News headlines systematically frame minority agency negatively while favoring the ingroup

Evidence

Following the general ideological square introduced above, we may for instance assume that headlines in the news tend to emphasize the negative characteristics of minorities. Much research has shown that this is indeed the case. In a Dutch study, for instance, we found that of 1500 headlines on ethnic issues, not a single one was positiv e when it involved minorities as active, responsible agents, whereas such is much more normal when one of Us is the semantic agent in a headline. Also the syntax of headlines may thus be biased in favor of the ingroup, for instance, when passive constructions diminish their responsibility for negative actions. — David Theo Goldberg, John Solomos, A Companion to Racial and Ethnic Studies, 1090

Categorization

• XREF: The 1500-headline Dutch finding and the passive-construction point echo Hall’s encoding/decoding and the ritual framing material on media reproduction of power. — connects to: News headlines systematically frame minorities as passive agents of negativity; The mass media reproduce racism partly because newsrooms themselves lack minority journalists — David Theo Goldberg, John Solomos, A Companion to Racial and Ethnic Studies, 1102; News media privilege white elite sources and downgrade minority claims to allegations — David Theo Goldberg, John Solomos, A Companion to Racial and Ethnic Studies, 1101 (+2 more)
• CANDY: Of 1500 Dutch headlines on ethnic issues, none was positive with minorities as active agents — a striking single statistic.

Broader Connections

• News headlines systematically frame minorities as passive agents of negativity #expands (0.97)
• News media privilege white elite sources and downgrade minority claims to allegations #exemplifies (0.95) — David Theo Goldberg, John Solomos, A Companion to Racial and Ethnic Studies, 1101
• Racist discourse tends to favor the ingroup and derogate the outgroup #expands (0.85) — David Theo Goldberg, John Solomos, A Companion to Racial and Ethnic Studies, 1062
• Differentiated bureaucracies suffer in-group bias and out-group derogation #exemplifies (0.75) — Roderick M. Kramer, Geoffrey J. Leonardelli, Robert W. Livingston, Social Cognition, Social Identity, and…, 1973
• The mass media reproduce racism partly because newsrooms themselves lack minority journalists #qualifies (0.72) — David Theo Goldberg, John Solomos, A Companion to Racial and Ethnic Studies, 1102