Speaking of Looting: An Analysis of Racial Propaganda in National Television Coverage of Hurricane Katrina

Johnson, Kirk A.; Dolan, Mark K.; Sonnett, John

doi:10.1080/10646175.2011.590404

Cited by 10 publications

(7 citation statements)

References 14 publications

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“…Videotape of the news stories was acquired through the Vanderbilt Television News Archive. Selection of the three cases was based on a preliminary quantitative analysis of lead stories from evening news broadcasts on ABC, CBS, CNN, Fox, and NBC, the five networks with the largest audience shares at the time (Pew Research Center 2008:14; see Johnson et al 2011). We did not have access to the PBS NewsHour broadcast, but note that it may feature more diverse reporting and sourcing than other networks (Zeldes et al 2012).…”

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Intense news coverage during the delayed government response focused on African-American residents who did not or could not evacuate New Orleans. Numerous studies have shown racially biased and stereotyped representations in this coverage (Davis and French 2008;Johnson, Dolan, and Sonnett 2011;Kahle, Yu, and Whiteside 2007;Shah 2009). A wellknown example contrasts the captions of two similar photographs, one a young black man said to be "looting," the other a young white couple said to be "finding" food (Sommers et al 2006).…”

Section: Hurricane Katrina As Racialized Media Disastermentioning

confidence: 98%

“…The mainstream media in the United States is white owned and mostly white operated. Whites largely controlled the images and stories of people of color after the storm, resulting in "racial propaganda" (Johnson et al 2011). The anxiety of reporting about racial others in an unfamiliar disaster zone led some white reporters to fall back on ethnocentric and stereotypical thinking (Johnson et al 2010).…”

Section: Hurricane Katrina As Racialized Media Disastermentioning

confidence: 99%

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Priming Implicit Racism in Television News: Visual and Verbal Limitations on Diversity

2015

Self Cite

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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.

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Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Hurricane Katrina As Racialized Media Disastermentioning

confidence: 98%

Section: Hurricane Katrina As Racialized Media Disastermentioning

confidence: 99%

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Priming Implicit Racism in Television News: Visual and Verbal Limitations on Diversity

2015

Self Cite

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“…Using publicly available Google Trends data, we examine the search incidence in the United States of seven terms: “Black Lives Matter,” “racism,” “antiracism,” “white privilege,” “looting,” “rioting,” and “how to talk to kids about race.” The first two search terms encompass general themes from the protests in summer 2020; the second two (antiracism, white privilege) focus on white in-group responsibility for racial inequality; the next two (looting, rioting) are concepts shown by others to be racialized and tied to backlash responses to minority-led movements (Jacobs 2000; Johnson, Dolan, and Sonnett 2011; Wasow 2020); and finally, the last topic (how to talk to kids about race) allows us to look for the coupling of race themes with parenting.…”

Section: Protests In Summer 2020 As a Focusing Eventmentioning

confidence: 99%

Black Lives, White Kids: White Parenting Practices Following Black-Led Protests

Anoll¹,

Engelhardt²,

Israel-Trummel³

2022

Perspect. polit.

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Summer 2020 saw widespread protests under the banner Black Lives Matter. Coupled with the global pandemic that kept America’s children in the predominant care of their parents, we argue that the latter half of 2020 offers a unique moment to consider whites’ race-focused parenting practices. We use Google Trends data and posts on public parenting Facebook pages to show that the remarkable levels of protest activity in summer 2020 served as a focusing event that not only directed Americans’ attention to racial concepts but connected those concepts to parenting. Using a national survey of non-Hispanic white parents with white school-age children, we show that most white parents spoke with their children about race during this period and nearly three-quarters took actions to increase racial diversity in their children’s environment or introduce them to racial politics. But the data also show parenting practices to be rife with uncertainty and deep partisan, gender, and socioeconomic divisions. Drawing upon our findings, we call for a renewed focus on political socialization that considers how parenting choices are shaped by political events—including Black Lives Matter—and the possible long-term consequences of racial parenting practices on politics.

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“…Even though reporters in both the black and mainstream press claim norms of objectivity and impartiality, research on the media consistently shows that the framing of issues can define public issues and drive thinking about how those issues should be addressed (Estrada, Ebert, and Lore 2016;Johnson 1991;Johnson, Dolan, and Sonnett 2011;Johnson et al 2010). In this regard, the way coverage is framed can have implications for readers' attitudes and behaviors.…”

Section: The Black Press and The Mainstream Pressmentioning

confidence: 99%

Covering the Dawsons: Racial Variation in Newspaper Framing of Urban Crime

Fields

Newman

2020

Sociological Forum

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This article uses newspaper coverage of a case from Baltimore, Maryland, to explore racial variation in the rhetorical framing of urban crime. In October 2002, seven members of the Dawson family were murdered in a house fire. The murders became an expression of Baltimore’s character and the lives of its residents. After analyzing 206 newspaper articles about the case, we find stark differences in the way the case, its causes, and its consequences are presented to readers. Newspapers with primarily white audiences—both “mainstream” and “alternative” papers—present the case as a horrific, singular instance, placing responsibility on the perpetrator. In contrast, articles in African American newspapers offer a complex web of explanation, calling attention to the structural inequalities and disparate access to state resources. Whereas white newspaper portray the Dawson family as martyrs in the drug war, black newspapers position the family as part of a wider of community of African Americans who are victims of slack policing, racial discrimination, and negligent social policy. We argue that these rhetorical differences are more than cosmetic. Rather, they provide a framework for better understanding the relationship between the press and policy makers. Differences in coverage of the case also contribute to our understanding of why blacks and whites have fundamentally different understandings of race in the United States.

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Speaking of Looting: An Analysis of Racial Propaganda in National Television Coverage of Hurricane Katrina

Cited by 10 publications

References 14 publications

Priming Implicit Racism in Television News: Visual and Verbal Limitations on Diversity

Priming Implicit Racism in Television News: Visual and Verbal Limitations on Diversity

Black Lives, White Kids: White Parenting Practices Following Black-Led Protests

Covering the Dawsons: Racial Variation in Newspaper Framing of Urban Crime

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