Framing and Attitude: A Transgender Perspective

• In Event: Research Exploring Individual Differences

Abstract

Following WikiLeaks Leaker Manning’s coming out as a transgender female, California transgender teen Campbell made history through winning high school homecoming queen. These cases stirred a national debate on how media should report news involving transgender people. While a considerable amount of media changed the name and pronouns, the split and controversy still existed. It called for research to examine how the use of pronoun, name, and visual depiction interacted with the type of news to influence audiences’ perceptions of and attitudes towards transgender people.

A between-subjects 3 (Pronouns and Names) x 2 (Visual Depiction) 2 (News Type) factorial design experiment will be conducted to examine how the use of pronoun and name (i.e. gender-matched, gender-mismatched, and gender-neutral pronouns and names) and visual depiction (i.e. gender-matched and gender-mismatched visual depictions) in news articles interact with the type of news (e.g. political news and social news) to influence audiences’ implicit and explicit attitudes towards transgender people and transgender-related policies. To date, 583 participants have signed up for participation.

Author

• Minjie Li, Louisiana State University