"Crime-ridden" to "Cool neighborhood": Changing Representations of Neighborhood Reputations Over Time in Houston, Texas


Jakira Silas, Rice University

This study examines how neighborhood reputation and stigma are represented in local media and how these representations may change over time. Specifically, I am interested in knowing how these representations change as neighborhoods undergo gentrification and how these representations connect with the racial composition of the neighborhoods. Exploring two Houston neighborhoods at different stages of gentrification with varying demographics, this study unpacks how media discourse shapes neighborhood reputations. This study builds on previous literature on symbolic boundaries, territorial stigmatization, segregation, gentrification, and media discourse to understand how these symbolic understandings of place accompany material aspects of place. I compare the reports of the third ward and EADO (East downtown) neighborhoods in the Houston chronicle, Houston’s largest newspaper, spanning from 1985 to 2024. Both neighborhoods were majority minority neighborhoods that have gentrified over time. Third ward is a case of a neighborhood that is still in the process of gentrifying. In parts of third ward, there are intentional, community efforts to resist gentrification as it unfolds. The neighborhood still largely maintains its identity, but it’s still clear that gentrification is happening. In 1990, third ward was 77% black, 12% white, and 8% Hispanic with 72.5% of the residents living below the poverty line. In 2020, third ward was 66% black, 15% white, and 11% Hispanic, with 52.7% of its residents living below the poverty line. This suggests that there has been some change to the racial and economic composition of the neighborhood, but the neighborhood is still majority minority and majority below the poverty line. EADO, however, is arguably in its final stages of gentrification (if such a thing exists) as the neighborhood’s identity has changed greatly. EADO is a new way to refer to this area, as it used to be referred to as part of the east end of Houston. In 1990, the same area was 27% black, 4% white, and 65% Hispanic, with 73.2% of its residents living below the poverty line. In 2020, this area was 28.6% black, 35% white, and 27% Hispanic, with 32% of the residents living below the poverty line. The racial and economic composition of the neighborhood has changed a great deal in the past 30 years. Combining nelson’s (2020) computational grounded theory and lee’s (2019) computation critical discourse analysis, I conduct a computational text analysis of the data from the Houston chronicle using structural topic modeling. I use a large corpus of newspaper articles, 6,000 EADO reportings and 4,000 third ward reportings, in my analysis. Importantly, these methods allow space for a qualitative analysis of the power and social dimensions of the articles, specifically in neighborhood discourse, while still using computational methods for the large corpus. The models examine change over time in the Houston chronicle reportings, which I connect with the findings on demographic changes in these neighborhoods. As a neighborhood gentrifies, it is important to consider how the neighborhood is changing, both physically and symbolically. I argue that we are able to see the stigma changes over time through media analysis. Put simply, we can see the gradual shift from “crime” to “craft breweries” as a neighborhood undergoes gentrification. As gentrification crystallizes in these neighborhoods we see the neighborhood’s identity and reputation change, going from a “unsafe” place to a “desirable” and “cool” neighborhood with fun activities. Findings will demonstrate how neighborhood reputations change over time, and how we can see this change happen gradually through media discourse. Furthermore, the methods used in the article explore new ways of understanding media discourse surrounding neighborhoods, through qualitatively analyzed computational models.

This paper will be presented at the following session: