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The Media-Driven Moral Panic and Double Consciousness of the Tamil Diaspora in Canada

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The Media-Driven Moral Panic and Double Consciousness of the Tamil Diaspora in Canada Boat People and Terrorists The media-driven moral panic and double consciousness of the Tamil diaspora in Canada by Ryan Boyd A thesis submitted to the Faculty of Graduate and Postdoctoral Affairs in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master o f Arts in Sociology Carleton University Ottawa, Ontario ©2012, Ryan Boyd Library and Archives Bibliotheque et Canada Archives Canada Published Heritage Direction du 1+1Branch Patrimoine de I'edition 395 Wellington Street 395, rue Wellington Ottawa ON K1A0N4 Ottawa ON K1A 0N4 Canada Canada Your file Votre reference ISBN: 978-0-494-93564-4 Our file Notre reference ISBN: 978-0-494-93564-4 NOTICE: AVIS: The author has granted a non­ L'auteur a accorde une licence non exclusive exclusive license allowing Library and permettant a la Bibliotheque et Archives Archives Canada to reproduce, Canada de reproduire, publier, archiver, publish, archive, preserve, conserve, sauvegarder, conserver, transmettre au public communicate to the public by par telecommunication ou par I'lnternet, preter, telecommunication or on the Internet, distribuer et vendre des theses partout dans le loan, distrbute and sell theses monde, a des fins commerciales ou autres, sur worldwide, for commercial or non­ support microforme, papier, electronique et/ou commercial purposes, in microform, autres formats. paper, electronic and/or any other formats. The author retains copyright L'auteur conserve la propriete du droit d'auteur ownership and moral rights in this et des droits moraux qui protege cette these. Ni thesis. Neither the thesis nor la these ni des extraits substantiels de celle-ci substantial extracts from it may be ne doivent etre imprimes ou autrement printed or otherwise reproduced reproduits sans son autorisation. without the author's permission. In compliance with the Canadian Conformement a la loi canadienne sur la Privacy Act some supporting forms protection de la vie privee, quelques may have been removed from this formulaires secondaires ont ete enleves de thesis. cette these. While these forms may be included Bien que ces formulaires aient inclus dans in the document page count, their la pagination, il n'y aura aucun contenu removal does not represent any loss manquant. of content from the thesis. Canada Abstract This thesis is a study of how Tamil people have been stigmatized in Canadian newspapers and its effects on Tamil youth. This research focuses on two key periods of newspaper coverage for the Tamil diaspora in Canada: protests in Toronto during May 2009 and the landing of the MV Sim Sea in August 2010. Tamil activists and migrants were frequendy conflated with Tamil Tiger terrorists and were framed as “bad immigrants” in contrast with “good immigrants” or “law-abiding citizens”; these attributes were often applied to the majority of the Tamil diaspora. Expanding moral panic theory, this study contributes the element of legacy as a key in establishing modem moral panic, with an emphasis on its lasting effects. In particular, this is the proposal of Bill C-4 (later Bill C-49) and double consciousness evident in discussions with Tamil youth. These youth explained that they sometimes felt pulled between their Canadian and Tamil identities, judged themselves through the eyes of others, and profiled other Tamils based on crystallized stereotypes, all of which were dimensions present in the newspaper coverage. Contents Abstract ii 1 Introduction 1 1.1 Introduction 1 1.2 Theoretical and methodological approaches 2 1.3 Findings 4 1.4 Motivations 6 1.5 Project map 8 2 Theory and Literature Review 10 2.1 Moral Panic, definitely not a Cohen-cidence 11 2.2 More moralpanic principles 23 2.3 The jive elements of Moral Panics 27 2.4 Legacies 31 3 M ethodology 41 3.1 Social constructionism 41 3.2 Timelines and newspapers 43 3.3 Critical discourse analysis 47 3.4 Focus groups and interviews 54 3.5 Concluding comments 60 4 M ay 2009 D em onstrations 61 4.1 background on the demonstrations 62 4.2 Activism 65 4.3 Xenophobia and racism 77 4.4 Terrorism 81 iii 4.5 An abrupt ending 87 MV Sun Sea Coverage 89 5.1 Context 90 5.2 Security 95 5.3 Immigration and economics 104 5.4 Elements of the moralpanic 112 Focus Groups and Interviews 118 6.1 Meet the participants 119 6.2 Crystallised stereotypes 120 6.3 Double Consciousness 125 6 .4 Strategies fo r change 131 6.5 Closing comments 135 Conclusion 137 7. 1 Research questions reviewed 137 7 .2 Theory and methodology 138 7.3 Findings from media analysis 140 7.4 Findings from discussions and interviews 144 7.5 Future projects 146 7.6 Contributions of the project and final thoughts 147 Appendix I: List of acronyms 149 Appendix II: Research participants 150 References 151 iv Chapter 1 - Introduction 1.1 Introduction “In the minds of most of the public, Tamils are all Tigers,” reads an editorial in the National Post (Mraz, 15 May 2009, p. A 12). As I will illustrate throughout this thesis, the conflation of Tamils in Canada with Tamil Tiger terrorists has been present since at least 2009, proving to be a steadfast, durable, and damaging stereotype. This sentiment gives additional meaning to a declaration scrawled on the University of Toronto St. George campus made in September 2010: “Tamil Tigers are terrorists.” For most of the public, the message might as well have read, “Tamils are terrorists.” This problematic conflation led to the research questions guiding my thesis: (i) how are Tamils stigmatized in Canadian news media?; and (ii) how, if at all, does this stigmatization affect Tamil youth living in Canada? To answer these questions I conducted a critical discourse analysis o f 445 national and local newspaper articles covering two key periods for the Tamil diaspora in Canada. The first period was a series of demonstrations held in May 2009, including a brief protest on the Gardiner Expressway in Toronto. These demonstrations were attempts by members of the Tamil diaspora to raise awareness and support for a ceasefire dining the bloody end of the Sri Lankan civil war. The civil war began in 1983 when a history of institutionalized racism against Tamils carried out by Sri Lankan’s Sinhalese majority reached a boiling point (Weiss, 2012). The LTTE, a rebel group claiming to represent the interests of Sri Lankan Tamils, waged a long war against the Sri Lankan military until they were defeated in May 2009. By 2006, however, the LTTE had been proscribed as a terrorist organization by most of the world that was engaged in the War on Terror. In a post-9/11 world, this proscription forced a very complex issue to be viewed through a very simple lens. 1 The second period was the landing of the MV Sun Sea, a cargo ship carrying nearly 500 Tamil migrants fleeing post-war Sri Lanka, in August 2010 and the subsequent proposal to change refugee policy in October 2010. The second research question, regarding the effects of stigmatization on Tamil youth, was answered through discussions with ten Tamil youth and a phenomenological approach to interpreting and presenting their experiences. Two discussion groups and five interviews were conducted through this process. 1.2 Theoretical and m ethodological approaches The theoretical approach to this project was primarily influenced by two seminal texts on moral panic theory: Stanley Cohen’s (2002) Folk Devils and Moral Panic and Erich Goode and Nachman Ben-Yehuda’s (2009) Moral Panics. These two texts offer comprehensive models to operationalize the actors and occurrences throughout a given moral panic. Cohen organizes moral panic in four phases: warning, impact, inventory, and reaction. Goode and Ben-Yehuda organize moral panic in five dimensions: concern, hostility, consensus, disproportionality, and volatility. However, the overuse of the term “moral panic” by pundits, public officials, and public in general, along with the oversaturation and over-reporting of certain news stories in a multi-mediated, 24/7 news cycle means that we need modified criteria for moral panic in (high, late, or post) modem times. Moral panic, after all, is about deviance. Its presence should be signified by the attempted or actual punishment for a society’s perceived transgressors. It is within this context and understanding of moral panic that I introduce the concept of legacy as a way to gauge the staying power of sentiment, the institutionalization and semi-permanent sides of the moral panic, and just how seriously a given society was affected by rather than exposed to the narratives. 2 Focusing on the long-term impact of moral panic, processes that make certain groups folk devils or “Others” through “Us” versus “Them” language may cause subjects of moral panic to internalize these negative images. I argue that this may be particularly true when folk devils have their identities linked to race or ethnicity, namely because these are noticeable and fixed characteristics. If these dispositions are internalized, they may result in double consciousness. Double consciousness, coined by W.E.B. Dubois (1989), means that these racialized or ethnic groups may perceive themselves through the eyes of those that label them as deviant. They may also feel a sense of two-ness, caught between their racial or ethnic identity and the identity of the larger, dominant group without truly feeling as part of either one. These are troubling anxieties that stem from social issues but manifest as personal problems. To study the presence of moral panic in these two periods, I studied the media data using the principles of critical discourse analysis outlined by Teun A. Van Dijk (1993). This approach to studying text provided me with the tools to study minute details, such as writing styles, choice of words, lexical devices, and much more found in the coverage.
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