Media Representation: Racial and Ethnic Stereotypes

Abstract

A stereotype is commonly understood as a generalizing image of individuals (or groups of individuals) who are not evaluated according to their individual characteristics but rather according to their group membership. The stereotype concept has three dimensions: categorization, value‐neutral generalization, and negative generalization. The media representation of racial and ethnic minorities is highly relevant in the context of social integration of groups and minorities into mainstream society. In the literature on media representation of minorities, a common observation is their low visibility or marginalization as well as their negative generalizations and contextualization.

Insults, criminalization, and calls for violence: Forms of hate speech and offensive language in German user comments on immigration

“…The portrayal of immigration and immigrants in the media was an active field of research in media and communication studies even before 2015. Negativism, marginalization, and stereotypical portrayals of ethnic minorities were and continue to be empirically described characteristics of reporting in conventional mass media in Western countries (Trebbe et al, 2017). However, the sharp rise in refugee migration and an increasing shift of public debates to social media have fundamentally changed the object of research.…”

“…To identify hate speech and offensive language using text annotation while simultaneously applying the quality measures of standardized content analysis, we first developed a detailed, theory-based coding scheme (see also Paasch-Colberg, et al, 2021a). The essential part of this coding scheme is a nuanced definition and operationalization of hate speech in text that is based on three key elements of hate speech that are commonly referred to in many content-based definitions, as outlined in section 3.1 above (e.g., Bahador & Kerchner, 2009): 1) negative stereotyping (i.e., the attribution of negatively connoted characteristics, roles, or behaviors to a whole group or to individuals on the basis of their group membership; see also Trebbe et al, 2017);…”

National stereotypes on education presented in folklore small texts (by the material of Russian, English and German proverbs and sayings)

“…An Rat gebrach es nie dem Mann, der vor-und rückwärts schauen kann. 3. Bücher fressen und nicht käuen macht ungesund.…”

“…Stereotyping, in other words, indicates thinking in terms of categories. [3] The specific nature of association in stereotypic description determines its significance in worldview of different nations. The importance of verbal realization of reverberation of national cultural peculiarities exposes not only its linguistic, but also cognitive entity in folklore.…”

From Insult to Hate Speech: Mapping Offensive Language in German User Comments on Immigration

“…Following our theoretical argument, we developed a flexible labeling scheme that measures three key ele-ments of hate speech in text: First, the negative evaluation of a group as a whole, i.e., negative stereotyping, is one common element of many hate speech definitions (e.g., Parekh, 2006). For the purpose of our coding scheme, we define negative stereotyping as the attribution of negatively connotated characteristics, roles, or behaviors to the whole group or to individuals on the basis of their group membership (see also, Trebbe, Paasch-Colberg, Greyer, & Fehr, 2017).…”