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Media and prejudice
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Three experiments examine how the type of language used to describe in-group and out-group behaviors contributes to the transmission and persistence of social stereotypes. Two experiments tested the hypothesis that people encode and communicate desirable in-group and undesirable out-group behaviors more abstractly than undesirable in-group and desirable out-group behaviors. Experiment 1 provided strong support for this hypothesis using a fixed-response scale format controlling for the level of abstractness developed from Semin and Fiedler's (1988a) linguistic category model. Experiment 2 yielded the same results with a free-response format. Experiment 3 demonstrated the important role that abstract versus concrete communication plays in the perpetuation of stereotypes. The implications of these findings and the use of the linguistic category model are discussed for the examination of the self-perpetuating cycle of stereotypes in communication processes.
The world is witnessing the highest level of displacement of people on record. Public discourse often uses labels to describe people on the move such as ‘migrants’, ‘asylum seekers’, or ‘refugees’ interchangeably. A preregistered study in nine countries (Australia, the Czech Republic, Finland, France, Italy, Portugal, Sweden, Switzerland, and the United Kingdom; N = 2844) tested experimentally the effect of these three labels on attitudes towards immigrants and immigration policies. We found a significant difference between the label ‘migrant’ and both ‘asylum seeker’ and ‘refugee’ on the social distance scale. Participants were happier if migrants, rather than asylum seekers and refugees, were their neighbours, friends, or partners. The effect was mediated by perceived benefits, but not threats, whereby migrants were perceived to bring more benefits to receiving societies than asylum seekers and refugees. To increase the acceptance of immigrants, speakers may consider specifying the given group and emphasize benefits that immigrants bring to receiving societies.
During a pandemic, it is vital to identify factors that motivate individuals to behave in ways that limit virus transmission (i.e., anti‐COVID‐19 behaviour). Fear has been suggested to motivate health‐oriented behaviour, yet fear of the virus (i.e., fear of COVID‐19) could have unintended consequences, such as an increase in anti‐immigrant prejudice. In a three‐wave longitudinal study (NT1 = 4275) in five European countries from April to October 2020, we investigated how social norms, the impact of the pandemic on individuals, and intergroup contact affected fear of COVID‐19 and—or in turn—anti‐COVID‐19 behaviour and prejudice towards immigrants. A latent change score model——distinguishing between intra‐ and inter‐individual changes in outcomes——indicated that fear of COVID‐19 influenced neither anti‐COVID‐19 behaviour nor prejudice. Anti‐COVID‐19 behaviour was increased by anti‐COVID‐19 norms (i.e., belief that others perform anti‐COVID‐19 behaviours), while prejudice was influenced by positive and negative direct and mass‐mediated intergroup contact.
Whereas politicians broker peace deals, it falls to the public to embrace peace and help sustain it. The legacy of conflicts can make it difficult for people to support reconciling and reintegrating with former enemies. Here we create a five-minute media intervention from interviews we conducted with Colombian Revolutionary Armed Forces (FARC) ex-combatants in a Colombian demobilization camp and non-FARC Colombians in neighbouring communities. We show that exposure to the media intervention humanizes FARC ex-combatants and increases support for peace and reintegration. These effects persisted at least three months post-exposure, were replicated in an independent sample of non-FARC Colombians and affected both attitudes (for example, support for reintegration policies) and behaviour (for example, donations to organizations supporting ex-combatants). As predicted, the intervention’s effects were mediated by changing conflict-associated cognitions—reducing the belief that ex-combatants are unwilling and unable to change—beyond affective pathways (for example, increased empathy or reduced prejudice).
The current paper describes an effort to develop an integrated theory – integrated mediated intergroup contact (IMIC) model – to account for the two types of mediated intergroup contact (parasocial and vicarious) that have been shown to help with prejudice reduction. To this end, our model applies concepts from intergroup contact theory, parasocial and vicarious research, and narrative transportation theory. The present research expands our theoretical understanding of how entertainment media can function as a tool for reducing prejudice toward various outgroups. The IMIC model accounts for the effects of the two types of mediated contact – parasocial and vicarious – and delineates the process of prejudice reduction.
Scholars report contradictory findings regarding whether citizens trust media in autocracies. Relying on focus group methodology, this study uses Russian television viewers’ reception of the Russia–Ukraine conflict to investigate media perception in an autocracy. It argues that citizens in non-democracies lack the opportunities, motivation and tools to substantively process news. When perceiving news, they express both critical and supportive reactions towards the regime without integrating them into coherent views and thus support authoritarian equilibrium by being unable to articulate consistent opinions. This argument helps to explain the paradoxes of media (dis)trust and clarifies the process of media perception in authoritarian political systems.
The efforts of peace-building and reconciliation between historical enemies are faced with many structural and psychological obstacles. Scholars have identified mechanisms that can induce improvements in psychological aspects of intergroup relations such as intergroup contact. However, establishing direct contact with everyone is impossible. Therefore, mass-media represents an important source through which groups learn about each other. Numerous studies have shown that stereotypical and often negative portrayals of specific social groups through media produces or reinforces negative intergroup outcomes. In this research we report results from an experimental study conducted in a post-conflict society of Bosnia and Herzegovina (N = 119). It examined the effects of stereotypical and counter-stereotypical representations of former enemy groups (Bosniaks) through media on intergroup behavior (reported by Bosnian Serbs). More specifically, in this research we explored the effects of representing outgroup individuals as immoral (stereotypical condition) and moral (counter-stereotypical condition) on specific behavioral tendencies towards the historical enemy group. The results indicate that exposure to primarily moral information about the outgroup target facilitated important positive intergroup outcomes. This study extends the literature and research on moral exemplars by demonstrating the effects on relevant intergroup outcomes whilst utilizing current (vs. historic) moral exemplars stories.
This study documents the results of a longitudinal content analysis of television news about LGBT people in terms of visibility, active representation, tone and framing in Flanders (1986–2017). While attention for LGBT issues has increased over time, LGBTs are not more likely to be visually represented or granted a voice. Gay men are more often actively represented than lesbians and transgender people. News remains negatively biased, although news stories in which LGBT people are depicted as the cause of negativity have become less prevalent. Patterns in framing have shifted: Deviance and abnormality frames have decreased in favor of a rise in equal rights and victim frames. Patterns in tone and framing were similar for gay men, lesbians and transgender people. Results suggest that journalists have shifted from problematizing homosexuality to problematizing homophobia. Implications of news as a source of mass-mediated contact to promote tolerance toward LGBT people are discussed.
Due to the recent conflicts between China and South Korea (mainly the THAAD incident), we intended to examine whether mediated intergroup contact through TV series and films can be beneficial for improving their intergroup relations. Moreover, a novel type of indirect intergroup contact was proposed and termed as extended mediated contact. The general objective is to investigate and differentiate its relationships with intergroup relations (i.e. intergroup attitudes and post-conflict forgiveness) with those of mediated contact. Chinese university students were selected as the sample of our study and 366 participants completed an online survey. Results from the structural equation modeling (SEM) analysis revealed that both mediated and extended mediated contact positively predicted cultural affinity, which, in turn, positively predicted both intergroup attitudes and post-conflict forgiveness. As compared to mediated contact, extended mediated contact exerted significant but weaker effects. The bootstrapping method in SEM revealed that cultural affinity played a mediating role in the relationships of the two types of contact to intergroup attitudes and forgiveness.
Minorities often express dissatisfaction and frustration with media depictions of their ingroup motivating them to engage in strategies that can restore a positive group identity. Based on the dual model of collective action and relying on two studies, we examined if exposure to negative news media can motivate collective action among Muslim Americans through increases in collective efficacy and group-based anger. Data from a four-wave longitudinal survey revealed that Time 1 self-reported exposure to negative news about Muslims increased Time 4 collective action intentions through increases in Time 3 efficacy, but not anger. Experimental results revealed that perceived news accuracy moderates these effects. Specifically, exposure to negative news about one’s ingroup motivates collective action when the news is perceived as biased but dampens these efforts if perceived to be accurate. These findings reveal how and under what conditions exposure to negative news coverage can lead to collective action among minorities.
Media and popular culture often serve as sites for the creation and perpetuation of negative ethnic stereotypes. Social cognitive theory, priming, and script theory explain that repeated omission, misrepresentation, and trivialization of minorities in the media have important implications for identity formation and intergroup relations. Biased media portrayals influence how marginalized groups understand and negotiate their identities, perceived self‐worth, and belongingness in society. They also impact dominant group members' social judgments, racial beliefs, prejudices, and policy opinions. Media literacy education can help audiences recognize and critique ethnic stereotypes in the media. Furthermore, it can challenge and counter harmful stereotypes by promoting alternative counterstereotypes, participatory media, and positive storytelling.
Combating prejudice against social minorities is a challenging task in current multicultural societies. Mass media can decisively shape prejudice, because it often represents the main source of information about social minorities. In 3 studies in the Czech Republic (N = 445) and Switzerland (N = 362; N = 220), we investigated how prejudice against negatively and positively perceived minorities (the Roma in Study 1, Kosovo Albanians in Study 2, Italians in Study 3) is influenced by a single exposure to a print news report, by manipulating the valence of reports about minority members (positive vs. negative vs. mixed) and linguistic forms for minorities’ ethnicity (nouns vs. adjectives). Positive and negative reports shaped prejudice in the respective directions; the effect of mixed reports mostly did not differ from positive reports. Labeling ethnicity with nouns (e.g., a male Roma) resulted in more prejudice than adjectives (e.g., a Roma man), independent of report valence. Report valence influenced the affective part of prejudice (i.e., feelings toward a minority), whereas language consistently shaped the behavioral part of prejudice (i.e., preferred social distance from a minority).
This study explores the role of social media for fundraising by people in a foreign country, in the aftermath of the Nepal earthquake in 2015. The Nepalese community in Victoria (and other parts of Australia) geared up almost instantly through Facebook to disseminate critical information and coordinate relief fundraising. Within two days of the earthquake, nearly 7000 people joined the Facebook page 'Victorians Stand Together for Nepal'. Content analysis of the Facebook page reveals that social media can be successfully used to drive fundraising in a disaster situation, particularly in geographically distributed populations. The page inspired thousands of people in Australia to donate over half a million dollars. Regular emotional pictorial posts on the page encouraged donations and a social network effect was evident. It was found that the Facebook page's focus on transparency, engagement, acknowledgement, encouragement and motivation were vital elements to the steady fundraising efforts.
To understand public opinion about immigration in Europe, one has to understand the media’s role in it. We present a literature review on research on media discourse on immigration and their effects. Despite differences in the way immigration and migrant groups are represented in European media, we can observe common patterns. Migrants are generally under-represented and shown as delinquents or criminals. Although, media framing differs based on specific migrant groups the discourse is focusing on, immigration coverage is often negative and conflict-centred. Frequent exposure to such media messages leads to negative attitudes towards migration, may activate stereotypical cognitions of migrant groups, and even influence vote choice. In addition to discussing these issues in depth, the present review also focuses on comparative findings.
Mass media has long been discussed as an essential determinant of the threat perceptions leading to anti-immigration attitudes. The field of empirical research on such media effects is still comparatively young, however, and lacks studies examining precise measures of the media environment an individual is likely to be actually exposed to. We employ a nuanced research design which analyses individual differences in the yearly levels of both media salience and attitudes in panel data of 25,000 persons, who were at least interviewed twice, and a time span over 15 years, from 2001 to 2015. We find a substantive and stable positive effect: comparing periods of vivid discussions with times where the issue was hardly discussed in the German media results in an increase in the predicted probability of being very concerned by about 13 percentage points. Deeper investigations reveal that the media effect is most potent for individuals living in areas with lower share of ethnic minorities and for those with lower education or conservative ideology, stressing the importance of individual receptiveness. In sum, our findings strengthen the line of reasoning stressing the importance of discursive influences on public opinion and cast doubt on the argument that threat perceptions stem primarily from the size of ethnic out-groups.
This paper will analyse the role of the Romanian press in the debate about the migration of the Romanian people, in the context of the freedom of movement for workers in Great Britain. The theme of Romanian migrants in the UK is a public issue which involves, among others, the country image of Romania. Considering these facts, the discussion will focus on the national symbols used by Romanian mass-media, as a response to the campaigns from the British tabloid press, and on the way in which stereotypes of Romanian people, spread in quality and tabloid newspapers (" beggars " , " murderers " , " criminals " , " fraudsters " , " corrupt ") shape the discursive construction of Romania's nation brand. Methodologically, a mixed research will be used, combining critical discourse analysis and media frames analysis, implying the four structural frame devices developed by Pan & Kosicki (1993). As a conclusion, the Romanian journalists respond to the anti-immigration campaigns from the British press by using three media frames: the anti-immigration frame, the contestation frame – Daily Fail and the truth frame. In doing so, the journalists fight against the stereotypes most employed in the British news articles about the Romanian migrants.
In 2015, Europe faced the arrival of over 1.25 million refugees fleeing from war-affected countries. The public mainly learned about this issue through domestic media. Through the use of computer-assisted content analysis, this study identifies the most dominant frames employed in the coverage of refugee and asylum issues between January 2015 and January 2016 in six Austrian newspapers (N = 10,606), particularly focusing on potential differences between quality and tabloid media, and on frame variations over time. The findings reveal that, apart from administrative aspects of coping with the arrivals, established narratives of security threat and economisation are most prominent. Humanitarianism frames and background information on the refugees’ situation are provided to a lesser extent. During the most intense phases of the crisis, the framing patterns of tabloid and quality media become highly similar. Media coverage broadens to multiple prominent frames as issue salience sharply increases, and then ‘crystallises’ into a more narrow set. In sum, the results confirm a predominance of stereotyped interpretations of refugee and asylum issues, and thus persisting journalistic routines in both, tabloid and quality media, even in times of a major political and humanitarian crisis.
This study content analyzed all print newspaper articles addressing U.S. immigration from Mexico appearing in Arizona, California, New Mexico, and Texas during a 1-year period for presence of linguistic intergroup bias. Across all four states, negative statements outnumbered positive statements; this negativity bias was more pronounced for out-group than in-group statements in all states except California. Consistent with the linguistic intergroup bias, positive in-group and negative out-group statements were encoded using more abstract language than negative in-group and positive out-group statements.
Public and commercial news follow distinct logics. We evaluate this duality in television news coverage on immigration. First, by means of a large-scale content analysis of Flemish television news (N=1,630), we investigate whether immigration coverage diverges between both broadcasters. Results show that, despite an overall negativity bias and relative homogeneity between the broadcasters, commercial news contains slightly more sensational and tabloid characteristics than public news. The latter promotes a more balanced view of immigration. These differences are stable over time. Second, using cross-sectional and panel data, we assess whether a preference for public versus commercial news is associated with an attitudinal gap in anti-immigrant attitudes. Findings demonstrate that individuals who prefer commercial news are more negative toward immigrants. We suggest that differences in news content may explain this attitudinal gap. In light of the debate around ‘public value’ offered by public service media across Europe, we tentatively conclude that public broadcasters have the potential to foster tolerance and provide balanced information by prioritizing a normative view over a market logic. The linkage between news coverage and the gap in attitudes between commercial and public news viewers warrants close investigation in the future.
Discrimination against Roma is a reality across Europe. The extent to which stereotyped, discriminatory beliefs of this minority group are reflected or reinforced by news media has received only limited attention. This study investigates media framing of Roma and explains variation in how European news media frame Roma in diagnostic and prognostic terms. We content analysed 825 news articles from newspapers in the Netherlands, Germany, Slovakia, the Czech Republic and the United Kingdom for the period 2010–2012. Results show that attention for Roma is clustered around key-events and differs considerably between countries. Our analyses of frame variation, based on multilevel modelling, indicate a duality in the use of frames, with Roma being both portrayed as victims and perpetrators. Variation in these portrayals could be ascribed mainly to sources and newspaper types. This study contributes to our understanding of the factors that account for problem-emphasizing portrayals of Roma in European countries.
Few studies have empirically examined how media stereotypes of Muslims influence Americans’ support for public policies exclusively harming Muslims. Across three studies, we tested the short-term and long-term effects of news portraying Muslims as terrorists on Americans’ support for public policies harming Muslims domestically and internationally. Study 1 revealed that exposure to news portraying Muslims as terrorists is positively associated with support for military action in Muslim countries. Study 2 revealed that exposure to news portraying Muslims as terrorists is positively associated with support for public policies that harm Muslims domestically and internationally; this effect was fully mediated by perceptions of Muslims as aggressive. Experimental results from Study 3 revealed that exposing participants to negative Muslim media footage, relative to neutral or no-video footage, increased perceptions of Muslims as aggressive, increased support for harsh civil restrictions of Muslim Americans, and increased support for military action in Muslim countries. Exposure to positive Muslim footage yielded opposite results. We discuss the importance of media in exacerbating aggressive attitudes and public policies in the context of intergroup relations.
We report on a field experiment and a focus group interview study that examine the impact of a media-based intervention (i.e., radio drama) aimed at promoting peaceful intergroup relations in the Eastern Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC). In Study 1, we used a priming paradigm to assess the causal impact of the intervention among 1,522 Congolese community members in North and South Kivu. The results revealed mixed effects of the media intervention on psychological outcomes: Priming the radio drama increased inclusive victim consciousness while reducing exclusive victim consciousness and social distance. However, priming also increased support for conformity toward leaders, and reduced the belief that cross-group discussions can resolve problems in community. Findings from a follow-up focus group interview study (with 6 focus groups, N = 51) shed light on possible reasons for these mixed results. We discuss why strategies that are effective in improving intergroup relations in the aftermath of violence might not be as effective in settings of ongoing violence.
Objectives:
We examined whether and how racial prejudice at both the individual and community levels contributes to mortality risk among majority as well as minority group members.
Methods:
We used data on racial attitudes from the General Social Survey (1993-2002) prospectively linked to mortality data from the National Death Index through 2008.
Results:
Whites and Blacks living in communities with higher levels of racial prejudice were at an elevated risk of mortality, independent of individual and community sociodemographic characteristics and individually held racist beliefs (odds ratio = 1.24; 95% confidence interval = 1.04, 1.49). Living in a highly prejudiced community had similar harmful effects among both Blacks and Whites. Furthermore, the interaction observed between individual- and community-level racial prejudice indicated that respondents with higher levels of racial prejudice had lower survival rates if they lived in communities with low degrees of racial prejudice. Community-level social capital explained the relationship between community racial prejudice and mortality.
Conclusions:
Community-level racial prejudice may disrupt social capital, and reduced social capital is associated with increased mortality risk among both Whites and Blacks. Our results contribute to an emerging body of literature documenting the negative consequences of prejudice for population health. (Am J Public Health. Published online ahead of print September 17, 2015: e1-e7. doi:10.2105/AJPH.2015.302776).
The present study (N = 1074) examined the impact of a theory-driven media intervention aimed at violence prevention and intergroup reconciliation in Burundi. We used a novel methodology utilizing audio-based surveys to assess attitudes related to intergroup conflict and reconciliation among community members. We conducted a propensity score analysis to estimate the causal effects of the intervention by examining differences between listeners and non-listeners of the radio dramas. The results indicated a positive effect of the intervention on several social psychological outcomes (tolerance, in-group superiority, social distance, intergroup trust, responsibility attributions, trauma disclosure and competitive victimhood). However, listeners and non-listeners did not differ in obedience toward leaders or historical perspective taking; and the results for active bystandership, one of the main foci of the intervention, were mixed. Furthermore, the results show that the impact of the intervention sometimes depends on listeners' personal experiences of victimization.
It is still not well understood how the media affect anti-immigrant party voting. In this paper, we argue and demonstrate empirically that mere exposure to immigration- and crime-related news is positively related to the likelihood that a voter casts a vote for an anti-immigrant party. On the basis of a media content analysis (N=20,084 news items) in combination with a voter panel survey (N=17,014 respondents) conducted in 11 European countries we find for several anti-immigrant parties that – ceteris paribus – exposure to news about immigration or crime increases voters’ probabilities to vote for these parties. We discuss our findings in light of prior research on issue ownership, and their implications for the role of the mass media in established democracies.
The current study content analyzes the 345 most viewed U.S. television shows within 12 separate television seasons spanning the years 1987 to 2009. Using multilevel modeling, the results from this comprehensive content analysis then are used to predict national-level racial/ethnic perceptions (between the years 1988 and 2008) with data from the American National Election Studies (ANES). Content analysis results reveal severe underrepresentation of Latinos, Asian Americans, and Native Americans, and a tendency to depict ethnic minorities stereotypically (e.g., overrepresentation of hyper-sexualized Latino characters). Multilevel-modeling analysis indicates that both the quantity and quality of ethnic media representations contributes to Whites’ racial attitudes.
Four correlational studies (N Albanians = 232, N Serbs = 129, N Bosniaks = 147, N Croats = 367) and one experimental study (N Bosniaks = 682), investigated the link between mass-mediated contact (i.e., information about former adversaries from the mass media) and forgiveness towards former adversaries in post-conflict societies. Specifically, we tested the association between positive and negative mass-mediated contact with one former adversary and forgiveness towards this former adversary (i.e., a primary transfer effect, Studies 1-4) and another former adversary (i.e., a secondary transfer effect, Studies 2-4). Positive mass-mediated contact with one former adversary was linked to greater forgiveness towards that former adversary and another former adversary. Intergroup trust mediated the primary transfer effect of positive mass-mediated contact, whereas generalization of trust and forgiveness from one former adversary to another mediated the secondary transfer effect. Our results underline the important role of positive but not negative mass-mediated contact with former adversaries in reconciliation.
After intergroup conflicts end, beliefs about past suffering of the ingroup compared to an outgroup influence relations between former adversaries. In Kosovo and Bosnia and Herzegovina, we simultaneously examined the effects of inclusive victimhood (i.e., a belief that both the ingroup and a former adversary suffered similarly) and competitive victimhood (i.e., a belief that the ingroup suffered more than a former adversary) on willingness to engage in contact with a former adversary, a precursor of positive changes in postconflict societies. In one correlational (nAlbanians = 159; nCroats = 227) and two experimental studies (NAlbanians = 161; NCroats = 341, preregistered), inclusive victimhood was linked to higher willingness to engage in contact with former adversaries through higher empathy (Studies 1 to 3) and trust (Studies 1 and 2). In contrast, competitive victimhood was associated with lower willingness to engage in contact through lower empathy (Study 1) and trust (Studies 1 and 3). We discuss the practical implications of our findings for interventions in postconflict societies.
Violent extremism is one of the major challenges of our time. A cluster-randomized controlled trial with two arms (treatment vs. control) conducted in 132 villages in the Sahel region of Burkina Faso ( N = 2,904 participants) examined whether a narrative intervention in the format of a radio drama can shift behavioral intentions, beliefs, and attitudes in contexts of violent extremism. Individuals in intervention villages participated in weekly listening sessions to the radio drama (6 months’ content) over 12 weeks. Compared with the control condition, the narrative intervention reduced justification of violence, increased behavioral intentions to collaborate with the police, and increased prioritization of addressing violent extremism. The intervention did not influence beliefs about or attitudes toward the police (e.g., trust, fairness) or beliefs about police–community collaboration. Content analysis of the narrative intervention and participants’ reception and discussion of the intervention provide insights on the processes driving the intervention’s influence.
Media discourse is often seen as an important condition of people’s attitudes and perceptions.
Despite a rich literature, however, it is not well understood how media exposure influences attitudes
towards immigrants. In contrast to previous studies, we argue that people rely on ‘availability heuris-
tics’ shaped by mass media. From that point of view, it is the specific content of media discourse on
immigration that affects people’s concerns. We use structural topic models to classify media content
of more than 24,000 articles of leading German newspapers from 2001 to 2016. Utilizing linear fixed-
effects models allows us to relate a person’s concern towards immigration, as reported in the German
Socioeconomic Panel, to prevalent topics discussed in print media while controlling for several
confounding factors (e.g., party preferences, interest in politics, etc.). We find a robust relationship be-
tween topic salience and attitudes towards integration. Our results reveal that specific topics with
negative contents (e.g., domestic violence) increase concerns, while others (e.g., scientific studies,
soccer) decrease concerns substantially, underlining the importance of available information provided
by media. In addition, people with higher education are generally less affected by media salience of
topics.
The aim of this paper is to identify a few reasons for the intensifying of “anti-Gypsyism” and scapegoating of the Roma in Romania during the COVID pandemic. Reasons are both economic and social. The need for free movement (essential for economic subsistence of many isolated Roma communities) as well as poor access to basic services are but two reasons, which lead to circulation of prejudices, which depict Roma as “lacking discipline and a sense of self control.” Focusing on the case of Țăndărei, this study intends to show that media representations are equally responsible for discourses of scapegoating and culture blame. Reports and articles which name Țăndărei as an “ecological bomb” fail to depict internal differences in the local Roma groups. Such representations (together with the process of scapegoating) may well illustrate Brubaker’s theory on groupism: in that media discourse on “the Roma” indiscriminately merges people with different social backgrounds into a homogeneous ethno-racial group.
This paper investigates the moderating role of public discourse in the effects of labeling asylum seekers (as “immigrants” vs. “refugees”) on attitudes toward asylum policy. The study relies on a series of survey experiments conducted in Hungary, in a period when asylum policy suddenly became a highly salient issue there. Originally, respondents were much more solidaristic toward “refugees” than “immigrants,” but the public discussion on asylum policy suppressed this wording effect—mainly by contaminating the concept of “refugee.” By using data on news reports and respondents’ media use, the analysis also looks at the roots of these changes. In particular, it presents evidence on the moderating role of converging connotations of different labels on the effect of wording.
First published in 1955, “Personal Influence” reports the results of a pioneering study conducted in Decatur, Illinois, validating Paul Lazarsfeld’s serendipitous discovery that messages from the media may be further mediated by informal “opinion leaders” who intercept, interpret, and diffuse what they see and hear to the personal networks in which they are embedded. This classic volume set the stage for all subsequent studies of the interaction of mass media and interpersonal influence in the making of everyday decisions in public affairs, fashion, movie-going, and consumer Behavior. The contextualizing essay in Part One dwells on the surprising relevance of primary groups to the flow of mass communication. Peter Simonson of the University of Pittsburgh has written that “Personal Influence was perhaps the most influential book in mass communication research of the postwar era, and it remains a signal text with historic significance and ongoing reverberations…more than any other single work, it solidified what came to be known as the dominant paradigm in the field, which later researchers were compelled either to cast off or build upon.” In his introduction to this fiftieth-anniversary edition, Elihu Katz discusses the theory and methodology that underlie the Decatur study and evaluates the legacy of his co-author and mentor, Paul F. Lazarsfeld.
This paper presents a meta-analysis of 79 cases (N = 21,857) testing the effectiveness of mediated intergroup contact on prejudice. Positive mediated contact decreased (r = −.23; 95% CI, −.29 to −.17), whereas negative mediated contact increased prejudicial attitudes (r = .31; 95% CI, .24 to .38) and intergroup anxiety and empathy were both significant mediators of these relationships. Furthermore, the data revealed no significant differences between parasocial and vicarious effects, positive and negative mediated-contact effects, or the effects of the duration of mediated-contact stimulus exposure on prejudice. However, the data did reveal experiments to have stronger effects than survey research. These and other results are discussed along with implications, limitations, and future research directions.
This meta-analysis of 49 studies, yielding 88 effect sizes (n = 10,215), examined the effect of negative stereotypes of Blacks in media on consumers’ attitudes. The results from the multilevel model (3-level) indicate that media stereotypes have a significant overall effect on consumers’ attitudes (r = .22, p < .001). This meta-analysis used multilevel multivariate models and meta-regression models to systematically investigate moderation of effect sizes by diversity in stimuli, dependent measures, research designs, sample demographics, and publication status. The results showed a consistent significant association between media stereotypes and attitudes across all moderator variables. Measures for attitudes in the subcategory of judgment showed larger effect sizes for the association between Black media stereotypes and consumers’ attitudes. Theoretical development, publication bias, and limitations are discussed. The entire database and codes for statistical procedures in R syntax is available from the Open Source Foundation (OSF) repository: https://osf.io/y8ndx/?view_only=dc6ecf5e18bf4fd883f0a396613022e0
We examined the association of the combination of direct intergroup contact and mass media news with attitudes toward immigrants and gay people in Italy, hypothesizing that direct intergroup contact would buffer the negative association between media news and attitudes, but only when contact was intimate or positive. Measuring contact variables and attitudes toward immigrants (Study 1, N = 428; Study 2, N = 426) and gay men and women (Study 3, N = 220), we found that intimate and positive direct intergroup contact was associated with more positive attitudes toward outgroup members, whereas exposure to negative news was related to more negative attitudes. Moreover, our results supported the buffering hypothesis, as the negative association between negative news and intergroup attitudes was significantly weaker amongst respondents with higher levels of intimate and positive intergroup contact.
The role of mass media in inciting and exacerbating intergroup conflicts is well documented.
However, there is still lack of evidence how mass media affects intergroup relations in the
aftermath of an intergroup conflict. We focused on Croats (N = 278) and Bosniaks (N = 267)
who engaged in mutual violence during the war in Bosnia and Herzegovina in the 90s. We
examined the relationship between exposure to ingroup media (media in national language) and
outgroup media (media in other languages) and two reconciliatory acts – forgiveness to the
outgroup and support for ingroup apology to the outgroup. Media exposure was not directly
associated with either of the two reconciliatory acts. Notwithstanding, media exposure was
indirectly linked to both outgroup forgiveness and support for ingroup apology through the
perception of ingroup victimhood. Greater exposure to ingroup media was associated with higher
perception of ingroup victimhood that was related to lower support for outgroup forgiveness and
ingroup apology. Reversely, greater exposure to outgroup media was associated with lower
perception of ingroup victimhood that was linked to higher support for outgroup forgiveness and
ingroup apology. Our findings extend the traditional view of media as deteriorating intergroup
relations and contribute to a more nuanced understanding of the role of mass media as a tool for
intergroup reconciliation in post-conflict societies.
In a society burdened with the most severe type of intergroup conflict, we examined the association between willingness to reconcile with former adversary, intergroup contact with, and perceived threat from former adversary. We focused on three reconciliatory acts—forgiveness to the outgroup, support for ingroup apology and support for financial compensation to the outgroup. We included different forms of positive and negative intergroup contact—direct and indirect (extended and mass‐mediated). In the link between contact and reconciliation, we tested the mediating role of two types of intergroup threat—realistic and symbolic. The sample comprised Bosniaks (N = 267) and Croats (N = 278) from Bosnia and Herzegovina. In both samples, reconciliation associated with indirect forms of intergroup contact even when controlling for its link with direct contact. This indicates the potential of indirect contact to promote reconciliation in the lack of direct contact, characteristic for segregated post‐conflict societies. Symbolic threat mediated the relationship between intergroup contact and symbolic forms of reconciliation—forgiveness and support for ingroup apology. Realistic threat mediated the link between intergroup contact and a more tangible form of reconciliation—support for financial compensation. This highlights the importance of considering different types intergroup threat when targeting distinct reconciliatory acts. Our results suggest that practitioners promoting reconciliation in post‐conflict societies need to implement different means when tailoring interventions that should enhance different sides of peace‐making process.
This study investigates the causes of fluctuations in public concern about immigration and contends that issues emphasized in media coverage explain these fluctuations. Drawing on agenda-setting research and theories about issue attributes, it is argued that media emphasis on aspects of immigration that are likely to be unobtrusive but with potentially concrete consequences for the public is likely to raise concern about immigration far more than unobtrusive but abstract issues. The analysis, based on public opinion data and newspaper articles on the topic of immigration to the U.K., shows that press emphasis on two unobtrusive but concrete issues within the theme of immigration - the economy and education - appears to increase concern about immigration; emphasis on more abstract issues evokes little reaction from the British public.
Although research has shown that different types of prejudice are highly correlated, prejudice hierarchies indicate that individuals differentiate between target groups. Here we examine the relationship between television news coverage and differences in attitudes toward minority groups. We rely on intergroup threat theory, tone and framing theories to formulate our hypotheses and conduct a multi-method study: All prime-time television news items in Flanders (N = 1,487) reporting on five minority groups (LGBT, Jews, Eastern Europeans, North-Africans, Roma) were coded in terms of tone and framing, and subsequently combined with individual-level survey data. Patterns in news coverage reflect differences in prejudice: groups that are most negatively/positively evaluated by the public receive the most negative/positive coverage. Prejudice is especially high for minority groups associated with problems and criminal threat frames in the news. We conclude that news content is an important characteristic of the intergroup context reflecting differences in minority group appraisals in society.
Two correlational studies investigated the associations between different forms of intergroup contact, on the one hand, and Italians’ prejudice and humanity attributions toward immigrants in Italy, on the other. Study 1 examined the effects of direct contact, extended contact and parasocial contact through mass-media, assessing separately contact through TV news and newspapers and contact through entertainment programs. Study 2 analyzed the distinct effects of positive and negative episodes of the contact forms considered in Study 1. Across the studies, we tested the mediational role of intergroup anxiety, empathy, and trust. Overall, results showed the importance of taking into account different forms of contact and considering the emotional processes during contact experiences to understand intergroup attitudes.
Political news coverage has – allegedly – undergone profound changes in the past decades. A professionalization of both politics and journalism, increasing market pressures and technological developments (Negrine & Lilleker, 2002) have led to a new quality in the link between political actors and institutions and the mass media, but are also claimed to have greatly affected the way politics is covered in the media. Such changes include overall decreasing amounts of political news coverage, an increasing focus on political strategy and the horse-race in politics, increasing negativity towards political actors and politics in general, conflict as a central theme of the news and an increasing focus on political leaders and personalities (Blumler & Gurevitch, 1995).
The majority of research on media counter-stereotyping of race/ethnicity has tended to employ positive portrayals or counter-stereotypical exemplars as a primary strategy in eliciting positive attitudes among White participants. In contrast, this article reports the results of an experiment on the unique role of affective responses to media messages as a mechanism in inducing greater feelings of connectedness with a diversity of racial/ethnic groups. Our focus is on the affective response of elevation specifically, which refers to feelings of being moved, touched, and inspired by images of people engaged in morally beautiful acts such as love, generosity, and kindness. Results show that the experience of elevation in response to inspiring videos was associated with heightened feelings of overlap between the self and humanity, with this overlap associated with greater feelings of connectedness with those from a diversity of racial/ethnic groups. This connection was also associated with more favorable attitudes.
In everything from the policies that regulate media industries to the practices of the organizations that produce the messages to the usage patterns of the consumers that choose them, mass media are implicated in real-world interracial/ethnic dynamics. Yet, despite the obvious associations between media and issues of race and ethnicity, a comprehensive effort aimed at documenting and addressing these links has not been undertaken. The current issue, Media Representations of Race and Ethnicity: Implications for Identity, Intergroup Relations, and Public Policy, endeavors to do just that. The merits of such an effort are articulated in this introduction to the volume alongside a review of the current state of the research in this domain.