Incomplete sentences : exploitation and empowerment in American incarceration media

Nearly 7 million individuals are currently under correctional supervision in America, with around 2.3 million confined in county, state, federal, and private correctional facilities. For those who are not currently and likely never will be incarcerated - including the majority of lawmakers and policymakers and myself - popular media in part defines our understandings of the American corrections system, from policing to the courts to imprisonment. In order to interrogate the ways in which such popular media can lift up or drown out the voices of those who are incarcerated, I critically analyze three case studies: a popular television show, an acclaimed podcast, and a recently released feature film with an accompanying documentary. Broadly, I argue that all texts constituting the incarceration media genre produce varying positionalities along an exploitation-empowerment spectrum, and by situating my chosen texts in dialogue with one another, I explore how these shifting relationships operate through popular mass media.

Name thesis:degree_name

Master

Department dc:contributor.department

Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Department of Comparative Media Studies

Grantor dc:publisher

Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Year dc:date.issued

2019

Author dc:creator

• Thompson, Rachel Paige.

Advisor dc:contributor.advisor

• Lisa Parks.

• Comparative Media Studies.

Statement dc:rights

• MIT theses are protected by copyright. They may be viewed, downloaded, or printed from this source but further reproduction or distribution in any format is prohibited without written permission.

Licence dc:rights.uri

• http://dspace.mit.edu/handle/1721.1/7582

Language dc:language.iso

eng

Handle dc:identifier.uri

https://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/124391

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:dspace.mit.edu:1721.1/124391