Racial Cues and Political Ideology

This research theorizes that the presence or absence in political conversation of racial cues—that is, references by elites and news media to images commonly understood as tied to particular racial or ethnic groups—may substantially influence wether citizens' racial cognitions contribute to their political judgments. In particular, such symbolic cues in discourse may activate an important linkage between an individual's racial perceptions and political ideology, which some scholars suggest have become closely intertwined in the U.S. political environment. With this in mind, an experiment was conducted in which the news discourse about crime was systematically altered—as including racial cues or not—within controlled political information environments to examine how individuals process, interpret, and use issue information in forming political judgments. The findings suggest that racial cues not only trigger the association between racial perceptions and political ideology but in turn may prompt individuals to become more ideologically distinct in their political evaluations.

[1]  David H Tewksbury,et al.  Switching Trains of Thought , 1997 .

[2]  Todd G. Shields,et al.  Priming Theory and Ras Models , 1997 .

[3]  R. Tourangeau,et al.  Cognitive Processes Underlying Context Effects in Attitude Measurement , 1988 .

[4]  Nicholas A. Valentino.  Crime News and the Priming of Racial Attitudes during Evaluations of the President , 1999 .

[5]  Robert M. Entman,et al.  Blacks in the News: Television, Modern Racism and Cultural Change , 1992 .

[6]  J. Baron,et al.  Inequality It's All in the Way You Look at It , 1998 .

[7]  Mary Carrillo,et al.  Examinations of Core Concepts and Processes Is It Really Racism?: The Origins of White American Opposition to Race-Targeted Policies , 1997 .

[8]  Tali Mendelberg,et al.  Executing Hortons: Racial Crime in the 1988 Presidential Campaign , 1997 .

[9]  J. Sullivan,et al.  The relationship of national and personal issue salience to attitude accessibility on foreign and domestic policy issues , 1996 .

[10]  Martin Gilens,et al.  RACE AND POVERTY IN AMERICA PUBLIC MISPERCEPTIONS AND THE AMERICAN NEWS MEDIA , 1996 .

[11]  James H. Kuklinski,et al.  On Hearing and Interpreting Political Messages: A Cautionary Tale of Citizen Cue-Taking , 1994, The Journal of Politics.

[12]  Jon Hurwitz,et al.  Public Perceptions of Race and Crime: The Role of Racial Stereotypes , 1997 .

[13]  Michael W. Link,et al.  Social Construction and White Attitudes toward Equal Opportunity and Multiculturalism , 1996, The Journal of Politics.

[14]  Susan T. Fiske,et al.  Political Beliefs, Policy Interpretations, and Political Persuasion , 1991, The Journal of Politics.

[15]  M. C. Thornton,et al.  Racial ideology in U. S. mainstream news magazine coverage of black‐Latino interaction, 1980–1992 , 1994 .

[16]  Martin Gilens,et al.  “Race Coding” and White Opposition to Welfare , 1996, American Political Science Review.

[17]  Gerald M. Kosicki,et al.  Assessing News Media Influences on the Formation of Whites' Racial Policy Preferences , 1996 .

[18]  K. Jamieson,et al.  The Treatment of Persons of Color in Local Television News , 1998 .

[19]  T. K. Srull,et al.  Person memory and judgment. , 1989, Psychological review.

[20]  Richard R. Lau,et al.  Construct accessibility and electoral choice , 1989 .

[21]  H. Gray.  Race Relations As News , 1987 .

[22]  L. Sigelman,et al.  Black Candidates, White Voters: Understanding Racial Bias in Political Perceptions , 1995 .

[23]  Shanto Iyengar,et al.  Experimental Demonstrations of the “Not-So-Minimal” Consequences of Television News Programs , 1982 .

[24]  David Domke,et al.  News Media, Racial Perceptions, and Political Cognition , 1999 .

[25]  Laura A. Brannon,et al.  The Media and the Foundations of Presidential Support: George Bush and the Persian Gulf Conflict , 1993 .

[26]  Blair T. Johnson,et al.  Effects of involvement on persuasion: a meta-analysis , 1989 .

[27]  S. Ball-Rokeach,et al.  VALUE-FRAMING ABORTION IN THE UNITED STATES: AN APPLICATION OF MEDIA SYSTEM DEPENDENCY THEORY , 1990 .

[28]  J. Bargh,et al.  Social cognition and social perception. , 1987, Annual review of psychology.

[29]  Peter Parisi.  The New York Times looks at one block in Harlem: Narratives of race in journalism , 1998 .

[30]  John H. Aldrich,et al.  Foreign Affairs and Issue Voting: Do Presidential Candidates “Waltz Before a Blind Audience?” , 1989, American Political Science Review.

[31]  S. Murphy,et al.  Priming Prejudice How Stereotypes and Counter‐Stereotypes Influence Attribution of Responsibility and Credibility among Ingroups and Outgroups , 1996 .

[32]  Gerald M. Kosicki,et al.  Priming and Media Impact on the Evaluations of the President's Performance , 1997 .

[33]  G. Marín,et al.  Stereotyping Hispanics: The Differential Effect of Research Method, Label, and Degree of Contact , 1984 .

[34]  S. Feldman,et al.  A Simple Theory of the Survey Response: Answering Questions versus Revealing Preferences , 1992 .

[35]  Dhavan V. Shah,et al.  MEDIA PRIMING EFFECTS: ACCESSIBILITY, ASSOCIATION, AND ACTIVATION , 1998 .

[36]  Jon A. Krosnick,et al.  Altering the Foundations of Support for the President Through Priming , 1990 .

[37]  C. Martin,et al.  Disciplining the Workforce , 1997 .

[38]  Linda C. Godbold,et al.  Convergence Between Racial and Political Identities , 1998 .

[39]  M. Mendelsohn.  The Media and Interpersonal Communications: The Priming of Issues, Leaders, and Party Identification , 1996, The Journal of Politics.

[40]  Robert M. Entman,et al.  Representation and Reality in the Portrayal of Blacks on Network Television News , 1994 .

[41]  P. Mark,et al.  The intersection of race and crime in television news stories: An experimental study , 1996 .

[42]  Mary Carrillo,et al.  Is it really racism ? The origins of white Americans' opposition to race-targeted policies : Examinations of core concepts and processes , 1997 .

[43]  Allan Collins,et al.  A spreading-activation theory of semantic processing , 1975 .

[44]  Robert M. Entman,et al.  Framing: Toward Clarification of a Fractured Paradigm , 1993 .

[45]  J. Ettema,et al.  The mayor's race: Campaign coverage and the discourse of race in America's three largest cities , 1998 .

[46]  P. Devine.  Stereotypes and prejudice: Their automatic and controlled components. , 1989 .