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Swift Judgment: How White, Black, and Latina Women and Girl Perpetrators Are Differentially Portrayed in Crime News
Abstract
News story narratives often depict people of color in harmful, stereotypical ways (e.g., as crime prone or unable to reform). However, examinations of story narratives may be incomplete because most people do not read news stories in their entirety. Instead, most people take in only a story’s prominent elements—the photograph, the headline, and the caption. With critical race feminism as a theoretical framework, we used content analysis to examine whether crime story photographs, headlines, and captions varied depending on the race/ethnicity of a woman or girl perpetrator (White, Black, or Latina). We found that these three elements—alone and in combination—were more likely to be unfavorable for non-White women and girls compared to White women and girls. Our findings may help explain how racist stereotypes of women and girls of color persist.
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There is a large body of literature examining the media portrayals of white females as both victims and offenders in crime news, but very little is known about how minority females—including Black, Latina, Middle Eastern, Native American, and Asian women and girls—are portrayed in these roles. In this literature review, I discuss general stereotypes surrounding women of color and their depictions within crime news stories as both victims and offenders. An examination of crime news media portrayals of minority females reveals that outdated and harmful stereotypes provide media personnel frames with which to write their stories. The negative portrayals of minority women and girls—as both victims and offenders—serve to reinforce racist beliefs and affect how consumers view political issues.
"Il y a eu une telle fertilisation réciproque des idées de la sémiotique de Saussure, centrée sur le code et le langage, et de la sémiotique inspirée par Peirce, qui est pragmatique et interprétative, qu'il est difficile de trouver aujourd'hui un sémioticien qui ne croit pas à la nécessité de développer une socio-sémiotique, interprétative et pragmatique ».
S'il fallait donner l'illustration de cette conception ouverte des avancées en sémiotique, l'ouvrage de Gunther Kress et Théo van Leeuwen : Reading Images - The Grammar of Visual Design, en serait
la meilleure preuve.
Critical race feminists posit that perceptions of White and minority females differ, which suggests that media representations will vary among female crime victims. To explore this proposition, we examined front-page crime stories from four different U.S. newspapers using Altheide’s approach to qualitative document analysis. We found that stories about White female victims received more repeated coverage and were more likely to contain sympathetic narratives than stories about Latina/Black female victims. In contrast, Latina/Black female victims were more likely to be portrayed as risk-takers and “bad” women, and their victimization was normalized through descriptions of their unsafe environments.
Posthumous stereotypical media portrayals of Michael Brown and other racial and ethnic minority victims of police violence have sparked questions about the influence of racial stereotypes on public opinions about their deaths and criminal proceedings for their killers. However, few studies have empirically investigated how the specific type of information released about a victim impacts opinions surrounding such incidents. Participants (N = 453) read about an altercation that resulted in a shooting death where the race of the victim and shooter (Black vs. White) was randomly assigned. Participants learned either negative, Black male stereotypic or positive, Black male counterstereotypic information about the victim. Next, participants appraised levels of fault and blame, sympathy and empathy for the victim and shooter, and indictment recommendations for the shooter. Findings suggest that the type of information released about a victim can significantly sway attitudes toward the victim and the shooter. Implications for media portrayals of racial/ethnic minority victims of police violence and its impact on criminal sentencing are discussed.
Significance
Police officers speak significantly less respectfully to black than to white community members in everyday traffic stops, even after controlling for officer race, infraction severity, stop location, and stop outcome. This paper presents a systematic analysis of officer body-worn camera footage, using computational linguistic techniques to automatically measure the respect level that officers display to community members. This work demonstrates that body camera footage can be used as a rich source of data rather than merely archival evidence, and paves the way for developing powerful language-based tools for studying and potentially improving police–community relations.
This essay explores the changing character of public discourse in the Age of Twitter. Adopting the perspective of media ecology, the essay highlights how Twitter privileges discourse that is simple, impulsive, and uncivil. This effect is demonstrated through a case study of Donald J. Trump's Twitter feed. The essay concludes with a brief reflection on the end times: a post-truth, post-news, President Trump, Twitter-world.
This report documents the rates of incarceration for whites, African Americans, and Hispanics, providing racial and ethnic composition as well as rates of disparity for each state. We find the following: in 11 states, 1 in 20 adult black men are in prison; in 5 states, racial disparity is greater than 10-1 black/white; and in 12 states, more than half of prisoners are black.
Drawing on a content analysis of television news and newspapers during the 2015 UK General Election along with semi-structured interviews with the heads and/or senior editors of news or politics from each broadcaster examined, we explore the intermedia agenda-setting influence of the national press during the campaign. Overall, we found similar policy-orientated agendas, with more stories emanating from right-wing newspapers and moments when front-page splashes dominated television news coverage. Many broadcasters were editorially comfortable with covering stories originating from newspapers if further context was supplied. Our findings do not point towards any deliberate political bias among broadcasters. We suggest instead that a range of structural constraints and professional routines encouraged broadcasters to feed off stories that were more likely to be supplied by right-leaning newspapers. Since news values are not politically neutral, we argue that if journalists or editors routinely rely on newspapers to help shape the political agenda it compromises their ability to make impartial judgements about news selection. Combining quantitative and qualitative analysis, we conclude, could help to better understand the editorial processes behind the selection of news and to more carefully interpret intermedia agenda-setting than large N studies can supply.
Previous research has shown that skin tone influences how individuals perceive themselves and others. There is considerable variation in skin tone between and among whites, Latinos, and blacks, and considering the role of skin tone in shaping racial attitudes is potentially important. In this paper, we explore the effects of skin tone on perceptions of commonality and competition among whites, blacks, and Latinos. Simply, does skin tone shape how whites, blacks, and Latinos view each other? Using data from the 2010 Cooperative Congressional Election Study, we explore the effects of individual self-perceptions of skin tone on racial attitudes. We find that skin tone has an effect only on blacks’ perceptions of Hispanics; light-skinned blacks are less likely to perceive commonality and more likely to perceive employment competition with Latinos, relative to blacks with darker skin tones. We also find some evidence to suggest that the effect of skin tone on blacks’ perceptions of commonality with Latinos is moderated by education.
We highlight an understudied aspect of racism in television news, implicit racial cues found in the contradictions between visual and verbal messages. We compare three television news broadcasts from the first week after Hurricane Katrina to reexamine race and representation during the disaster. Drawing together insights from interdisciplinary studies of cognition and sociological theories of race and racism, we examine how different combinations of the race of reporters and news sources relate to the priming of implicit racism. We find racial cues that are consistent with stereotypes and myths about African Americans—even in broadcasts featuring black reporters—but which appear only in the context of color-blind verbal narration. We conclude by drawing attention to the unexpected and seemingly unintended reproduction of racial ideology.
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.
Until now, most discussion of racial profiling has given only fleeting consideration of its causes. Those causes are overwhelmingly psychological. In Suspect Race, social psychologist and public policy expert Jack Glaser leverages a century's worth of social psychological research to provide a clear understanding of how stereotypes, even those operating outside of conscious awareness or control, can cause police to make discriminatory judgments and decisions about who to suspect, stop, question, search, use force on, and arrest. Glaser argues that stereotyping, even nonconscious stereotyping, is a completely normal human mental process, but that it leads to undesirable discriminatory outcomes. Police officers are normal human beings with normal cognition. They are therefore influenced by racial stereotypes that have long connected minorities with aggression and crime. Efforts to merely prohibit racial profiling are inadequate. Additionally, Glaser finds evidence that racial profiling can actually increase crime, and he considers the implications for racial profiling in counterterrorism, finding some similarities and some interesting differences with drug war profiling. Finally, he examines the policy landscape on which racial profiling resides and calls for improved data collection and supervision, reduced discretion, and increased accountability.
Drawing on criminology, history, psychological science, and legal and policy analysis, Glaser offers a broad and deep assessment of the causes and consequence of racial profiling. Suspect Race brings to bear the vast scientific literature on intergroup stereotyping to offer the first in-depth and accessible understanding of the primary cause of racial profiling, and to explore implications for policy.
This study examines the representation of crime stories in the news. Using 71 matched pairs, we examine the constructed elements in the reporting of crime stories between newspapers and local television to document similarities and differences across the mediums. Although considerable work has been devoted to discerning differences in reporting across types of media, little research has investigated how the same crime story “gets told” in one medium compared to another. With matched-pairs of stories, we are able to do this. In this study, we also use content analysis to examine a subset of cases that focus on juveniles to ascertain how atypical victims and offenders are portrayed in the media. Although youth are much less likely to commit crime and to be victimized compared to adults, their stories are disproportionately “the stuff of news.” Collectively, the findings indicate that news reporting follows the law of opposites—the characteristics of crime, criminals, and victims represented in the media are in most respects the polar opposite of the pattern suggested by official crime statistics. This was especially the case in news reports involving juvenile victims and offenders.
This study tests the idea that TV genres (crime drama, reality cop shows, news) and channels (TV and newspapers) vary in their potential to cultivate perceptions, fears, and behavior related to exposure and attention to crime content. Randomly selected adults (505) over the age of 18 in Indiana were interviewed. Regression analyses indicate significant variance across media genres and channels in their influence on viewer orientations to crime. Yet overall, media use is a relatively weak predictor of crime orientations. This study was conducted with grant support from the School of Journalism at Indiana University.
Two thematic news reports on the three-strikes law and school vouchers were differentially illustrated with photographs. Online news stories were either illustrated with no images, with 2 photographs of Blacks, with 2 photographs of Whites, or with 2 photographs, 1 of a Black and the other of a White person (mixed condition). In none of the four conditions did the text make any reference to the ethnic/racial identity of the subjects in the photographs juxtaposed with the text. White respondents assessed the extent to which each ethnic/racial group was affected by the social problem or issue discussed in the news stories. Differential pictorial illustration of ethnic groups fostered differentiation association of ethnic groups with the social problem. Implicit racial images of Blacks helped prime racial stereotypes about blacks and led to stronger association of Blacks with social problems addressed in the stories. The concept of implicit visual propositioning is discussed as a discursive form through which racial stereotypes of Blacks are subtly activated and maintained in society.
Qualitative content analysis and thematic analysis are two commonly used approaches in data analysis of nursing research, but boundaries between the two have not been clearly specified. In other words, they are being used interchangeably and it seems difficult for the researcher to choose between them. In this respect, this paper describes and discusses the boundaries between qualitative content analysis and thematic analysis and presents implications to improve the consistency between the purpose of related studies and the method of data analyses. This is a discussion paper, comprising an analytical overview and discussion of the definitions, aims, philosophical background, data gathering, and analysis of content analysis and thematic analysis, and addressing their methodological subtleties. It is concluded that in spite of many similarities between the approaches, including cutting across data and searching for patterns and themes, their main difference lies in the opportunity for quantification of data. It means that measuring the frequency of different categories and themes is possible in content analysis with caution as a proxy for significance.
The current research examines whether images presented alongside online articles might systematically vary in how political targets are presented. We focus our analyses on how presidents who either share or do not share political orientations with Internet media outlets are portrayed along the dimensions of warmth and competence, qualities highly prized in leadership and effectively conveyed in facial images. Four hundred twenty-two images from five online media outlets were coded for warmth and competence. Media outlets sharing political orientations with a target portrayed them as more warm and competent than targets of another orientation. The viability of this effect as a potential mechanism to influence readers of online articles is discussed. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved)
This paper examined how a female offender's race/ethnicity influenced how she was portrayed by the media. Existing literature on gender stereotypes, racial and ethnic stereotypes, and media depictions of offenders provided the basis for this study. Few have focused solely on the media's treatment of offenders, in general, and fewer have looked closely at how the media depict female offenders, in particular. This study, therefore, filled a void. We predicted that minority women would be portrayed less favorably than white women, and conducted a content analysis of front-page newspaper articles that featured female offenders to test our expectation. The articles were gathered from two different U.S. newspapers for the 2006 calendar year—the Los Angeles Times and the New York Times. We found that stories about white female offenders were more likely to contain excuses for their alleged or actual offenses and were, therefore, more likely to take on an overall favorable tone than stories about minority female offenders.
Experimenters examining male facial attractiveness have concluded that the attractive male face is (1) an average male face, (2) a masculinized male face, or (3) a feminized male face. Others have proposed that symmetry, hormone markers, and the menstrual phase of the observer are important variables that influence male attractiveness. This study was designed to resolve these issues by examining the facial preferences of 42 female volunteers at two different phases of their menstrual cycle. Preferences were measured using a 40-s QuickTime movie (1200 frames) that was designed to systematically modify a facial image from an extreme male to an extreme female configuration. The results indicate that females exhibit (1) a preference for a male face on the masculine side of average, (2) a shift toward a more masculine male face preference during the high-risk phase of their menstrual cycle, and (3) no shift in other facial preferences. An examination of individual differences revealed that women who scored low on a “masculinity” test (1) showed a larger menstrual shift, (2) had lower self-esteem, and (3) differed in their choice of male faces for dominance and short-term mates. The results are interpreted as support for a hormonal theory of facial attractiveness whereby perceived beauty depends on an interaction between displayed hormone markers and the hormonal state of the viewer.
Prior research suggests the media depict White female victims more sympathetically than their minority counterparts, yet no researcher has yet examined this proposition at the multivariate level. Moreover, prior research on media portrayals generally include White versus non-White or White versus Black comparisons, but no researcher has yet compared media accounts of White, Black, and Latina female victims. Based on critical race feminism, we expected news coverage of White, Black, and Latina victims to vary in key ways. We examined narratives at the bivariate and multivariate levels, and we contextualized findings with story excerpts. Stories about White female victims were more likely to contain sympathetic themes-such as themes of religiosity and reported media attention-and to result in overall sympathetic narratives compared to stories about minority victims, whereas overall narratives about Latina and Black female victims were often unsympathetic. Our findings align with the "ideal victim" stereotype and may help explain the differential treatment of White and minority female victims by the criminal justice system.
While there is some literature analyzing moving images and their effects relating to Black Lives Matter, there hasn't been an extensive analysis of the still images associated with this movement. This article analyzes one of the most widely circulated and remarked upon photographs from the Black Lives Matter movement in comparison to several other images associated with the movement so as to illuminate the image's rhetorical function and consequence as well as to theorize the role of images in contemporary discourses about race. Specifically, our analysis demonstrates how an image may serve to shift/change the narrative of an emerging movement and of the perception of African American citizens by making visible realities and experiences not otherwise readily seen or articulated.
In this conversation, the authors converse on skin colour politics and the white beauty standard. Reflecting on the resurgence of white supremacist ideas in the US American public sphere and its underlying imaginary that denies Black beauty, dignity and grace, Shirley A. Tate asserts that beauty is not just a matter for the individual, but socially constructed. As such, it has always been a political issue for Black thinkers, engaged in thinking through what Black anti-racist aesthetics could and should be about. In spite of decades of collective struggles against hegemonic beauty norms, the authors conclude that colonial conceptions of skin colour and beauty continue to haunt us, even if these may now include ‘mixed looks’ rather than just whiteness.
A growing body of evidence demonstrates that the way the press frames policy issues can foster fear, particularly with respect to portrayals of immigrants. Building on this research, we examine images of immigrants, borders, and legality in the media’s coverage of immigration. To do so, we collect a unique dataset of images appearing in three major national news magazines’ articles about immigration or immigrants in the U.S. between 2000 and 2010. We code the images based on whether they include visual representations of the border and immigration enforcement, whether illegality and/or criminal behavior is shown or implied, and the activities in which the immigrants are engaged. We find that the press frequently portrays immigrants as undocumented, presenting images of the border as well as immigrant arrests and detentions. Moreover, when immigrants are working, they are disproportionately engaged in low-skilled activities. Our analysis demonstrates a general tendency to frame immigrants in a negative light, consistent with a “threat” narrative but inconsistent with actual immigrant demographics. Our findings are particularly important in light of research establishing that such portrayals contribute to more hostile attitudes about immigration in the U.S. as well as greater support for punitive immigration policy among Whites.
This article explores the ways in which anti-black-woman body politics manifest themselves in the lives of Caribbean women living in the United States. Specifically, using the personal narratives of black Caribbean immigrant women, I examine these women's encounters with ideologies that marginalize them based on their bodies and preserve contemporary anti-black-woman ideologies in "post-racial" United States. This study addresses two areas that are typically understudied in body image research of black women: a critical understanding of how anti-black-woman sentiments manifest themselves in the everyday lives of black women and black women's own voices and reflections on their embodied social realities.
This volume of the series was designed to provide a comprehensive primer on the existing best practices and emerging developments in the study and design research on crime and criminology. The work as a whole includes chapters on the measurement of criminal typologies, the offenders, offending and victimization, criminal justice organizations, and specialized measurement techniques. Each chapter is written by experts in the field and they provide an excellent survey of the literature in the relevant area. More importantly, each chapter provides a description of the various methodological and substantive challenges presented in conducting research on these issues and denotes possible solutions to these dilemmas. An emphasis was placed on research that has been conducted outside of the United States and was designed to give the reader a broader more global understanding of the social context of research. The goal of this volume is to provide a definitive reference for professionals in the field, researchers, and students. This volume in the Handbooks in Criminology and Criminal Justice series identifies the principal topical areas of research in this field and summarizes the various methodological and substantive challenges presented in conducting research on these issues. In each chapter, authors provide a summary of the prominent data collection efforts in the topical area, provide an overview of the current methodological work, discuss the challenges in the measurement of central concepts in the subject area, and identify new horizons emerging in data collection and measurement. We encouraged authors to discuss work conducted in an international context and to incorporate discussion of qualitative methodologies when appropriate.
Marketing messages socialise individuals into believing that (amongst other practices) consuming cosmetics is the key to beauty and such messages are now being targeted directly to pre-adolescents. Research shows marketing portrayals of beauty ideals are associated with body disillusionment; however, there is a lack of knowledge on how tweens' enculturation of the necessity to consume beauty products influences their personal development and perspectives of others. The present study examines tweens perceptions of girls who own makeup; 111 girls between 6 and 12 years drew and described a child who owned makeup and a child who did not own makeup, resulting in 222 drawings. The drawings and descriptive words were coded inductively using emerging themes and differences between the two drawings were analysed using SPSS and chi square analysis. Findings revealed girls who owned makeup were perceived to be more attractive, happy, and popular than girls who did not wear makeup, however, they were also perceived to be ‘nastier' than girls who did not own makeup. The findings revealed tweens are enculturated into contemporary beauty ideals and hold strong stereotypes regarding owning makeup. Interpreted through the lens of sociocultural theory and the Halo Effect, findings are discussed in terms of how such ideals shape tweens expectations of others and ultimately may shape their own personal behaviour with regards to social interactions, roles and activities engaged in. We argue that the beauty ideal stereotypes associated with tween cosmetic ownership may be in reality, less than ideal. This article is protected by copyright. All rights reserved.
Organized around the intersecting social divisions of class, race, age, and gender, the book provides an engaging and authoritative overview of the nature of victimisation in society. In addition to a review of the major theoretical developments in relation to understanding aspects of victimization in society, individual chapters explore the political and social context of victimisation and the historical, comparative, and contemporary research and scholarly work on it. Each chapter includes the following:- Background and glossary- Theory, research and policy review - `Thinking critically about…' sections- Reflections and future research directions- Summary and conclusions- Annotated bibliographyVictims, Crime and Society is the essential text on victims for students of criminology, criminal justice, community safety, youth justice and related areas.
We examined how a female offender's race/ethnicity influenced the tone of a crime story. Our thematic content analysis of front-page articles from four nationally available U.S. newspapers suggested that stories about minority female offenders were more likely to have negative tones, overall, than were stories about white female offenders. This finding held even after we considered the type of offense committed and the degree of front-page news coverage. The more negative depictions of minority females may explain their harsher treatment by the criminal justice system. © Springer Science+Business Media New York 2013. All rights are reserved.
Utilizing data from multiple local newspapers, this study examines disparities in the presence/absence and amount of newspaper coverage given to homicide victims in Los Angeles County, California. Multilevel logistic and negative binomial regressions indicate that the level of economic disadvantage and percentage of minority residents in/around the crime scene neighborhood negatively affects the presence/absence and rate of newspaper coverage. These findings contribute to the literature by highlighting the role of neighborhoods in the production of newspaper stories. This study has implications for the social construction of and criminal justice response to crime.
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The selection of 'good' pictures has increasingly become a crucial factor when transmitting news to the recipients. Every day thousands of events are happening and millions of pictures are taken. By choosing photographs for newspapers and magazines, photographic editorial departments want to attract the recipients' attention, evoke emotions and get them to read their stories. But what exactly is a good picture that meets these expectations? Which criteria are decisive for selecting pictures and what effects of this selection can be measured on the recipients' side? This article presents the results of a research project carried out at the University of Erfurt in 2008 and conducted in collaboration with the German weekly magazine stern. It deals with the selection and impact of press photography by introducing the concept 'photo news factors'. Applying the traditional news value theory to pictures, photo news factors are defined as selection criteria that, on the part of the communicator, decide whether the press photos are worth publishing. Furthermore, they are assumed to exert an influence on the intensity of attention that a picture arouses.
This article analyzes racial and ethnic patterns in media coverage of poverty in the United States, with a particular focus on depictions of African Americans and Hispanics. A content analysis of photos accompanying poverty‐related stories published in Time, Newsweek , and U.S. News & World Report from 1992 to 2010 shows that while Hispanics are underrepresented in media portrayals of the poor, African Americans are overrepresented, especially alongside stories on welfare, in times of economic growth and low unemployment, and in coverage unsympathetic to the poor more generally. I conclude that media coverage of poverty is unrepresentative in a manner consistent with stereotypes concerning African Americans and Hispanics, likely contributing to the endurance of such stereotypes and explaining the fact that welfare is as unpopular after welfare reform as it was prior to reform.
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Wagle , Udaya R . 2013 . “.” Politics & Policy 41 (): 947 ‐ 984 . http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/polp.12053/abstract Agrawal , Shantanu . 2008 . “.” Politics & Policy 36 (): 636 ‐ 675 . http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1747‐1346.2008.00124.x/abstract Gainous , Jason , Stephen C. Craig , and Michael D. Martinez . 2008 . “.” Politics & Policy 36 (): 972 ‐ 1004 . http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1747‐1346.2008.00147.x/abstract
Related Media
Pilgrim , David . 2000 . “.” http://www.ferris.edu/news/jimcrow/coon/ Clinton , William J . “, The American Presidency Project . http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/?pid=53219
Objective
We employ theories of causal reasoning to understand attributions about the 2007 Virginia Tech and 2011 Tucson shootings. We argue that attributions stem from two motives: (1) a partisan motivation to perceive events consistent with party attachments, and (2) a drive to minimize the cognitive burdens associated with extensive reasoning processes. The latter motive is expected to produce a fundamental attribution bias: the least educated respondents attribute blame for the shootings to the individual assailant while the most educated attribute blame to environmental conditions. Methods
We test hypotheses using 2007 and 2011 national surveys reported just after the shootings. ResultsOur findings suggest a major partisan divide on the causes of tragedy; Democrats believed social and political forces were responsible whereas Republicans blamed individual gunmen. Considerable differences between the least and most educated respondents were also discovered. Greater educational attainment was associated with environmental attributions. Finally, the analyses revealed that education had virtually no influence on Republican attributions, but enhanced Democrats’ penchant to blame the tragedy on environmental factors. Conclusion
Our study highlights the utility of using motivational theories of causal attributions to understanding and modeling the cognitive processes involved in perceived causes about gun-related tragedies.
The abstract for this document is available on CSA Illumina.To view the Abstract, click the Abstract button above the document title.
Cultivation analysis investigates television's contributions to viewers'
conceptions of social reality. Developed by George Gerbner in the 1960s,
cultivation research continues to expand in numerous directions, with
over 125 new studies published since 2000. This article reviews the
history of cultivation theory and takes stock of recent trends in the
field. We argue that cultivation has taken on certain paradigmatic
qualities, and we consider the future prospects for cultivation research
in the context of the changing media environment.
This study tested 2 important theories in the history of mass communication research, agenda setting and cultivation, by comparing the effects of watching local television news with direct experience measures of crime on issue salience and fear of victimization. Direct experience was measured in 2 ways: (a) personal crime victimization or victimization of a close friend or family member, and (b) neighborhood crime rates. Using a random digit dial telephone survey of residents of the Washington, DC, metropolitan area, researchers found that local news exposure accounted for an agenda-setting effect but did not cultivate fear of being a victim of crime. By contrast, direct experience had no agenda-setting effect but did predict fear.
This research examined media depiction of homicide in a large metropolitan area from the market-driven journalism perspective (McManus, 1994). From this perspective, news organization decisions are based on journalist and news editor perceptions of what type of stories resonate with the general public. Accordingly, the news production process becomes characterized as an exercise in market strategy rather than a presentation of an accurate summary of local, national, and world events. We examined effects of victim, offender, and situational characteristics of homicides investigated by the Houston Police Department on a variety of media outcome measures for homicide stories appearing in the Houston Chronicle. The findings suggested that situational aspects of the homicide were the most important measures in predicting media outcomes.
This paper examines the stratification among African American women by skin color on indices such as education, income, and spousal status. How racial and colonial ideologies situate whiteness and blackness as symbolic representations in relation to one another and the subsequent systems of discrimination that develop from those ideologies is the crux of the theoretical argument in this paper. Infusing the concept of constructed notions of beauty into this racial paradigm further elaborates this process for African American women. I hypothesized that light-skinned women would have higher educational attainment, higher personal incomes, and would be more likely to marry high-status husbands than would darker-skinned women. Even when controlling for background variables, all three of the hypotheses are confirmed and the significance of skin color, particularly the privileging of lightness, is demonstrated.
We conducted a content analysis of a random sample of local television news programming in Los Angeles and Orange counties to assess representations of Blacks, Latinos, and Whites as lawbreakers and law defenders. ‘Intergroup’ comparisons of perpetrators (Black and Latino vs. White) revealed that Blacks and Latinos are significantly more likely than Whites to be portrayed as lawbreakers on television news. ‘Interrole’ comparisons (lawbreakers vs. law defenders) revealed that Blacks and Latinos are more likely to be portrayed as lawbreakers than as defenders, whereas Whites are significantly more likely to be portrayed as defenders than as lawbreakers. ‘Interreality’ comparisons of lawbreakers (television news vs. crime reports from the California Department of Justice) revealed that Blacks are overrepresented as lawbreakers, and Latinos and Whites are underrepresented as lawbreakers on television news compared to their respective crime rates obtained from the California Department of Justice for Los Angeles and Orange counties. Interreality comparisons of law defenders (television news vs. county employment records) revealed that Whites are overrepresented, Latinos are underrepresented, and Blacks are neither over- nor underrepresented as police officers on television news compared to employment reports. We speculate on the psychological effects of exposure to these intergroup, interrole, and interreality differentials on television news viewers.
Why has the public persisted in believing that violent crime is a widespread national problem in the U.S. despite declining trends in crime and the fact that crime is concentrated in urban locations? Cultivation theory suggests that widespread fear of crime is fueled in part by heavy exposure to violent dramatic programming on prime-time television. Here we explore a related hypothesis: that fear of crime is in part a by-product of exposure to crime-saturated local television news. To test this, as well as related and competing hypotheses, we analyzed the results of a recent national survey of perceived risk; a 5-year span of the General Social Survey (1990–1994); and the results of a recent survey of over 2,300 Philadelphia residents. The results indicate that across a wide spectrum of the population and independent of local crime rates, viewing local television news is related to increased fear of and concern about crime. These results support cultivation theory's predicted effects of television on the public.
Forty-four undergraduates assigned traditional stereotyping adjectives to middle-class black, middle-class white, lower-class black, and lower-class white female stimulus persons. A multivariate analysis of variance revealed that these Race Class stereotypes of women differed significantly by race and by social class, but there was no Race Class interaction. The stereotype of white women was rated significantly higher than that of black women on dependent, passive, and emotional. The stereotype of lower-class women was rated significantly higher than that of middle-class women on confused, dirty, hostile, inconsiderate, and irresponsible. Although the stereotypes of women differed significantly by race and social class, all were stereotypically feminine. In addition, the stereotypes of white women, and of middle-class women were most similar to traditional stereotypes of women. Thus, it was concluded that both race and social class are implicit variables in sex-role stereotypes.
This research examines identity construction and gender roles in social networking sites by studying and comparing the profile photographs of male and female Facebook users. Specifically, the number of photos in the profile album and the content of the main profile picture are studied by coding specific pictures, and determining if the content and amount of profile pictures differ significantly by gender. Participants include male and female Facebook users between the ages of 18 and 23 who are currently enrolled in a college or university. Profile pictures tended to be inactive, posed, appropriate, and only including the subject. The content and amount of Facebook profile photographs also did not significantly vary by gender. Implications of these findings, as well as suggestions for future research, are discussed.