn’t do a fair job with the coverage of Rexton last week.
A growing trend of the use of alternative media in place of traditional media is changing the way people receive their news about events.
Alternative media is an effective way for events such as Rexton to work, said communications professor Jamie Gillies.
“With protests and localized social movements, social media and the people commenting as an event unfolds have become important ways to get information out to the larger public.”
Gillies said governments and corporations also use this tactic.
“The use of Facebook and Twitter are becoming key elements in the development of public opinion on any complex policy issue.”
In terms of mainstream and alternative media, McCormick looks at it all. And he doesn’t look at these pieces as either false or genuine but he sees the writer’s interpretation.
“So, when a writer says First Nations brought violence to the protest – that’s an interpretation. When I read or see a video of the snipers sneaking up on elders in a camp, I see a very different interpretation,” said McCormick. “I tend more to believe the second one because of my work on crime and the media. I have just too many examples of how the mainstream media disguises relationship power and disguises inequality.”
He said this occurred with Rexton.
Gillies said even though there might be some false information on social media and it might be one-sided, it is still an important part of the conversation of the social movement.
“Traditional media still matters a great deal but all sides in complex debates like shale gas exploration ignore the social media response.”
