Media Perception of Minority Groups

<v ->I’m here to talk about,</v> how media influences, intergroup relations. Between racial, ethnic, and religious groups. And in my research, I’ve looked at this both from the perspective of White Americans, but also for the depicted groups, the racial ethnic minority groups. So first of all, for White Americans what we see is that, exposure to media depictions of racial ethnic minorities. Oftentimes increases negative attitudes towards the depicted groups, but also harmful behaviors including support for public policies that are targeting members of this group. And the reason is, because the content analysis show us that, the way in which racial ethnic minorities are represented in American media, they’re either underrepresented or they are negatively represented, in the context of stereotypes.

So this has been found across different genres. So television, newspapers, movies, even digital media, new media, video games. So what we see is that, because racial ethnic minorities are represented in these stereotypic ways. Exposure to these kinds of depictions, oftentimes increases negative, kinds of cognitions about these groups, negative emotion, and then subsequently behaviors.