| This thesis takes as its starting point the intersection of work on crime, race and place in the disciplines of geography, criminology, sociology and media studies. I take up these literatures in a case study of Malvern, a racialized and classed inner suburban neighbourhood in Toronto that has received much media coverage in recent years. My content and discourse analyses of media coverage of this neighbourhood highlight the shifting media narratives of Malvern's place identity, from being a space of environmental contamination to a place of moral contamination. The prevalence of discourses of racialized 'otherness'---particularly through the use of 'disease' as a framing concept---contributes to the media construction of Malvern as an outside place. In highlighting this, I argue that media discourses of crime and race intimately affect understandings of place identities in ways that have important policy repercussions and relevance to people's everyday lives. |
