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Priming Implicit Racism in Television News: Visual and Verbal Limitations on Diversity
Author(s) -
Sonnett John,
Johnson Kirk A.,
Dolan Mark K.
Publication year - 2015
Publication title -
sociological forum
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.937
H-Index - 61
eISSN - 1573-7861
pISSN - 0884-8971
DOI - 10.1111/socf.12165
Subject(s) - racism , priming (agriculture) , narrative , diversity (politics) , race (biology) , ideology , context (archaeology) , representation (politics) , sociology , social psychology , mythology , psychology , gender studies , politics , history , linguistics , political science , archaeology , anthropology , biology , philosophy , botany , germination , law , classics
We highlight an understudied aspect of racism in television news, implicit racial cues found in the contradictions between visual and verbal messages. We compare three television news broadcasts from the first week after Hurricane Katrina to reexamine race and representation during the disaster. Drawing together insights from interdisciplinary studies of cognition and sociological theories of race and racism, we examine how different combinations of the race of reporters and news sources relate to the priming of implicit racism. We find racial cues that are consistent with stereotypes and myths about African Americans—even in broadcasts featuring black reporters—but which appear only in the context of color‐blind verbal narration. We conclude by drawing attention to the unexpected and seemingly unintended reproduction of racial ideology.