The number of multiracial candidates seeking office is growing in an increasingly diverse America. This raises questions about how the media frame candidates with potentially complex racial backgrounds and how voters respond to these frames. We investigate the impact of media frames that emphasize race and gender attributes using survey experiments on Kamala Harris—the first Black woman and first Asian woman vice president. Our findings are mixed. In a survey experiment conducted after her nomination, headlines emphasizing different elements of Harris’s race or gender had no impact on public attitudes. In an experiment conducted after Harris was inaugurated, however, headlines that cued her gender only or both her gender and her Black racial background boosted popular support. Taken together, these findings suggest that some types of identity-based cues may matter, but the effects are sensitive to experimental settings and contexts.

This article analyses how the Brazilian Movimento dos Atingidos por Barragens (Movement of Dam-Affected People, MAB) has been represented in the press, in the context of networks of resistance to large hydroelectric dams in Latin America. We analyse how the press deploys linguistic-discursive resources in producing and constructing meaning and focus in its presentation of news about anti-dam protests. The study analyses print media reporting on anti-dam protests in Minas Gerais between 1998 and 2005, and shows how, at different moments and in different political contexts, representations of social protest have changed and newspaper reports have either ignored, criminalised or provided visibility to MAB in this region.