Assessing News Media Influences on the Formation of Whites' Racial Policy Preferences

Abstract

Researchers have shown that news discourse contains images, episodes, themes, and vocabulary that comprise a negative portrayal of Blacks. But evidence linking news media content to Whites' racial policy opinions has lacked clear specification of the opinion formation process and mechanisms of news media influences on such process. This study mimics Whites' reasoning process via a causal model involving ideological orientations, affect toward Blacks, assessment of situations of racial inequality, and causal attributions of the inequality. The characteristics of this reasoning process may be affected by the news media in several ways. By analyzing the National Election Study (NES) 1990 Post-Election Survey data, this study examines how Whites' reliance on ideological principles or affect in forming their opinions is contingent on news media exposure. The data show that increased information-oriented media use enhances the role of ideological orientation and, possibly, causal attributions in Whites' racial policy reasoning.

Television use, stereotypes of African Americans and opinions on affirmative action: An affective model of policy reasoning

“…Other studies (e.g., Gilens, 1996;Pan & Kosicki, 1996) have analyzed how perceptions of racial minority groups (e.g., African Americans) by majority (White) Americans affected majority opinions on race related issues. Similarly, we are interested in stereotypes of a racial minority by the majority, assuming that in general, majority opinions are more likely to affect public policy than minority opinions.…”

“…Building on the work of , Pan and Kosicki (1996) analyzed how the news media might influence the reasoning chain of White Americans regarding racial policy. They predicted that use of information media will strengthen the effect of ideology on opinions regarding racial issues, while "non-information" television use will strengthen the influence of race affect on opinions.…”

Passing the “Breakfast Test”: Exploring the Effects of Varying Degrees of Graphicness of War Photography in the New Media Environment

“…Research shows that media can affect specific viewer policy beliefs and attitudes (Pan & Kosicki, 1996;Tan, Fujioka, & Tan, 2000). Pan and Kosicki (1996) found that conservatism was a much stronger negative predictor of support for racial equality policy among those who scored high on information-oriented media use. Overall, media can impact viewer policy beliefs, and this influence may be through framing mechanisms.…”

Media Representations of Race, Prototypicality, and Policy Reasoning: An Application of Self-Categorization Theory

“…Of additional interest to the model of policy reasoning formulated by Tan et al (2000) is whether and how these responses later translate into viewers' political decisions. Research on media use and racial policy positions informs this outcome, demonstrating a link between responses to media content and subsequent policy reasoning (Gilliam, 1999;Mendelberg, 1997;Pan & Kosicki, 1996;Valentino, 1999).…”

“…Finally, with a survey design, Pan and Kosicki (1996) investigated the influence of news consumption on race-based policy decisions. Specifically, they assessed the extent to which news exposure affected the relevance and weight of factors taken into consideration when making race-based policy determinations.…”