Where You Live and What You Watch: The Impact of Racial Proximity and Local Television News on Attitudes about Race and Crime

Abstract

In this article, we investigate the interaction of exposure to stereotype reinforcing local crime news and neighborhood racial context on atti- tudes about race and crime. To date, there has been little research inves- tigating whether neighborhood context mitigates or exacerbates the impact of exposure to racially stereotypic crime news. Based on theories of schema formation and change, we predict that residential proximity should condition more complex, multidimensional views of blacks, such that whites from those areas would be less negatively influenced by black criminal stereotypes on the news. We collected information about the neighborhood racial context for each respondent in an experiment. We then exposed respondents either to racially stereotypic or non-stereotypic crime stories on local news programs. Results support our central hypothesis. When exposed to racial stereotypes in the news, white respondents living in white homogeneous neighborhoods endorsed more punitive policies to address crime, expressed more negative stereotypic evaluations of blacks, and felt more distant from blacks as a group. Whites from heterogeneous neighborhoods were either unaffected or moved in the opposite direction, endorsing less punitive crime policies, less negative stereotypes, and feeling closer to blacks as a group as a result of exposure to the stereotypic coverage.