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Few studies attempt to demonstrate whether and how systemic racial inequality might form on the web. I use racial formation theory to conceptualize how race is represented, and systematically reproduced on the web, and how both may reveal forms of racial inequality. Using an original dataset and network graph, I document the architecture of web traffic, and the actual traffic patterns among and between race-based websites. Results demonstrate that web producers create hyperlink networks that steer audiences to websites without respect to racial or nonracial content. However, user navigation reflects a racially segregated traffic pattern; users navigate to racialized versus nonracialized websites (and vice versa) more than what would be expected by chance. These results, along with disparities in website traffic rankings, provide evidence of, and demonstrates how a race-based hierarchy might systematically emerge on the web in ways that exemplify disparate forms of value, influence and power that exist within the web environment. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This article argues that exposure to admirable media celebrities from racial/ethnic outgroups is an effective, proactive, and viable strategy for prejudice reduction and intergroup harmony. It uses mediated contact and exemplification theories to demonstrate that reading news stories about likable outgroup media personalities who serve as counter-stereotypic exemplars can subtly modify racial attitudes, which are malleable and context-sensitive. Specifically, results from a between-participants experiment (N = 88) show that exposure to news stories about counter-stereotypic African American media personalities as compared to stereotypical ones reduces stereotypical perceptions and symbolic racist beliefs of White Americans about African Americans. Furthermore, these favorable attitudes translate into an increased willingness to support affirmative action policies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This essay examines the popular television showRuPaul's Drag Raceto reveal the ways drag performance provides an ambivalent, contradictory space for wrestling with contentious issues surrounding cultural identity and authenticity in reality TV. Focusing on the show's controversial season three, the authors demonstrate how drag queens subvert and play with ideas of gender “realness” but find an impasse in open discussions of race. The racial minstrelsy of some contestants we observe created antagonisms between black/brown characters and their white/Asian counterparts, exposing a rift in ideas about racial play despite the general acceptance of flexibility in gender bending. Recognizing that reality TV exploits and uncovers these tensions, we demonstrate that while drag performance enacts a subversive mode of queer performance, it provides a contested site and complex semiotic space for dealing with sensitive matters of race/ethnicity, especially when certain forms of stereotyping are rewarded over others. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

It is now widely publicized that Latinos are one of the most disproportionately affected communities by the 2008 recession. At the same time that Latinos have one of the highest unemployment rates in the U.S., they also have the highest foreclosure rates due in great part to subprime mortgages. In this essay the authors ask: How are Latinos represented as a significant force in the financial crisis? In particular, what are the media narratives constructed around Latinos and the subprime mortgage meltdown? In order to answer these questions, the authors analyzed the coverage of Latinos in the subprime mortgage crisis in both English- and Spanish-language print news from 2008–2011. Overall, the authors analyzed the news coverage using a transcultural political economic framework, paying close attention to the ways that Latinos are treated as postcolonial subjects. The analysis of media narratives shows how the crisis of the subprime is in fact part of a historical legacy of exclusionary property ownership, racialized segregation, and the continuous exploitation of Latin America through its people. Ultimately, the authors argue that such legacies are evident in the different ways Latinos are constructed in English- and Spanish-language news media regarding the subprime mortgage crisis. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Popular sentiment, political actors, and even scholarly work suggest the media are biased. Yet, work on media bias targeted against such varied political entities as Republicans, African Americans, and women does not provide a fair baseline with which to compare coverage. That is, previous research lacks a comparison of coverage focused on politicians who have produced the same record, and who therefore should receive equitable coverage. This study uses the House banking scandal of 1992, in which hundreds of members were revealed to have regularly overdrawn their accounts, to compare coverage of members when their behavior was the same. Coverage of Democrats is compared with Republicans, Whites with African Americans, and men with women based on their check writing habits. The findings suggest that there is little difference in the treatment of Democrats and Republicans; however, African Americans and women receive significantly less desirable coverage than do Whites and men. The overall pattern is consistent with the distribution effect, in which people whose traits are rare in an occupational field may suffer from negative associations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]