Media Coverage of “Wise” Interventions Can Reduce Concern for the Disadvantaged (original) (raw)
Related papers
2009
Despite a preponderance of evidence that news reports increase negative racial attitudes, some researchers have demonstrated that the print media can reduce such effects. Research has yet to examine whether television news can similarly reduce negative racial attitudes among viewers, even though television suffers from a worse reputation for encouraging such biases than does print. Building upon psychological research into the malleability of prejudice, the present research explores television’s potential to affect viewer prejudice. Psychological research (e.g., Dasgupta and Greenwald, 2001; Wittenbrink, Judd, and Park, 2001) shows that targeted manipulations can both positively and negatively affect implicit prejudices. Media research (e.g. Power, Murphy, and Coover, 1996; Casas & Dixon, 2003; Ramasubramanian, 2005) demonstrates that print media can produce positive and negative effects upon stereotypes and prejudice, though such research remains somewhat contradictory. Capitalizing on psychology’s differentiation between implicit and explicit attitudes, this study is the first specifically to explore the potential for television news to prime counter-prejudicial attitudes. Specifically, the study uses an Implicit Association Test (IAT) to measure television news’ facility to serve as a prime to strengthen or weaken racial schema and impact racial attitudes. After recording base-level prejudice through the IAT, researchers showed national news segments featuring famous and infamous Whites and Blacks to 130 White participants. Each segment was chosen either for visual impact or for the potential emotional impact of its subject. Pairs of segments served as either stereotypical or counterstereotypical manipulations. Following presentation of the segments, researchers measured post-manipulation implicit prejudice using the IAT and recorded levels of explicit prejudice as responses to semantic differentials and feeling thermometers. Data did not support initial hypotheses concerning the segments’ effects upon explicit and implicit prejudice, but the experiment did yield interesting results that should help future media researchers. This dissertation provides a guide for future media research designs utilizing the IAT, suggests that television may possess a positive capacity to curb pro-White biases in society, and implies that television’s propensity to increase anti-Black attitudes may be more limited than previous media research studies seem to suggest.
Using Celebrity News Stories to Effectively Reduce Racial/Ethnic Prejudice
This article argues that exposure to admirable media celebrities from racial/ethnic outgroups is an effective, proactive, and viable strategy for prejudice reduction and intergroup harmony. It uses mediated contact and exemplification theories to demonstrate that reading news stories about likable outgroup media personalities who serve as counter-stereotypic exemplars can subtly modify racial attitudes , which are malleable and context-sensitive. Specifically, results from a between-participants experiment (N = 88) show that exposure to news stories about counter-stereotypic African American media personalities as compared to stereotypical ones reduces stereotypical perceptions and symbolic racist beliefs of White Americans about African Americans. Furthermore, these favorable attitudes translate into an increased willingness to support affirmative action policies.
Media based strategies to reduce racial stereotypes activated by news stories
This study focuses on the role of media in facilitating and inhibiting the accessibility of stereotypes primed by race-related news stories. Specifically, it examines experimentally the effects of two strategies for reducing stereotype accessibility: an audience-centered approach that explicitly instructs audiences to be critical media consumers, a goal of media literacy training; and a message-centered approach using stereotype-disconfirming, counter-stereotypical news stories. Participants viewed either a literacy or control video before reading stereotypical or counter-stereotypical news stories about African Americans or Asian Indians. Implicit stereotypes were measured using response latencies to hostile and benevolent stereotypical words in a lexical decision task.Results suggest that a combination of audience-centered and messagecentered approaches may reduce racial stereotypes activated by news stories.
Empathy may curb bias: Two studies of the effects of news stories on implicit attitudes
Contemporary Readings in Law and Social Justice, 2017
People think and feel more negatively about outgroup members, even though such attitudes are rarely expressed explicitly; people may be unaware of them or express them only symbolically. The literature suggests that, cross-culturally, negative attitudes against outgroup members are more pronounced among men than among women, and that implicit negativity may be malleable by visual or textual stimuli. This study used two experiments to explore the effects of news stories about African Americans and Native Americans on implicit attitudes toward these groups. Story valence and participant gender were the main independent variables. In the first study, participants took the Implicit Associations Test (IAT) before and after reading news stories about professionally accomplished African Americans, who had overcome poverty and discrimination. The results suggested that these stories did abate implicit bias against African Americans; the effect was weak but statistically significant. Contrary to expectations, the degree of bias abatement was not significantly different in men versus women. In the second study, participants took the Implicit Associations Test (IAT) before and after reading news stories about either successful Native Americans or about tragic events (murder, suicide) involving Native Americans. Both types of stories detailed systemic obstacles faced by Native Americans and participants assigned to either category showed a decrease in negative attitudes on the post-test IAT; however, this abatement effect was statistically significant only after exposure to narratives that culminated in tragic events. Bias abatement was more pronounced on women than on men. Empathy and intergroup contact are discussed as possible factors in decreasing implicit bias against members of minority groups.
The Obama effect: Decreasing implicit prejudice and stereotyping
Journal of Experimental …, 2009
This project explores the impact of Barack Obama's presidential campaign and the resulting high levels of exposure to a positive, counter-stereotypic Black exemplar, on prejudice and stereotyping among non-Black participants. We found dramatically decreased levels of implicit anti-Black prejudice and stereotyping as compared with bias observed previously at the same institutions and in the literature. Providing some insight why the bias was reduced, Study 1 demonstrated that participants had positive Black exemplars come to mind or anticipated that other people have positive exemplars come to mind when they thought of Black people and this was associated with low levels of racial prejudice. Our second study revealed that participants who had qualities strongly associated with Obama as a political figure (e.g., president) activated when they were primed with ''Black" had lower levels of implicit prejudice. These findings indicate that the extensive exposure to Obama resulted in a drop in implicit bias.
Toward a Psychology of Framing Effects
Political Behavior, 1997
Framing is the process by which a communication source constructs and defines a social or political issue for its audience. While many observers of political communication and the mass media have discussed framing, few have explicitly described how framing affects public opinion. In this paper we offer a theory of framing effects, with a specific focus on the psychological mechanisms by which framing influences political attitudes. We discuss important conceptual differences between framing and traditional theories of persuasion that focus on belief change. We outline a set of hypotheses about the interaction between framing and audience sophistication, and test these in an experiment. The results support our argument that framing is not merely persuasion, as it is traditionally conceived. We close by reflecting on the various routes by which political communications can influence attitudes.
Health Education Research, 2011
News stories reporting race-specific health information commonly emphasize disparities between racial groups. But recent research suggests this focus on disparities has unintended effects on African American audiences, generating negative emotions and less interest in preventive behaviors (Nicholson RA, Kreuter MW, Lapka C et al. Unintended effects of emphasizing disparities in cancer communication to African-Americans. Cancer Epidemiol Biomarkers Prev 2008; 17: 2946-52). They found that black adults are more interested in cancer screening after reading about the progress African Americans have made in fighting cancer than after reading stories emphasizing disparities between blacks and whites. This study builds on past findings by (i) examining how health journalists judge the newsworthiness of stories that report racespecific health information by emphasizing disparities versus progress and (ii) determining whether these judgments can be changed by informing journalists of audience reactions to disparity versus progress framing. In a doubleblind-randomized experiment, 175 health journalists read either a disparity-or progressframed story on colon cancer, preceded by either an inoculation about audience effects of such framing or an unrelated (i.e. control) information stimuli. Journalists rated the disparity-frame story more favorably than the progress-frame story in every category of news values. However, the inoculation significantly increased positive reactions to the progress-frame story. Informing journalists of audience reactions to race-specific health information could influence how health news stories are framed.