1. Mark Peffley PS 475 Media & Politics

2.  Written Assignment posted this afternoon
 Will go over Why Americans Hate the Media
in Class
 Read Iyengar for Written Assignment & final
 8 more classes
 Conference: Dec 7

3.  News coverage
 Election night coverage
 Campaign ads
 Post-mortem and analysis?
 Storm
 Fiscal cliff
 2014, 2016
 Polarized electorate: This American Life

4.  Persuasion (attitude change)
 Reinforcement
 Learning
 Agenda setting
 Priming
 Framing
Historical note: Iyengar did some path-breaking work on subtle effects like
agenda-setting, priming and framing, but because of the loose and strange
way he defined these terms, it took others a decade to sort out the differences.

5.  Advantages (internal validity)
 1. Ability to test causal inferences.
 2. Ability to explore the details of process.
 3. Relative economy.
 Disadvantages (external validity)
 1. Sampling bias: Unrepresentative subject pools (i.e., over-use of
college sophomores).
 2. Artificial environment, esp. in terms of “Mundane realism” (any
superficial appearance of reality. The similarity of experimental
events to everyday experiences.)
▪ But need to consider “Experimental realism” (the experiment captures the intended
essence of the situation when subjects are caught up in the experiment and are truly
influenced by it).
 3. In the treatment condition, everyone is exposed to the treatment which
may not be an accurate portrayal of reality (e.g., attention levels, remote
controls).

6.  Survey & experiments (influence of TV violence,
cigarette smoking)
 Survey experiments (hybrid)
▪ Question wording experiments (text only)
▪ Internet surveys (video experiments via survey)

7.  Racial, gender, other negative stereotypes of groups created
and reinforced by biased media messages
 News coverage associates racial imagery with ostensibly race-neutral
policies, like crime & welfare
 Methodological pluralism: Content analysis , survey and news
experiments
 Studies
 Gilens: Racially biased imagery of news media (news magazines,
TV and newspapers) stories of poverty creates an association
between race and poverty in the minds of whites, as well as
opposition to welfare, and negative stereotypes of the poor and
minorities.
 Gilliam & Iyengar: Racially biased imagery of local TV news
stories on violent crime creates racial fears and support for
punitive crime policies by associating violent crime with minorities
(e.g., news coverage of “crack cocaine epidemic” in 1990s).
 Juxtaposed against minority celebrities as exemplars (e.g., Oprah)
 Chavez: Latino Threat stereotype (content analysis only)

9. Shift in media focus from rural poverty portrayed by whites to urban poverty
portrayed by blacks, with much variation in frequency over time.

10. Given this negative, racially biased news coverage, is it any wonder that most whites greatly
over-estimate the percentage of welfare clients who are black?

11.  Content Analysis:
 While African Americans make up about 30 percent of the poor, about 60 percent of the
poor people shown on network television news and depicted in the major newsweeklies
between 1988 and 1992 were black.
 Similarly, the media portray the black poor in a disproportionately negative light. Every
single picture in newsweekly stories about the "underclass"--the ghetto poor--between
1950 and 1992 showed African Americans. In more sympathetic stories about
predicaments such as hunger or medical care among the poor, only about one-fourth of
the people pictured were black.
 Survey:
 As a result of systematic distortion, Americans consistently overestimate the black
proportion of the poor and of welfare recipients—believing that about 60% of welfare
recipients are black.
 In 1991 survey, Gilens found big correlation between whites’ negative stereotypes of
blacks and their opposition to welfare. Most whites mistakenly assumed that blacks
were the principal beneficiaries of welfare.
 Can we conclude that negative racial stereotypes cause opposition to welfare? Why or
why not?

13.  Now think about a [black woman, white woman]
in her early twenties with a ten year old child
and who has been on welfare for the past year.
 ½ respondents randomly assigned to the black
welfare mother condition
 Other ½ respondents randomly assigned to the
white welfare mother condition
 Question: why not ask everyone about both the
black and the white welfare mothers and then
compare responses?
 The two conditions (questions) are exactly the
same in every respect, except for the race of the
welfare mother.
 Any differences in responses must be due to the
manipulation.

14. When predicting Whites’ opposition to welfare, find that evaluations of Black welfare
mother are much stronger predictors than evaluations of White welfare mother
Conclusion: The much higher correlation between attitudes toward Black than White welfare mother
and opposition to welfare shows: When Whites think of welfare, they think of Black welfare
mothers, not white welfare mothers.

15.  Content analysis evidence doesn’t show news
coverage causing racial stereotypes
 Survey experiment
 Text only manipulation
 No evidence of “media effects”
 Before welfare reforms of 1996

16. Vesla M. Weaver, “Race, Skin Color, and
Candidate Preference”
• Different (racially manipulated) photos
randomly assigned to campaign Appendix I. Morphed Images
For each candidate, 3 images were morphed.1 This procedure removes distinctive features and creates a very
literature “average” face; it also increases attractiveness. Because each candidate shares 2 images, the resulting faces are
extremely similar while appearing to be distinct individuals. This methodology diminishes the likelihood that
• Uses morphing technology to change
support differentials across treatment groups are due to different target candidates.
White Candidate 1:
skin color and racial features of
candidates.
+ +
A B C
White Candidate 2:
+ +
A B D

17. Light-skinned Black Candidate:
+ +
A E F
Dark-skinned Black Candidate1:
+ +
E F G
The dark-black candidate was purposefully generated from all black
images so that he is different from the light-skinned black candidate in both
complexion and phenotype (his nose and lips are more afrocentric). The
hair and eyebrows of the light-skinned candidate have also been digitally
lightened
1
.

18.  Content analysis:
 racially biased images in local TV news
over-represents black suspects.
(Louisville in 1990s as well as other
cities)
 Survey:
 to establish association between
heavy TV watching and views on race
and crime in a natural setting
 Experiment:
 to establish cause & effect of watching
TV news

19. Punitive Remedies:
• “enforcement of the
death penalty for people
convicted of murder;'
• "three strikes and you're
out legislation,"
• "putting more police on
the streets."
Old-fashioned racism:
rate African-Americans on the
following traits
• "law abiding;
• "unintelligent;
• "disciplined,“
• "lazy."

20. Subjects are randomly assigned to watch a 15 minute local news broadcast (with
commercials) that included one of 4 versions of a crime story inserted in the
middle of the broadcast that is identical except for the image of the perpetrator:
1) no image of perp, or 2) white perp, 3) black perpetrator, or
4) no crime story at all.
Early days of Photoshop
Adult participants were recruited
in a shopping mall, and filled out
questionnaire and watched
broadcast in a kiosk.
Note: colors here are not identical to those used in the experiments

22. • Either stories with no perp. or black perp. lead to more negative racial
stereotypes & support for punitive crime policies among Whites.
• Different effects among Blacks subjects, who seemed to resist the crime script.

23.  Learning is complex and conditional. Depends on
medium, issue, and citizens (audience).
 Hypothesized media differences
 Television
 Newspapers
 Magazines
 What medium –TV, magazines or newspapers—would you
expect to lead to the greatest gains in learning? Why?

24.  General concerns about using survey research
 Survey research as too blunt to capture cause & effect of media
influence, especially subtle effects that may be short-term but also
critical in an election
 Specific concerns about using surveys to study learning
 Correlation between political sophistication and different news media:
▪ Watching television news, low pol. knowledge
▪ Reading newspapers, high pol. Knowledge
▪ What’s causing what?
 Selection effect:
▪ People with lower sophistication watch a lot of television because it places
lower demands on them (to understand the news)
 Need multi-method design to study learning

25. How does learning vary across:
• medium,
• issue and the
• cognitive skills of the individual?

31. Factual knowledge assessed in pre-test and post-test:
Example:

32.  Different media for different people and
different issues
 Media complementarity
 Importance of grabbing viewers’ attention
before ingesting hard news and contextual
information
 Question: at what point does entertainment
become distracting and interfere with learning?
 This study was done in 1992; how might the
authors’ conclusions change if they did their
study in 2012?