News Images, Race, and Attribution in the Wake of Hurricane Katrina

Abstract

This study looks at the effect of news images and race on the attribution of responsibility for the consequences of Hurricane Katrina. Participants, Black and White, read the same news story about the hurricane and its aftermath, manipulated to include images of White victims, Black victims, or no images at all. Participants were then asked who they felt was responsible for the humanitarian disaster after the storm. White respondents expressed less sense of government responsibility when the story included victims' images. For Black respondents this effect did not occur. Images did not affect attribution of responsibility to New Orleans' residents themselves. These findings are interpreted to support the expectations of framing theory with the images serving as episodic framing mechanisms.

Are press depictions of Affordable Care Act beneficiaries favorable to policy durability?

“…Second, visual images-not studied here-may bear as much or more on beneficiary constructions as do numbers and words. 550,551,552,553,554 Third, the degree to which the results generalize outside the months studied is an open question. One consideration is that the ACA's implementation timeline may make it logical for the media to generate different portrayal patterns at different times.…”

Crime Victims’ Attributions for Survival

“…Media effects researchers contend that these programs influence viewers in myriad ways, including cultivating views of a mean and dangerous world (e.g., Gerbner & Gross, 1976), priming racial stereotypes (e.g., Dixon, 2006), and shaping attitudes toward law enforcement and crime-related public policies (e.g., Holbert et al, 2004). Framing theory and research indicates that media messages about crime and victimization also influence viewer attributions of responsibility, such that episodic frames (i.e., a discussion of public issues in terms of specific instances or people) lead to victim blaming and thematic frames (i.e., a discussion of public issues in more general terms) prompt viewers to ascribe responsibility to external factors (Ben-Porath & Shaker, 2010). These attributional tendencies are particularly troubling given that the vast majority of crime news stories are episodic in nature (Gilliam & Iyengar, 2005).…”

Revisiting Responsibility Attribution within Multilevel Governments: The Role of Information

“…Even when institutional clarity exists, citizens absorb information mainly through media, which are the ones that select, frame it and transmit it. Saliency and framing of public policies will ultimately influence the amount of information reaching voters and will condition the ability of the latter to evaluate politicians (Arcenaux, 2006;Cordero, 2016, Ben-Porah andShaker, 2010;de Vries and Giger, 2013). More specifically, Rudolph (2003a and2003b) shows that media help citizens´ responsibility attribution by providing them information cues.…”