Portrayal Of Race Research Articles

Impacts of Black Athlete Media Portrayals on Canadian Youth

This paper examines the limitations of present theory concerning media and race, and provides a rationale for using Janice Radway’s concept of “interpretive communities” as a means for theorizing the “impacts” of media portrayals on audiences. Results are reported from a focus group study that used the “interpretive community” framework to assess adolescent reactions to black portrayals in television. Issues surrounding the impacts of black athlete portrayals are examined as a crucial case, considering the cultural importance of these figures for certain youth cultures. The results offer insights into the impacts of media portrayals of race in several key areas, including minority self-perceptions, racial awareness, racial stereotyping, perceived conditions of social mobility, and perceived racial equality. They also demonstrate the need to conceptualize media impacts as intertextual and dialogical events that occur as an interaction between the audience and the media.

Approaching Race and Gender Issues in the Context of the Language Arts Classroom

offer many possibilities for integrating race and gender issues into the fabric of the English language arts classroom so that teachers can find a way to begin dealing with these ever-present, extremely important aspects of life and literature. If these issues are never raised, if students are never encouraged to question the assumptions behind gender and race portrayals, the danger seems to be that students will accept the portrayal of characters as the way people really are. RAISING THE ISSUES AND BEGINNING THE CONVERSATIONS 1. Sentence Starters. Ask stu-

Influences of authoritarianism and portrayals of race on Caucasian viewers’ responses to reality‐based crime dramas

An experiment was conducted to examine the roles of authoritarianism and portrayals of race in Caucasian viewers’ responses to reality‐based crime dramas. Subjects viewed a segment from a reality‐based program that varied the race of the criminal suspect (African‐American, Caucasian). Subsequently, subjects indicated their enjoyment of the segment as well as their perceptions of the characters portrayed. Authoritarianism was associated with greater enjoyment of the crime video and more negative evaluations of the criminal suspects, but only if the criminal suspects were African‐American rather than Caucasian. Authoritarianism was also associated with more favorable evaluations of police officers.

How real is the portrayal of aggression in television entertainment programming?

How realistic is the portrayal of aggressive behavior in entertainment programming on television? An answer to this question is operationalized in terms of (1) replicated reality and (2) contextualized reality. Replicated reality is assessed by comparing the characteristics of televised portrayals to real world characteristics, such as the demographics of the perpetrators and victims. The contextual reality is an inference built from the variables of intention, motivation, reward, consequences, humor, and realism of the portrayal. The data base for the analysis contains 3,844 acts of aggression found in a composite week of 100.5 hours of entertainment programming. The results present evidence for replicated reality on the patterns of seriousness of the aggression, as well as gender patterns of perpetrators and victims. However, portrayals of race and age were not found to be close to real world patterns of aggression. As for contextual reality, the findings did not support a morality play template. But interesting differences were found among the contextual variables across degrees of realism.