Minorities and Communication 1997 Abstracts
Minorities and Communication Division
Racial Differences in Responding to Occupational Portrayals by Models on Television • Osei Appiah, Stanford University • This study examined the differences in how black and white viewers process messages based on the race of television models representing five occupations. Findings from 54 black and white college students suggest that the race of the model has no impact on the amount of information white viewers remember from television models. In contrast, black viewers remember significantly more information from black television models than they do from white television models. The results imply that when designing campaign messages, particularly health messages, planners should make use of black models in order for black viewers to best remember those messages.
Framing Minority Image: A Case Study of Korean Americans Before and After the 1992 Los Angeles Riots • Hyun Ban, The University of Texas at Austin • This study examined and compared how the Los Angeles Times framed Korean Americans before and after the 1992 Los Angeles riots, according to four framing dimensions: substantive, affective, stylistic, and stereotypical. The results indicated that Times’ efforts to cover the Korean Americans more frequently and with a greater variety of aspects were successful. Nevertheless, their image in the Times did not significantly improve after the riots, in terms of favorability and depth.
Tolerance for First Amendment Rights in a Southern California Vietnamese Community • Jeff Brody, Tony Rimmer, California State-Fullerton • What are the dimensions of tolerance for civil liberties in immigrant communities? Models developed in large-scale surveys of the general American population have found education, liberal political ideologies, and newspaper reliance to be positively associated with tolerance, while religion, age and TV reliance are negative predictors. Closer inspection of these data, however, show radically different opinions may be held by subgroups. Some religious communities, for example, do report tolerant attitudes. The present study considers tolerance for speech and press rights in the Vietnamese community, a subgroup whose migrating circumstances over the last two decades suggest alternative tolerance models. We argue that the recent political history of the Vietnamese and their unique cultural and religious heritage will find the received general tolerance model wanting. Religious and media use measures (TV news rather than newspaper use) did play a positive role here in predicting tolerant attitudes towards the speech and press rights of others. Our attempt to incorporate historic circumstances into the model was not successful.
Newspapers’ Coverage of the Immigration Issue During the 1996 Presidential Campaign • Yu-li Chang, Ohio • This study about newspapers’ coverage of the immigration issue during the 1996 presidential campaign found that Hispanics and Asians were the immigrant groups most frequently covered and that immigrants were presented in a negative light. This study also found that papers published in cities with large immigrant populations and having large circulations were aware of the ethnic diversity among their readers since they contained more coverage and diversity of topics on the immigration issue.
Use of Asian American History in the News Media: The Discourse of Model Minority • Chiung Hwang Chen and Ethan Yorgason, University of Iowa • This paper focuses on the use of history in the American press’s model minority discourse between the 1960s and the 1980s. It looks at how the mainstream media constructed an Asian American past to justify the discourse of the model minority. It then addresses the political and ideological implications of this stereotype. It concludes by arguing that journalists ought to incorporate a deconstructive impulse in using history and writing about minorities.
They Just Keep Rolling Along: Images of Blacks in Film Versions of Show Boat • Douglass K. Daniel, Kansas State University • The four filmed versions of the venerable American musical Show Boat, dating from 1929 to 1989, significantly altered their depictions of blacks while telling the same story. Racial slurs and stereotypes diminished with each version. Yet the most popular film, the 1951 Technicolor extravaganza, responded to changing attitudes about black portrayals in film by virtually eliminating characters and subplots. The 1989 version filmed for television demonstrated an enlightened production of a racially flawed story.
White Viewers’ Perceptions of Black Television Images • Chontrese M. Doswell, University of Maryland at College Park, Carolyn A. Stroman, Howard University • The general foundation of the present study was the socializing influence the media have upon audience perceptions resulting from televised images. The specific aim was to examine whether media depiction of Black people shaped White audience members’ perceptions of Black people in the real world. Findings showed divergent opinions exist about viewer perceptions of White and Black people. White images on television were held more closely representative of White culture than Black images. Results of the study indicate that (1) there is a weak relationship between television images of Black people and White viewer perceptions of Black people in the real world, (2) in addition to television, music videos, magazines and firsthand experiences are predictors of knowledge about Black people among White people; and (3) weekly TV exposure is the strongest predictor of perceptions about Black people. This perceived reality study showed that White adult viewers perceived White and Black people differently. Traditionally, research in this area has only used children. Further research using adults should be done to fully determine the relationship between television exposure and subsequent perceptions.
An Investigation of Colorism of Black Women in News • Lillie M. Fears, University of Missouri-Columbia • Most studies of colorism in advertising have concluded that typically Eurocentric-looking models are more popular than typically Afrocentric-looking models. This study differs in that it examines whether news editorial photographs reveal the Eurocentric black woman’s life advantages over that of the Afrocentric black woman. Results indicate an overwhelming representation of Afrocentric-looking women, a finding that supports the notion that news, unlike advertising, presents a far more realistic view of the way Black America really looks.
Racism, Hegemony, and Local TV News: An Ethnographic Study of News Practice • Don Heider, University of Texas at Austin • Using theoretical frames of hegemony and everyday racism, this ethnographic study examines news practice in two local television newsrooms. News philosophy and coverage decision-making are examined, as well as where news room power resides. With the help of community leaders and informants within the newsrooms themselves, the author finds that news practice remains a process that routinely excludes coverage of people of color and naturalizes the process wherein Anglo values continue to control the daily news product.
Japan’s Challenge to America’s Game: Hideo Nomo’s First Season with the Los Angeles Dodgers • Tsutomu Kanayama, Ohio University, Joseph Bernt, Ohio University • Study of Hideo Nomo’s first season as a Japanese player in the major leagues content analyzed 229 stories covering games in which Nomo pitched. Stories represented the entire universe of such stories from USA Today and 14 metropolitan papers from the cities with National League franchises. Race-labeled description, photographic treatment, length of story, paper, and date of coverage were recorded to determine subtle evidence of biased reporting using a method similar to Washburn’s 1981 study of coverage of Robinson’s first season with the Dodgers. Coverage varied by time of season, type of paper, location of paper and game.
HIV/AIDS Video Programming for Latino Youth • Hilary N. Karasz, University of Washington • The purpose of this study is to provide guidelines for improving programming about HIV/AIDS for a specific population of Latino adolescents. A set of programming recommendations was developed from the literature and tested in a series of focus group discussions with Latino teenagers from a San Francisco outreach center. The findings show that teenagers prefer and recommend explicit, detailed information about HIV/AIDS, presented with particular attention to realistic characterization and the male/female relationship.
Like the Sun Piercing the Clouds: Native American Tribal Newspapers and Their Functions • Teresa Trumbly Lamsam, University of Missouri • In a content analysis of news content, three Native American tribal newspapers were examined for the functions of surveillance, correlation, transmission of culture and entertainment. For these three cases, the findings indicate that these tribal newspapers seldom perform an interpretive or propaganda function. Instead, the analysis shows that nearly 90 percent of the time, the common goal of the three newspapers was to keep tribal members informed of activities of the tribal government, elected tribal officials and tribal members.
A Survey of Asian American Journalists: A Look at Their Job-Related Experiences Due to Ethnicity, and a Look at Their Perceptions of Media Coverage of Asian Americans • Virginia Mansfield-Richardson, Penn State • This paper is a survey of 520 members of the Asian American Journalists Association asking about negative and positive experiences they have had as print, radio and television journalists, which they attribute to their ethnic status as Asian Americans. The survey also asks their opinions of how Asian Americans and issues affecting Asian Americans are being covered in the media today. The answers reveal a great deal of anger, passion, resentment, and bitterness, as well as many positive attitudes that there are advantages to being an Asian American in the news business today.
White and Whiter: Television’s Impediments to Inter-Racial Trust • Andrew Rojecki, Indiana • This paper argues that entertainment television erodes social trust between blacks and whites by constricting the range of inter-racial involvement and intimacy. It does so in two ways: structurally by putting blacks and whites in hierarchical relationships that diminish involvement beyond formal role requirements, and symbolically by stripping blacks of a full-range of human emotion by making them allegorical vessels of white virtue. The project uses the concept of social capital, most recently developed by Robert Putnam, to argue that the store of inter-racial trust depends on horizontal relationships that encourage candor and involvement.
No Racism Here: News Coverage of the Desegregation of the University of Alabama • Jim Sernoe, Midwestern State University • Autherine J. Lucy was one of the first students to enroll at a previously all-white university. Her enrollment at the University of Alabama in February 1956 was very controversial, and after a series of riots and administrative obstacles, Lucy was suspended. Using textual analysis, this paper examines news coverage in the New York Times from February 1956 through March 1957 to determine the frames and themes found in the coverage, concluding that although stereotypes were largely absent, the Times failed to see whites’ racism and blamed most of the problems on Autherine Lucy.
From Yellow Peril through Model Minority to Renewed Yellow Peril • Doobo Shim, University of Wisconsin-Madison • This study is a historical analysis of Asian American portrayals in entertainment media and a contextualization of their meaning in society. The general nature of Asian stereotypes and the racial formation projected in those stereotypes are determined. With the knowledge of this history, the contemporary era’s renewed propensity to depict Asians as illegalists will be understood more clearly.
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