Racial Identity, Media Use, and the Social Construction of Risk among African Americans

Despite the conflict and turmoil we have observed among media scholars who have been concerned with discovering the nature of media effects, there are very few among us who would deny that media help to shape the ways in which we understand the world (Hagen & Wasko, 2000; Livingstone, 1998). Our present uncertainty regarding the precise role that media play in this process exists in large part because we have become less parochial in our views about causation. We have chosen, or have been forced to expand, the number and variety of individual and contextual factors that we believe play an important role in shaping or moderating the ways in which media content comes to be processed, stored, and put to routine use (Renckstorf, 1996). Among the more important influences we have identified are those associated with our identities as members of groups. Of course, our identity as a member of a group defined primarily by race or ethnicity is just one component of an extremely complex identity structure (Frable, 1997; Jaret & Reitzes, 1999). The salience or centrality of racial identity varies across individuals, groups, contexts, and moments in time (Cornell & Hartmann, 1998). Managing this complexity in an effort to understand the nature of media influence is a daunting challenge. This article is an attempt to engage this complexity.