Minority Candidates, Media Framing, and Racial Cues in the 2004 Election

Rooted in political communication models of framing and priming and a rather unique theory of appeals to racial authenticity, the authors examine minority candidates in both majority-minority and majority-white districts during the 2004 election cycle.They explore and analyze potential framing and priming effects based on variations of candidates’ media coverage in a number of campaign scenarios. Results suggest that racial references are commonplace in biracial election contests (and are more likely to occur there than in all-white contests). Furthermore, newspaper coverage of biracial and all-black elections is more likely to contain a racial frame than stories about all-white races. The authors conclude with a discussion of the normative implications of these findings, as well as suggestions for further examination and testing.