Constructing Place: Cultural Hegemonies and Media Images of an Inner-City Neighborhood

This paper examines place portrayals of an inner-city neighborhood by investigating the interrelationships among the representations of the neighborhood in major mainstream newspapers, the alternative neighborhood press, and local institutions. I argue that the everyday, lived experiences of neighborhood residents are represented through a series of discourses and counter-discourses between the mainstream and local newspapers. Using newspaper articles about vice in the Frogtown neighborhood of St. Paul, Minnesota, I demonstrate that the negative imagery of Frogtown in the mainstream press is contested and challenged in the local neighborhood newspaper, and by activists in the neighborhood. I conclude that while the major press has a dominant role in defining the neighborhood, locally based contestations over the place identity undermine and offer challenges to the hegemony of the popular media. Both local and dominant media discourses contribute to a neighborhood place identity. [Key words: media hegemony, newspapers, neighborhood, place representation.]