The Mass Media and the Dynamics of American Racial Attitudes

Extract

The Mass Media and the Dynamics of American Racial Attitudes. By Paul M. Kellstedt. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003. 155p. $60.00 cloth, $20.00 paper.

The literature on race and public opinion has been dominated by the debate between those who emphasize the continuing role of prejudice or racial resentment and those who emphasize the role of other values and ideologies, such as limited government or individualism, in explaining sources of individual-level support and opposition to current race policy. Thus, it is refreshing to find a book like The Mass Media and the Dynamics of American Racial Attitudes, which looks at racial attitudes from a different perspective. In the tradition of Howard Schuman and his colleagues in Racial Attitudes in America (1997), Paul Kellstedt demonstrates and explains variation in the American public's racial policy preferences over the last half of the twentieth-century. Kellstedt draws on the existing opinion and media effects literature to develop a theory that can explain how the public as a whole evolves on matters of race. This book's most valuable contribution comes from the specific attention he gives to media framing. Many researchers suggest a role for media coverage in the development and trajectory of racial policy preferences over this period, yet little empirical work examines this relationship. Using an innovative approach, the author provides convincing evidence that media coverage “is an important part of a system of influences that determine public opinion on race in America” (p. 134).