Race in the Floodwaters: Constructing and Deconstructing Television News Coverage of Hurricane Katrina.

Abstract

This dissertation explores a puzzle that has troubled policymakers for some time: If there is widespread support for the norm of racial equality in America, why do Whites oppose policies designed to achieve that goal? Employing three interrelated studies, I explore the possibility that the news media may alter the characterization of a policy such that specific racial attitude dimensions become more or less salient. Particular media frames of policy-relevant events may help to socialize attitudes that can subsequently depress support for policies such as affirmative action or welfare. Television news can play a powerful role in providing information about the world, and television coverage of Hurricane Katrina brought the disaster into people’s homes. The first two studies examine the visual and verbal construction of television news coverage of the disaster and look for patterns reflective of four theories (i.e., prejudice as a sense of group position, symbolic racism, the politics-centered approach, and whiteness) offered to explain the gap between egalitarian norms and policy preferences. The first study uses textual analysis to assess how whiteness emerged in television news coverage of Hurricane Katrina. Three themes become evident: law and order, White normalcy, and White determination. The second study employs quantitative content analysis and begins to tell a story about construction of the coverage through elements of group position, symbolic racism, and whiteness. The third study is an experiment investigating how the policy preferences of White participants change as the frame of a news story is manipulated to emphasize considerations that underlie the four theories. The expected differences between the racial frames did not emerge as strongly as expected, and these mostly null results might suggest that these racial attitudes are largely overlapping psychological constructs. Yet, because in numerous cases the results are in the correct direction, there is also a suggestion that something is occurring worth additional study. This dissertation was designed to explore a possible relationship among Whites’ policy preferences, four theoretical perspectives, and television news coverage. These first steps invite further empirical work to understand the gap between White opinions and policy preferences—and ultimately our democratic future.