The mass media provides our society with information and stories regarding political, social, and economic issues both at home and abroad. Consequently, this results in the media having influence over what is most salient in people’s minds and can reinforce which issues are more or less important to the masses (Gruman et al., 2016). This phenomenon is referred to as agenda setting; however, it’s important to note that this does not mean that the media influences what people think but rather what they think about (Gruman et al., 2016). Nevertheless, what is the impact of media’s influence on attitudes and beliefs? Specifically, how does the portrayal of racial minority victims by police violence affect people’s attitudes toward criminal proceedings, the victim themselves, or their killers? (Dukes & Gaither, 2017). How does portraying the victim of police brutality as a “common criminal” affect people’s perspectives? How does the framing of race in mass shootings impact people’s social worldviews?
Research supports that racial minorities experience an overrepresentation as criminals in comparison to the White majority (Dukes & Gaither, 2017). In addition, this stereotype in the media has been shown to foster hostility and bias toward minority groups from the majority (Dukes & Gaither, 2017). This illustrates that the media’s influence can lead to real and dangerous consequences for people of color. This overrepresentation is met with underrepresentation of minority groups depicted as victims (Dukes & Gaither, 2017). This is a recipe for misrepresentation. Minority groups will be placed in a “criminal only” box where their White counterparts will be labeled “victim only” (Dukes & Gaither, 2017). Even when racial minorities are depicted as victims, it’s still to their detriment. Specially, in an analysis of media coverage over the deaths of Eric Garner and Michael Brown it was found that the media focused heavily on their “criminal” past, their physical attributes, or on the location where they were killed by police, which is described as poor and a breeding ground for crime (Dukes & Gaither, 2017).
Cultivation theory posits that the more media exposure an individual has, the more likely they are to internalize the media content and adopt it into their worldview (Gruman et al., 2016). In other words, media can shape people’s social world (Gruman et al., 2016). Therefore, if negative stereotypes are framed in the media, it would suggest that people will inherently internalize these racial prejudices. This can result in unfair criminal proceedings due to juror bias or overt acts of violence to minority groups. In Dukes & Gaither’s (2017) study, they exposed 453 participants to a scenario of a physical altercation between a victim and a shooter, where participants were randomly assigned to either a negative stereotyped Black victim or shooter, or a positive counter-stereotyped Black victim or shooter. The results found when negative stereotypes were used on the victim, it heavily influenced how the participants viewed them and led them to believe that they were at fault for their own death compared to the positive stereotypes (Dukes & Gaither, 2017). This showcases the breadth of influence that media has on how the masses perceive the victim and how punishment should be handed down (Dukes & Gaither, 2017).
Shooter’s race portrayal in the media is also a factor to consider. For example, news coverage of the Columbine shooting did not include race whereas the 2007 Virginia Tech shooting received a heavy race frame despite the two atrocities being similar in nature (Park et al., 2012). This race frame for the 2007 VT shooting further perpetuated viewer’s mentality on immigrants as “other” and helped the narrative that immigrants are simply inherent criminals (Park et al., 2012). Again, this disparity in representation can cause racial injustice because as the cultivation theory identifies, the population will internalize this narrative into their social world (Park et al., 2012; Gruman et al., 2016).
It’s supported that when the media portrays stereotypes of racial minorities, it can perpetuate an “us” vs. “them” mentality in our society (Park et al., 2012). Again, media is known for influencing what people think about (Gruman et al., 2016). However, if the media portrays racial stereotypes both towards victims and criminals, then those biases can be internalized into people’s realities through cultivation, resulting in racial injustice (Gruman et al., 2016).
References
Dukes, K. N., & Gaither, S. E. (2017). Black racial stereotypes and victim blaming: Implications for media coverage and criminal proceedings in cases of police violence against racial and ethnic minorities. Journal of Social Issues, 73(4), 789-807.
Gruman, J. A., Schneider, F. W., & Coutts, L. M. (Eds.). (2016). Applied social psychology: Understanding and addressing social and practical problems. SAGE Publications, Incorporated.
Park, S. Y., Holody, K. J., & Zhang, X. (2012). Race in media coverage of school shootings: A parallel application of framing theory and attribute agenda setting. Journalism & Mass Communication Quarterly, 89(3), 475-494.
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