Ethnic/Racial group representation in News Media
Today more than ever, news media is an important tool in society since many people's opinions and mindsets are formed based on what they receive from the news media. Therefore, ethnic/racial group representation is an important feature of the news media because it can affect the way that certain groups are perceived. This is the overall purpose of this study, to investigate ethnic/racial group representation in the news media. We intend to determine whether or not groups are under or over-represented. Furthermore, what are the implications? For example, are stereotypes further justified or disproved as a result of the representation? We also seek to determine the role of journalists/newscasters in media representation, how are they represented? Additionally, we intend to find out what certain characteristics of the news suggest about representation. For example, is there a relationship between the locations of a story with the specific group being represented, as well as whe!ther the study was positively or negatively portrayed? Also, are minorities over-represented in relation to stories involving crime? To begin our study, we discuss what other experiments and literature have found in related studies. We then
From the afore mentioned observations, we could confidently conclude that our hypothesis was correct in that negative overrepresentations of minorities and positive overrepresentations of Caucasions in the news media do create, maintain and reinforce stereotypes. Shortcomings of Research Though we remained faithful to our methods of research, such that we were able to prove our hypothesis, compare our findings to those found within other similar studies that we reviewed and national statistics; there are other methods, which could be implemented to strengthen our findings. The ethnic/racial group representation in our study will justify or prove wrong that there are certain stereotypes for minority groups among journalists, and hence society. The coding !included marking in the charts each time a piece of data appeared in the news stories, and then counting up the number of results (among all the cases) in each variable. The over or under-representation of the racial groups among the journalists/reporters and the participants/witnesses represent this corresponding over or under-representation in all forms of media that relay news. Finally, we could have simultaneously run a study of national news coverage so that we could compare and contrast data and have a control group within our experiment. Firstly, we could largely increase our sample data so that a stronger claim could be made with regards to our hypothesis. Secondly we didn't cover all minority groups equally; rather, we focused more so on African-Americans and Latinos. Further, the possibility for presentation bias was noted because those reporting were largely Caucasian. MethodsData/Procedure We randomly selected ABC local news as our sample news source. By observing five days of local news on ABC, which covered issues in the Metro-Detroit areas, we were able to record media coverage content and determine the perceptions that it is most likely to give its audience. We wrote down on small individual sheets of paper, allocating one sheet for each potential sample source, local news and national news, of which we picked one literally out of a hat, and ABC, NBC, and CBS, of which we again picked out of a hat. Each news story was identified as a case, numbered in increasing order according to the order in which it appeared in the half-hour news show. In addressing image depictions of minorities, our study found more negative appearances shown of African-Americans and Latinos than of Caucasians. Additional studies could link the reinforced stereotypes to self-esteem issues among minorities, an increased level of insecurity among [inner-city] residents due to improper crime coverage, and coverage affect on minority youth and ethnic/individualistic image and identity.
Common topics in this essay:
Latino/Hispanics Asian/Americans,
Latino/Hispanics Asian-Americans,
,
Latinos Caucasians,
Future Studies,
Shortcomings Research,
Methods Data/Procedure,
African-Americans Latinos,
NBC CBS,
Los Angeles,
positive negative,
ethnic/racial representation,
nature story,
abc local,
positive negative nature,
representation media,
results variable,
¤ compare,
negative nature,
location story,
african-americans latinos,
negative nature story,
negative neutral nature,
subsequent days daily,
five subsequent days,
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Acceptance Essays
