Evidence of Linguistic Intergroup Bias in U.S. Print News Coverage of Immigration

Abstract

This study content analyzed all print newspaper articles addressing U.S. immigration from Mexico appearing in Arizona, California, New Mexico, and Texas during a 1-year period for presence of linguistic intergroup bias. Across all four states, negative statements outnumbered positive statements; this negativity bias was more pronounced for out-group than in-group statements in all states except California. Consistent with the linguistic intergroup bias, positive in-group and negative out-group statements were encoded using more abstract language than negative in-group and positive out-group statements.