Title: Media Portrayals and Black Male Outcomes | The Opportunity Agenda
Headings: Media Portrayals and Black Male Outcomes
Media Portrayals and Black Male Outcomes
Distorted patterns of portrayal
Underrepresentation in media portrayals
Negative associations exaggerated
Positive associations limited
The “problem” frame
Missing stories
Causal link between media and public attitudes
Impacts on thinking of black males themselves
Documentations of bias — conscious and unconscious — against black males
Unconscious patterns
Automatic responses
Hostility
General negative evaluation
African Americans’ own implicit biases
Conscious patterns
Practical consequences in lives of black males
Why media patterns are distorted
Bias among producers of media
Audience preferences
Incorrect assumptions about what audiences want
Lack of input from African Americans
Political motivations to traffic in stereotypes
Mistaken understandings

Content: This paper breaks the story down into five “links in the chain” (some of which have been studied and discussed more than others): Distorted portrayal of black (male) lives/experience
Why media patterns are distorted
Causal link between media and public attitudes
Documentations of the public’s bias — both conscious and unconscious — against black males
Practical consequences for the lives of black males
Distorted patterns of portrayal
In a wide range of ways, the overall presentation of black males in the media is distorted, exaggerating some dimensions while omitting others. Many scholars have contributed to a robust body of research documenting these distortions, which have several aspects. Underrepresentation in media portrayals
A number of researchers have essentially conducted “censuses” (of representations overall, of fictional characters, of characters in ads, and so forth) and compared these findings to the numbers of black men and boys that would be expected if racial bias were not at work. As this research has progressed, analysts have grown more sophisticated in the distinctions that they draw about where black males do and do not appear in the media. A pattern reported again and again is that African Americans are underrepresented in various facets of the media’s portrayal of the world. For example, although characters of color in video games have been increasing over time, blacks in general tend to be underrepresented especially as active, playable characters in video games. They are more likely to be stock characters in the story. …outside of sports games, the representation of African Americans [in popular video games] drops precipitously, with many of the remaining featured as gangsters and street people … (Williams et al., 2009)
Black males also tend to be underrepresented as experts called in to offer commentary and analysis in the news.