Media Effects on Racial Attitudes: Evidence from a Three-Wave Panel Survey in a Political Campaign

In Western democracies, the public harbors mostly negative attitudes toward ethnic minorities and favors policy programs intended to restrict immigration (Pettigrew, Wagner, & Christ, 2007). In some cases, these prejudices may stem from the coverage of ethnic minorities in the news media. On U.S. television, ethnic minorities are typically portrayed negatively, for example, as being poor or violent, as well as being loud politicians, or criminals (Dixon & Linz, 2000; Entman & Rojecki, 2000). Studies from Europe also reveal that racial bias is a core component of media reporting on ethnic minorities (e.g., Lubbers, Scheepers, & Wester, 1998; Ruhrmann, 2002). Given that media coverage of minorities is overwhelmingly negatively biased, exposure to such news is likely to perpetuate ethnic prejudice (Mastro, 2009). Most studies assume that racial bias in the news is likely to prime negative evaluative thoughts in recipients (Dixon, 2008; Domke, Shah, & Wackman, 1998; Power, Murphy, & Coover, 1996). In this context, priming refers to the activation of stereotypic cognitions in the mind of such audiences in response to recent or frequent exposure to stereotypical news portrayals of ethnic groups (Roskos-Ewoldsen, Roskos-Ewoldson, & Dillman Carpentier, 2002). Theoretically, racial bias in the media is likely to automatically cue negative evaluative thoughts about minorities because news reports commonly contain elements that have a negative racial connotation. Once such thoughts have been activated by media depictions of ethnic minorities, they are temporarily more accessible for subsequent judgments as activation spreads through individuals’ cognitive networks (Higgins, 1996). Moreover, since intergroup attitudes can be considered to be “the weighted average of the valence of all attributes associated with the group” (Park & Judd, 2005, p. 112), enhanced accessibility of negative thoughts is likely to solidify prejudicial beliefs about ethnic minorities. In this way, the priming of negativity due to the biased reporting about minorities can result in the activation and maintenance of negative racial attitudes (Fiske, 1998; Park & Judd, 2005).