Author

HAZEL ATUEL, VIVIANE SEYRANIAN
AND WILLIAM D. CRANO

Year

2007

Publisher

European Journal of Social Psychology

DOI/Link

https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/pdf/10.1002/ejsp.377?casa_token=g3qXhkOONe4AAAAA:Uf1S2STgEQVrTNOSJOliLAaU-VKajR09lH25ejKAESSu2QnxkJibSm-7Yg1mDJ4DEyY7sK1rh-B0d8g

Abstract

This research series replicated and extended earlier findings of Gardikiotis, Martin, and Hewstone
(2004), who examined via content analysis UK media representations of numeric majority and minority
groups. Using news articles from North and South Dakota, where majority/minority population
characteristics mirror those of the UK in terms of number and power, Study 1 replicated the patterns
of results found in Gardikiotis et al. Study 2, in which articles from California newspapers were
analyzed, yielded findings contrary to Gardikiotis et al. and our Dakota analyses: Minority headlines
were more frequent in California, and majority articles were longer than minority articles. Consistent
with UK and Dakotas findings, majority headlines in California were associated with politics and
identity adjectives, whereas minority headlines were linked to social issues and ethnicity-based
adjectives. Arguably, these differences occurred because in California, unlike the UK and the Dakotas,
Whites are not simultaneously the social power and the numeric majority. Variations in power and
number associated with majority and minority status were discussed in explaining differences across
contexts, and in signaling possible shortcomings in the conceptualization and methods used to
investigate minority and majority influence.

Keywords

Digital Citizenship