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This paper is part of a larger project in which we explore the nature and consequences of media coverage of hate crime. Here we present the results of the first part of the project, an analysis of media coverage of hate crime from 1990 to 2000. We analyze coverage of hate crime in the Washington Post to begin to understand the information that is available to readers of mainstream news. Specifically, we examine the frames and causal attributions offered for making sense of hate crime. As a point of comparison, we also analyze coverage in the Washington Blade, the gay newspaper in Washington DC, to understand how the gay community frames this issue. One test of whether mainstream media help their audience to see anti-gay hate crime as gays do is to see if they invoke the same frames as the gay press. We find that the gay press is much more likely to cover hate crime across the decade. Readers of the Washington Blade are much more likely to encounter articles dealing with hate crime than readers of the Washington Post. For the Washington Post, substantial coverage only comes with the 1998 murder of Matthew Shepard. On the other hand, the Post does include many of the same frames invoked on behalf of hate crime legislation. The perspective of the gay community in this respect is present in Washington Post coverage. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study of media effects on perceptions of foreign nations and foreign policy preferences is based on a national telephone survey of 649 Americans, 18 years or older. Our results suggest that media have little direct effect on shaping American?s attitudes about the rest of the world. Watching or reading the news and paying attention to news about foreign affairs had no relationship to whether people saw other countries as friendly or threatening. Exposure to broadcast news, however, influenced people?s support for military intervention in countries that potentially threaten the United States. Although media had limited effects on shaping American?s international opinions, respondents who were generally predisposed to trust other nations, as well as those who were generally isolationist, were less likely to feel threatened by specific countries and less likely to support armed intervention. We also find that general perceptions of threat interacted with exposure to network news to explain support for military intervention. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

What role, if any, did racial themes play in media coverage of the 2008 presidential election? In order to answer this question, this paper presents the results of a systematic content analysis of New York Times, Washington Post and USA Today campaign coverage during the fall campaign. We examined substantive campaign coverage, coding for a number of potential racial references or frames. We find, not surprisingly, that racial references were present in the general election coverage. Most often, we found references to Obama's own race or the race of groups within the electorate. References to racism or the potential for racial animosity to continue to play a role in the campaign were also present, though less common. Although we cannot test the effects of this coverage, we suggest that references to race which occur throughout the fall campaign have the potential to prime racial considerations. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the nature of local television news coverage of crime and its effects on emotional response. Specifically, I present the results of a content analysis of two months of local television news coverage of crime from a network affiliate in the Washington DC metropolitan area. Consistent with what others have found regarding local television news, I find that most local news crime stories are episodic in nature and focus on violent crime, particularly murder. Moreover, there is a specific racial cast to this coverage - significant attention is given to black perpetrators while black victims are undercovered. Using an experiment that compared two types of crime stories taken from the content analysis to explore how coverage influences viewers' emotional reactions, I find, contrary to my expectation, that a thematic story about violent crime generates greater and more varied emotional response than an episodic story dealing with a specific murder. When I vary the race of the perpetrator portrayed in the episodic story to try to examine the influence of the prevalence of visuals of black perpetrators in the crime coverage, I do not find differences in how participants in this study respond to the murder story based on the race of the perpetrator. I discuss the implications of my findings and suggest future directions for this research. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper presents the results of a content analysis examining the portrayal of racial minorities in television news as well as a series of interviews with reporters and producers designed to explore why the news coverage looks as it does. ..PAT.-Conference Proceeding [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the aftermath of September 11, 2001, many Americans experienced a range of emotional responses, including fear, worry, hope, and pride. During the same period, an unusually large percentage of Americans expressed high levels of trust in government and trust in people. This study examines whether these phenomena were related and, if so, how. In contrast to previous research on the cognitive causes and consequences of trust, we focus on how such trust may shape and be shaped by emotional responses. Using data from a three-wave panel survey we explore the sources and effects of fear and worry (anxiety) and hope and pride (enthusiasm). The results suggest that enthusiasm and both political trust and social trust reinforced one another in the aftermath of the terrorist attacks, though some of these relationships may have faded over time. Taken as a whole, the findings point to the importance of considering the emotional sources and implications of trust. ..PAT.-Conference Proceeding [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study explores the effect of news framing, specifically game and policy framing, in coverage of public policy. Game frames present politics as a horse race, a battle or a sport. Such frames are most commonly used in election coverage (Patterson, 1994; Cappella and Jamieson, 1997; Fallows, 1997). Yet this emphasis on conflict, or the game, extends to coverage of the policy process as well. For example, Lawrence (2000) found that coverage of the 1996 welfare reform debate focused on tactics and maneuvers within the legislative process rather than the content and merits of welfare reform proposals. While use of the game frame in election coverage has received considerable attention, little attention has been given to the effects of the game frame in coverage of policy issues. We examine whether this ostensibly objective game frame fosters political cynicism and influences policy opinions when journalists use it in their coverage of the policy process. We draw on data from an experiment in which participants read a game-framed article about campaign finance reform, a policy-framed version of the same story, or a control article. The study was conducted in 2001 while the congressional debate over campaign finance was still underway. Subjects were randomly assigned to read different versions of a news article about how an ambitious bipartisan effort to rewrite the nation’s campaign finance laws was abruptly derailed in the House. Those in the game frame condition read a version of the article emphasizing the political combat over the bill while those in the policy frame condition read a version of the article emphasizing the pros and cons of the bill. Like previous studies focused on the electoral context, we found that game coverage fostered political cynicism. Subjects who received the game frame were more likely to express cynicism in their open-ended responses. We also found, however, that game coverage fostered support for campaign finance reform among cynical participants while eroding support among trusting participants. Similarly, game coverage provoked considerable anger and disgust from reform supporters while generating little anger or disgust among opponents. In short, game coverage of the policy process had consequences for policy opinions and emotions, but not everyone responded to the game in the same way. Such conditional effects may have implications for policy-making outcomes, as well as for the practice of political journalism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The media provide citizens with news frames that tell readers how to understand the news: For example, in terms of strategy versus policy or themes versus episodes. In this study, we examine the effects of such frames on policy views and emotional responses to issues. Drawing on cognitive response theory, we argue that citizens can be active consumers of news, counter-arguing information in news frames that goes against their prior beliefs. Our analysis tests whether these beliefs mediate the effects of frames. Experimental participants were randomly assigned to read different versions of articles about mandatory minimum sentences and campaign finance reform. We find that participants who read a strategy-framed article about campaign finance are more likely than those in the control condition to support reform, but this effect is mediated by prior political cynicism. Similarly, the effects of framing on emotional responses are mediated by prior attitudes about reform. We find that participants who read a thematic-framed or episodic-framed opinion column about mandatory minimum sentences are more likely to oppose them than participants in the control condition; again, however, these effects are mediated by a predisposition (in this case, support for a punitive approach to crime). Moreover, the effects of the episodic frame are weaker when the column focuses on a black person than when it focuses on a white person. Emotional responses are more frequent under the episodic frame, but this pattern is conditioned by prior attitudes about mandatory minimum sentences. Taken as a whole, the results suggest that citizens play an active role in the framing process, though not necessarily a critical, deliberative role. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Racial divides have been central to political conflict in the United States throughout its history, no less so in candidate evaluation and vote choice. The news media and campaign messages can play a key role in reinforcing or diminishing the prevalence and impact of negative racial attitudes based on the ways they represent race. In this study, we examine whether and how racial frames and references emerge in mainstream news and ideologically targeted opinion programming. Drawing on coverage of 2012 presidential election campaign in mainstream news (New York Times, Washington Post, USA Today, NBC Nightly News, Fox Special Report) and in opinion programming (Rachel Maddow Show, O'Reilly Factor, Rush Limbaugh Show), we demonstrate that racial themes receive relatively limited attention in mainstream news, but are much more prominent in opinion programming. Our results show that, compared with 2008, there was less attention to Obama's own race in mainstream news coverage though there was still considerable reference to the racial coalitions supporting the various candidates. In this way, mainstream media coverage arguably continued to prime race though in more innocuous ways. By contrast, racial themes were prominent in ideologically targeted media - with important and not unexpected variations across different ideologically targeted programs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]