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Journal Article 1: Fetveit, A. (1999). Reality TV in the digital era: a paradox in visual culture? Media Culture Society, 21, 787–804.

Abstract: This article examines reality TV and the social phenomena created by the digital era. This examination of modern media looks at various forms of culture presented visually in the digital era.

Journal Article 2: Michaels, E. (2014). New immigrant destinations in small-town America: Mexican American youth in junior high. Journal of Contemporary Ethnography, 43, 720–745.

Abstract: This work examines the new places that Mexican American Youth are coming of age. It explains some of the challenges and processes involved with new destinations.

Journal Article 3: Schrauf, R. (1999). Mother tongue maintenance among North American ethnic groups. Cross-Cultural Research, 33, 175–192.

Abstract: This study looks at the conditions under which some ethnic groups maintain their "mother tongues," while others completely lose their native languages.

Journal Article 4: Steuter, E., & Wills, D. (2010). ‘The vermin have struck again’: Dehumanizing the enemy in post 9/11 media representations. Media, War & Conflict, 3, 152–168.

Abstract: This article examines the ways in which the media uses dehumanizing rhetoric to re-construct “enemies and thus to generate and sustain public support for military engagement, particularly in the war on terror. Beginning with the concept that language is an essential ingredient to the escalation and justification of conflict, the authors argue that propagandistic discourse, in its ability to disengage critical thought while engaging vitriolic emotion, has been deployed through the use of “a remarkably coherent and consistent set of metaphors which represent the enemy as animals, particularly noxious, verminous, or pestilential animals, or as diseases, especially spreading and metastatic diseases like cancers or viruses” (153). Such depictions of any enemy serve to dehumanize those persons, to mark them as both different and lesser, and work to justify and sustain racially and ethnically grounded stereotypes. “This dehumanization of an entire group or race encourages an unconscious transformation, the imaginative transference that is metaphor’s chief function (Hawkes, 1972: 1), and by which entire populations are collectively stripped of their humanity” (452).

Journal Article 5: Tyree, T. C. M., & Krishnasamy, A. (2011). Bringing afrocentricity to the funnies: An analysis of afrocentricity within Aaron McGruder's The Boondocks. Journal of Black Studies, 42, 23–43.

Abstract: This article examines the cartoon strip (not the televised version) of The Boondocks, drawn by Aaron McGruder, to discover whether McGruder’s underlying rhetorical position is essentially Afrocentric. They look for the principles and concepts of Afrocentricity, particularly the 10 principles of nommo - an Afrocentric word that refers to the power of a word or other kind of work to generate and create reality; nommo is also a communal event that moves toward the creation and maintenance of community, as well as the power of words to create balance and harmony in disharmony.

Journal Article 6: Mehra, B., Merkel, C., & Bishop, A. P. (2004). The internet for empowerment of minority and marginalized users. New Media Society, 6, 781–803.

Abstract: This article examines the results from 3 digital divide studies to examine the ways that marginalized members of society utilize computers and communications technology as tools of empowerment. Underlying their investigation is the critical concept that these technologies have the potential to allow people to create social equity, and that technology also can serve as a way to deconstruct the burdens of marginality and inequality. Grounding their research is a commitment to engage researchers in a fundamental deconstruction of the digital divide.

Journal Article 7: Brettell, C. B. (2006). Political belonging and cultural belonging: Immigration status, citizenship, and identity among four immigrant populations in a southwestern city. American Behavioral Scientist 50, 70–99.

Abstract: This article examines the concepts of political and cultural belonging through the dual lens of citizenship as composed of rights and responsibilities, and as an identity construction on the other. Brettell argues that immigration status is critical in shaping national, local, and community attitudes towards naturalization and citizenship. Demonstrating the constructed nature of identity, she argues that immigrants have a bifocal outlook on belonging that is grounded in the differences between citizenship as right and responsibility, and citizenship as identity.

Journal Article 8: Littlefield, M. B. (2008). The media as a system of racialization: Exploring images of African American women and the new racism. American Behavioral Scientist, 51, 675–685.

Abstract: This article presents the argument that “[US] society views a daily discourse on race, gender, and class that continues to reproduce dominant and distorted views of African American womanhood and sexuality” (675). By linking these media representations in popular culture to social constructions of identity of African American women, the author argues that the media serves as a system of racialization that marginalizes, penalizes, and discriminates against these women as a way of constructing the broader racial discourse as a method of social control.