Network News and Racial Beliefs: Exploring the Connection Between National Television News Exposure and Stereotypical Perceptions of African Americans (original) (raw)
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TV Entertainment, News, and Racial Perceptions of College Students
Journal of Communication, 1992
A study assessed the relationship between media exposure, interracial contact, and four categories of race-related beliefs among three samples of white midwestern university students between 1980 and 1986 (196 were in the first sample; smaller numbers were in the second and third samples). Contrary to the "uniform messages" assumption of cultivation theory, different types of media content were related differently to perceptions concerning race. Television news exposure was associated with beliefs that Blacks had relatively lower socioeconomic outcomes, with more negative character attributions, and with harsher evaluations of welfare recipients. TV drama exposure was associated with beliefs that Black Americans had a relatively higher socioeconomic standing. Exposure to TV Blacks specifically was associated with relatively more positive character attributions. (Seven tables of data are included, and 73 references are attached.) (Author/SR)
In-Group Effects of News Use on African Americans
The topic of this thesis is how frequent news exposure affects the Black community’s perceptions of the world and trust in institutions. The purpose of this thesis is to uncover whether African Americans with more news exposure are more likely to view the world with skepticism and fear when compared to those with less news exposure. My hypotheses predicted that African Americans who have had frequent exposure to news will perceive the world as a meaner and scarier place (H1), will exhibit less trust in police officers (H2), and will exhibit less trust in news media (H3) than those who have had less news exposure. I also took into account how strength of racial identity and prior contact with law enforcement moderated these relationships. I ran a series of regression tests that revealed support for H1 and H2, but no support for H3. I found that higher levels of news exposure for African Americans predicts mean world perceptions and feelings of paranoia around police officers, but does not predict lack trust in the news media. I also found that racial identity and prior contact with law enforcement partially moderated these relationships. The possibility that participants who consume news frequently do so because they have a lot of trust in the news media is discussed, as well as other implications. Limitations and opportunities for future study are also considered.
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.
Journal of Communication, 2008
A survey of Los Angeles County adults was undertaken to determine whether exposure to the overrepresentation of Blacks as criminals on local news programs, attention to crime news, and news trust predicted perceptions of Blacks and crime. After controlling for a number of factors including the diversity of respondents' neighborhood and neighborhood crime rate, attention to crime news was positively related to concern about crime. In addition, attention to crime news was positively associated with harsher culpability ratings of a hypothetical race-unidentified suspect and a Black suspect but not a White suspect. Finally, heavier consumption of Blacks' overrepresentation as criminals on local television news was positively related to the perception of Blacks as violent. The theoretical implications of these findings are discussed in light of chronic activation and accessibility of stereotypical constructs.
Race and Ethnicity in local Television News: Framing, Story Assignments, and Source Selections
Journal of Broadcasting & Electronic Media, 2003
Because local television has become the primary source for news, this study examined race and ethnicity in news stories, story assignments, and source selections. A content analysis of local newscasts found Latinos,' Asian Americans, and Native Americans were virtually invisible as anchors, reporters, and subjects in the news. Although African Americans anchored and reported the news in some markets, overall there was segregation in story assignments. Rarely were Latinos, Asian Americans, or Native Americans interviewed as news sources. African Americans were used as news sources more than other racial and ethnic groups when 2 or more people were interviewed. Although the news media landscape at the end of the 20th century had been filled with an array of news sources, more Americans turned to local television for news than any other medium. According to the Pew Research Center for the People and the Press (2000), 56% of Americans watched local television news regularly but only 46% read newspapers regularly. Still fewer adults turned to network news (30%), CNN (21%), and news magazines (12%), and three days a week or more, 23% of Americans looked to the Internet for news. Because of its dominance as a news source, local television news may also be a dominant force in influencing perceptions of race and ethnicity in communities across America. By examining the presence and coverage of African Americans, Latinos, Asian Americans, and Native Americans in local television news, it may be possible to identify how this dominant news source may be influencing how people of color are perceived and the implications of those perceptions.
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.
Effects of Stereotypical Television Portrayals of African-Americans on Person Perception
Social Psychology Quarterly, 1997
An experiment was conducted to test the hypothesis that stereotypical television portrayals of African-Americans increase the likelihood that whites will make negative social perception judgments of an African-American (but not a white) target person. Forty white subjects were exposed to comedy skits featuring stereotypical or neutral portrayals of African-American characters. Subjects then read a vignette describing an incident in which a college student was allegedly assaulted by his roommate. In half of the conditions, the alleged offender was assumed to be white; in the other half he was assumed to be African-American. Subjects rated the likelihood that the alleged offender was guilty of the assault. Guilt ratings of the white target did not differ significantly between the stereotypical and the neutral comedy skit conditions. In contrast, guilt ratings of the African-American target were higher in the stereotypical comedy skit condition than in the neutral comedy skit condition.
Intergroup Contact, Media Exposure, and Racial Attitudes
2012
Abstract The present investigation uses intergroup contact and media systems' dependency theories to illuminate the relative significance of various sources of information in shaping Caucasian-American attitudes toward African-Americans.
Racialized portrayals of reporters and criminals on local television news
2004
The author presents the results of a content analysis of TV newscasts, to test whether Blacks, Latinos, or Whites are systematically presented in a positive (news reporter or anchor) or negative (criminal) light. When I was a young man, I watched a news program with my family. At some point during the newscast there was a story about a horrible crime. I can't remember today what the report was about, but I do remember it involved murder and the police didn't have any suspects in custody. After the murder was described, I recall my mother saying "I sure hope whoever did that wasn't Black." It was interesting because I was thinking the same thing, though I hadn't verbalized it. Similar scenarios were repeated several times during my childhood and adolescence. If the reporters revealed that the suspect was not Black then there was a sense of relief in the room. If, on the other hand, the reporters indicated the suspect was Black, there was a slight feeling of despair, shame, and fear-though no one in the room had ever ommitted a crime. c When my friends from the African American community ask me what I do for a living, I tell them I am a professor who studies race and the news. To illustrate what that means, I often ask my friends if they've ever been in a similar scenario to the one I described above. Invariably, they say yes. I believe that the reason for this reaction to news programming by Blacks is twofold. First, there is the feeling that the news often misrepresents Blacks as criminals. Second, there is the concern that this misrepresentation promotes stereotyping of Mrican Americans as lawbreakers, which leads to discrimination, prejudice, and racism. Part of that stereotype is the notion that Blacks are responsible for most crimes that occur and that crime is a rampant problem is society.