Visual and Narrative aspects of Front-Page Crime Stories for Male and Female Offenders: Does Race and Ethnicity Matter?

• In Event: Race, Gender and Visual Representations of Crime and Violence

Abstract

This paper examined how media portrayals differed for white and minority offenders. Existing literature on racial and ethnic stereotypes, critical race feminism, and media depictions of offenders provided the basis for this study. We predicted that minority men and women would be portrayed less favorably than their white counterparts, and conducted a qualitative document analysis to assess the textual and visual aspects of front-page newspaper stories that featured photographs of male and female offenders to test our expectation. Our assessment of the key visual aspects of crime stories—the photographs, captions, and headlines—may be especially salient when one considers that most people do not read crime stories in their entirety. Articles from 2006 to 2015 were gathered from the USA Today, a newspaper designed to visually entice readers. Our research findings may shed light on the cultivation of implicit racial and ethnic bias in our society.

Authors

• Ebonie M. Epinger, University of Nebraska at Omaha

• Pauline K. Brennan, University of Nebraska at Omaha