Media Studies · Media Studies: Critical Lenses, Platforms, AI and Responsible ProductionRepresentation and Power: The Tourist Gaze, Intersectionality, Algorithms and Indigenous Media Sovereignty
1.5About 75 minutes
Learning goals- I can analyze representation by asking who controls the story, camera, voice, edit and data.
- I can apply the tourist gaze and intersectionality to complex texts.
- I can explain algorithmic representation and Indigenous media and data sovereignty, including OCAP®.
Words to know
tourist gaze
John Urry's term for how tourism media shape what visitors look at and how.
intersectionality
How overlapping identities, and the systems of discrimination attached to them, create experiences that single-identity analysis misses.
backdrop representation
Showing people as decoration in someone else's story.
media sovereignty
A people's control over their own stories, images and media.
OCAP®
First Nations principles of ownership, control, access and possession of their data.
algorithmic representation
How automated systems such as search, generators and moderation represent groups.
Remember from Grade 11
In Grade 11 you analyzed representation, identity and power: tropes, tokenism, symbolic annihilation (being absent or trivialized in media), content audits and self-representation. You learned that APTN (launched in 1999) and Igloolik Isuma Productions create media by and about First Nations, Inuit and Métis peoples, and that a representation passes through many gatekeepers.
Grade 12 (expectation 1.5) asks you to analyze with increasing insight the questions that perspectives and biases raise about beliefs, values, identity and power, in complex texts. This lesson adds the tourist gaze, intersectionality, algorithmic representation and Indigenous media and data sovereignty.
Hook: two invented tourism videos
- Video 1, by an invented tourism agency: helicopter shots of lakes and forests in northern Ontario, a canoe at sunrise, and for four seconds, Indigenous dancers in regalia performing as a backdrop while tourists film them on phones. No names, no Nation, no voices. A narrator says: Discover a timeless land.
- Video 2, by an invented Anishinaabe-owned tour business: the owner introduces herself in Anishinaabemowin and English, names her community, explains what visitors will learn and what is not shared with visitors, and shows her staff guiding a paddle on the river her family has fished for generations.
Both videos include Indigenous people. Only one gives them power over their representation.
The gaze and the tourist gaze
In the critical lenses lesson you met Laura Mulvey's male gaze: whoever controls the camera controls who is looked at. Sociologist John Urry described the tourist gaze (1990): tourism media teach visitors what to look at and how, often turning local people into scenery or spectacle.
Watch for:
- Backdrop representation: people appear as decoration in someone else's story.
- Timelessness: words like timeless or ancient can freeze Indigenous peoples in the past, as if they weren't living, modern nations today.
- Voice and naming: who speaks, and are people and Nations named?
Intersectionality
Legal scholar Kimberlé Crenshaw introduced intersectionality in 1989 to show that overlapping identities (for example, race and gender), and the discrimination attached to them, create experiences that single-identity analysis misses. In media analysis, it asks: whose representation is missing when we look at only one identity at a time?
Algorithmic representation
Representation now also happens through systems:
- Generated images can reproduce stereotypes from their training data (see the generative AI lesson).
- Search results and autocomplete can reflect and repeat biased patterns from past searches and web content. Scholar Safiya Umoja Noble documented examples in Algorithms of Oppression (2018).
- Content moderation rules applied at scale can affect groups differently, for example by misreading words or images that are normal in one community.
Indigenous media and data sovereignty
Sovereignty here means a people's right to control their own stories, images and information.
- Media: Indigenous-led media (APTN, Isuma, Indigenous newspapers, radio, podcasts and creators) produce stories with community control.
- Data: the First Nations principles of OCAP® (ownership, control, access and possession), a registered trademark of the First Nations Information Governance Centre, set out how First Nations data and information should be collected, protected, used and shared. Inuit and Métis organizations have developed their own approaches. These principles matter for research, archives, photographs, recordings, and now AI training data.
- Truth and Reconciliation Commission Calls to Action (2015) include Call 84 (on CBC/Radio-Canada reflecting Indigenous cultures, languages and perspectives) and Call 86 (on journalism and media schools teaching Indigenous history, including residential schools, Treaties and Aboriginal rights).
Questions about power
For any representation ask: Who benefits? Who decides? Who is harmed or erased? Who can respond or correct it?
Worked exampleLet's compare the two tourism videos
Analyze the perspectives and biases in the two invented tourism videos and the questions they raise about identity and power.
- Video 1, perspective: the tourist gaze. The camera belongs to the visitor; Indigenous dancers are backdrop for tourists' phones.
- Video 1, evidence: no names, no Nation, no voices; only four seconds on screen; the word timeless freezes Indigenous peoples in the past; the land is framed as discovered.
- Video 1, power: the agency controls story, camera, voice, edit and data. The bias is towards a consumer's fantasy of an untouched, ancient North. Indigenous people are present but objectified, a quieter form of symbolic annihilation.
- Video 2, perspective: self-representation. The owner speaks first, in her own language, names her community and sets boundaries (what is not shared with visitors).
- Video 2, power: the community controls every step, including what is kept private. That is media sovereignty. It presents Anishinaabe people as a living, present-day nation with a modern business.
- Questions raised: who profits from Indigenous imagery in tourism? Who decides what is shared? Insight: appearing on screen is not the same as being represented; control is what changes the meaning.
Video 1 shows the tourist gaze, turning Indigenous people into timeless scenery controlled by outsiders. Video 2 shows self-representation and sovereignty, with control over story, voice and what stays private. The key insight is that control, not mere visibility, determines power in representation.
Respectful analysis
Write about First Nations, Métis and Inuit peoples in the present tense as living communities, name specific Nations where the text does, and avoid words such as ancient or vanishing unless you are quoting and analyzing them.
Hands-on activityControl audit of three texts
You need: three media texts that represent one group or place (tourism ads, a documentary clip, a news story, a creator's video), with a grown-up's OK for any searching, plus paper and a pencil.
- Draw the five-step control table (story, camera, voice, edit, data) for each text.
- Fill in who controls each step. Use credits, about pages and descriptions. Write unknown honestly where you can't tell.
- For one text, apply intersectionality: which overlapping identities are represented or missing?
- Answer the four power questions for each text: who benefits, who decides, who is erased, who can respond?
- Write a 6-sentence comparison of the two most different texts.
What to look for: evidence from credits and the texts themselves, honest unknowns, an intersectional observation, and a comparison focused on control and power, not just who appears.
Your turn
1What is the tourist gaze?
John Urry's term for how tourism media teach visitors what to look at, often turning local people into scenery or spectacle.
2What is backdrop representation?
When people appear only as decoration in someone else's story, without names, voices or agency.
3Why can the word timeless be a problem in representing Indigenous peoples?
It can freeze them in the past, as if they weren't living, modern nations today.
4Define intersectionality and name who introduced the term.
The idea that overlapping identities create experiences that single-identity analysis misses; Kimberlé Crenshaw (1989).
5What do the letters in OCAP® stand for, and whose principles are they?
Ownership, control, access, possession; the First Nations principles of the First Nations Information Governance Centre.
6Give one example of algorithmic representation.
Any one: AI image generators reproducing stereotypes; biased search or autocomplete results; moderation rules affecting groups unequally.
7List the five control points in this lesson's table.
Story, camera, voice, edit, data.
More practice: warm-up
1Who wrote Algorithms of Oppression (2018)?
2Which TRC Call to Action concerns journalism and media schools?
3Which TRC Call to Action concerns CBC/Radio-Canada?
4What does sovereignty mean in media sovereignty?
A people's right to control their own stories, images and information.
5True or false: if a group appears on screen, it is well represented.
False. Appearing is not the same as having control or complex representation.
More practice: on your own
1Explain why OCAP® matters for AI training data.
AI models are trained on huge collections of text, images and recordings, which may include First Nations information gathered without consent; OCAP® says First Nations should own and control how their data is used, which challenges unconsented scraping.
2An audit finds that 20% of characters in a sample of ads are women of colour, but none have speaking roles. What does an intersectional reading add?
Counting only gender or only race might look balanced, but intersectionality shows women of colour are visible yet voiceless, a specific pattern of objectification that single counts miss.
3Rewrite this caption to give agency: Native dancers perform for tourists.
Sample: Dancers from [named] First Nation share a dance their community has chosen to present to visitors. (Name the Nation and frame the dancers as decision-makers.)
4Why might content moderation rules affect some communities unequally?
Rules applied by automated systems at scale may misread language, slang, images or cultural practices that are normal in one community, removing their content more often.
5Apply the four power questions to Video 1.
Benefits: the agency and tourism businesses. Decides: the agency. Erased: named Nations, Indigenous voices and present-day life. Can respond: Indigenous communities have little control over the ad, though they can criticize it publicly.
Challenge
1Some argue that any Indigenous visibility in mainstream ads is progress. Evaluate this view using the ideas of this lesson.
Sample: Visibility can be a step away from total absence, and it can create opportunities. But visibility without control can repeat stereotypes (timelessness, backdrop) and profit outsiders. The stronger measure of progress is self-representation and sovereignty: Indigenous people controlling the story, voice, edit and data, and benefiting from the result.
2Write a 5- to 6-sentence analysis of how one complex text represents an identity, using at least two concepts from this lesson.
What to look for: a named text; at least two concepts (tourist gaze, intersectionality, algorithmic representation, sovereignty, control points); specific evidence; the questions it raises about power; respectful, present-tense language.
3Explain how algorithmic representation could make stereotypes harder to notice than in a single ad.
A stereotype in one ad can be seen and criticized; a stereotype in a generator's defaults or search rankings appears across millions of personalized outputs, seems neutral because a machine produced it, and is hard for any one user to see as a pattern.
Quiz
1. Tourism media that turn local people into scenery illustrate:
2. Kimberlé Crenshaw's term for overlapping identities is:
4. Which shows self-representation most strongly?
5. TRC Call to Action 86 concerns:
6. Why can timeless be a biased word in tourism ads about Indigenous peoples?
What this lesson teaches: analyzing perspectives and biases and the questions they raise about identity and power (1.5), with the tourist gaze (Urry), intersectionality (Crenshaw), algorithmic representation (including Noble's Algorithms of Oppression), and Indigenous media and data sovereignty (OCAP®, TRC Calls to Action 84 and 86). Both tourism videos and the business are invented. No humour block is included because the lesson deals with discrimination and the legacy of colonialism.
How to help at home:
- Look at tourism ads for your region together and ask who controls the story.
- Learn whose traditional territory you live on and look for media made by that Nation or community.
- Model respectful, present-tense language about First Nations, Métis and Inuit peoples.
Common difficulties:
- Counting appearances instead of analyzing control.
- Single-identity analysis. Prompt with Who is at the overlap?
- Language that freezes Indigenous peoples in the past.