Representation, immigration, experience and memory: a study of representational dynamics of “the other” in post imperial Britain (1947-1990s) with special reference to African and African Caribbean immigrants

The study is an assessment of the proposition that the British media coverage of African and African Caribbean minority ethnic communities is permeated with 'othering'. It analysed the mode of accounting and explaining mobilised by some of the national press regarding racial unrest, focusing particularly on those major events that served to narrativise and recompose the image of immigrants as the 'other' in the context of articulating Britishness. These are Enoch Powell's Rivers of Blood speech in 1968 and the Brixton disturbance of 1981. A content/frame analysis of newspaper coverage of these events was carried out. Seymore-Ure's analysis of the media's response to Powell's speech in The Political Impact of Mass Media (1974) served as major point of reference. In addition, the study explored through in-dept interviews the relationship between lived experiences and popular media discourses in an attempt to gauge the extent to which interviewees' memories cohered or not with the media's account of events involving black people; and which news stories have had significant and formative impact on the experiences of other-ness.