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The Effects of Geographic and Racial Representation in the News

Sat, May 26, 14:00 to 15:15, Hilton Prague, Floor: L, Amsterdam

Abstract

Newsrooms are challenged with representing a diverse public, yet they are not always diverse in terms of geographic coverage or in terms of the racial diversity of their staffs. This study explores how news representations of neighborhoods and race affect audience news selection and their impressions of news coverage using an experiment with 900 randomly selected Chicago residents. We find that tailoring a headline to a specific neighborhood increases the likelihood that people from that neighborhood will read the story compared to a headline referencing an entire city. We find limited evidence of relationships between the race of the journalist and news selection or perceptions of representation. The suggestive evidence we do uncover illustrates that different racial and ethnic groups respond differently to hearing bylines from those sharing their race/ethnicity and from those of a different racial/ethnic background. We discuss the practical implications of our findings for newsroom diversity.

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