Race cues in the news, racial attitudes, and the politics of criminal justice punitiveness
Abstract/Contents
- Abstract
- Individuals are often called upon to form opinions about phenomena that they have limited first-hand experience with; in many of these instances, they turn to the news media as a vicarious source of information. Is the news media a central and influential cultural root force that directly shapes audience members' attitudes and beliefs, or is it a cultural conduit whose messages are selectively accepted or rejected by audience members based on their individual tastes and preferences? This dissertation grapples with this question by focusing on the nature and scope of the relationship between crime news exposure and audience members' racial attitudes and criminal justice policy preferences. It uses nationally representative survey data to assess the relationship between news exposure patterns, demographic and social psychological characteristics, and public opinion about race and crime. It also employs several survey-based experiments to directly gauge the impact that the type of crime presented and the race and gender of actors featured in crime news has on audience members' attitudes and beliefs. The findings indicate that various types of news have differing relationships with audience attitudes, with some being more potent than others, and that individuals' demographic and social psychological characteristics are important factors shaping the relationship between news exposure and attitudes. Overall, the results suggest that the news media acts as a cultural conduit as opposed to a cultural root force; its messages are not written on a tabula rasa, instead, audience members' characteristics play a key role in determining media effects. In short, while crime news is at times influential on audiences' attitudes about race and punishment, this is not always the case.
Description
| Type of resource | text |
|---|---|
| Form | electronic; electronic resource; remote |
| Extent | 1 online resource. |
| Publication date | 2010 |
| Issuance | monographic |
| Language | English |
Creators/Contributors
| Associated with | Simmons, Alicia Darnell |
|---|---|
| Associated with | Stanford University, Department of Sociology. |
| Primary advisor | Bobo, Lawrence |
| Primary advisor | Cook, Karen |
| Thesis advisor | Bobo, Lawrence |
| Thesis advisor | Cook, Karen |
| Thesis advisor | McDermott, Monica, 1971- |
| Advisor | McDermott, Monica, 1971- |
Subjects
| Genre | Theses |
|---|
Bibliographic information
| Statement of responsibility | Alicia D. Simmons. |
|---|---|
| Note | Submitted to the Department of Sociology. |
| Thesis | Ph.D. Stanford University 2010 |
| Location | electronic resource |
Access conditions
- Copyright
- © 2010 by Alicia Darnell Simmons
- License
- This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution Non Commercial 3.0 Unported license (CC BY-NC).
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