About this Collection
What do I want to find out?
The extent of bias in pupils’ attitudes towards the Minority and Majority Worlds; the role of the media in reinforcing this bias.
What do I need?
- Resource sheet with counter-intuitive facts or news stories from a range of countries in different continents.
What do I do?
Timing: 25 minutes
- Hand out the resource sheets to individuals or one per group and ask the pupils: ‘Where do you think each of these stories has come from? Why?’
- Ask them to name either the continent or country in the space provided
How do I analyse the results?
- For positive news (examples 1 and 2) give 2 points for each answer stating the story is from Europe or North America and 0 points if students suggest any other continents.
- For negative news (examples 3 and 4) give 2 points for each answer including Africa, Asia or South America and 0 points if the answer is Europe or North America.
- Add up the total scores for the class. The higher the value the higher the level of bias towards the Minority World. To what extent do these they assign positive information to the Majority World and negative information to the Majority World?
- Look at the reasons pupils give for the choices they make. To what extent do these reflect stereotypical views?
As a stimulus for further discussion encourage pupils to look for non-stereotypical facts and news stories which point to the immense diversity within continents and individual countries.
How do I measure the change?
- Repeat the activity using a range of positive and negative facts or news stories from different continents.
- Compare the scores and pupils’ comments. Look for changes in how pupils’ assign the positive and negative facts and news stories.
- Look for evidence of the extent to which pupils are influenced by the reporting of local, national and global events. This can form the basis of further work on recognising the impact of bias in the media.
Read each report and decide which continent it comes from. Also elaborate on your reasons to choose the continent.
News item 1…
…is about The World Bank reporting high economic growth, stating that almost a third of countries in this region will show economic growth of 6% or more
News item 2…
…is a magazine article about the richest woman in this continent. She is a fashion designer who studied in London and then continued to manufacture clothes. The estimated value of her assets is £4.5 billion
News item 3…
…discusses how the feeling of being safe is not related to the number of murders. In countries with a higher murder rate inhabitants which evaluated the security situation as better than in countries where the murder rate was much lower.
News item 4…
…is about the number of women who are victims of domestic violence and how their partners are responsible in 12 to 35% of cases. It states that support for victims is inadequate, unevenly distributed and funding is insufficient.
Featured image, Man reading newspaper, by Elvert Barnes. Via Flickr