Experimental Effects of “Achievement Gap” News Reporting on Viewers’ Racial Stereotypes, Inequality Explanations, and Inequality Prioritization

2020 ◽  
Vol 49 (7) ◽  
pp. 482-492
Author(s):  
David M. Quinn

The “achievement gap” has long dominated mainstream conversations about race and education. Some scholars warn that the discourse around racial gaps perpetuates stereotypes and promotes the adoption of deficit-based explanations that fail to appreciate the role of structural inequities. I investigate through three randomized experiments. Results indicate that a TV news story about racial achievement gaps (vs. a control or counterstereotypical video) led viewers to express more exaggerated stereotypes of Black Americans as lacking education (Study 1 effect size = .30 SD; Study 2 effect size = .38 SD) and may have increased viewers’ implicit stereotyping of Black students as less competent than White students (Study 1 effect size = .22 SD; Study 2 effect size = .12 SD, ns). The video did not affect viewers’ explicit competence-related racial stereotyping, the explanations they gave for achievement inequalities, or their prioritization of ending achievement inequalities. After 2 weeks, the effect on stereotype exaggeration faded. Future research should probe how we can most productively frame educational inequality by race.

2018 ◽  
Vol 13 (1) ◽  
pp. 36-38
Author(s):  
Elizabeth Margaret Stovold

A Review of: Schaferm, S., Sulflow, M., & Muller, P. (2017). The special taste of snack news: an application of niche theory to understand the appeal of Facebook as a source for political news. First Monday, 22(4-3). http://dx.doi.org/10.5210/fm.v22i4.7431 Abstract Objective – To investigate Facebook as a source of exposure to political news stories and to compare the reasons for using Facebook as a news source and the gratifications obtained, compared with other news sources. Design – Survey questionnaire. Setting – Facebook. Subjects – 422 German Facebook users. Methods – An online survey was developed to investigate the use of Facebook as a news source compared with other sources. Specific research questions were informed by the ‘theory of niche’ (Dimmick, 2003) which examines the coexistence and competition between different media outlets by examining the breadth, overlap and superiority of one platform over another. The survey was distributed using a ‘snowball’ technique between July and August 2015. The survey was shared by 52 student research assistants on their Facebook profiles. They asked their friends to complete the survey and share it with their own networks. Main results – The mean (M) age of the 422 respondents was 23.5 years (SD=8.25). The majority were female (61%) with a high school degree (89%). TV news and news websites were the most frequently used sources of political news. Facebook ranked third, ahead of newspapers, search engines, magazines, email provider websites, and Twitter. The mean score for the importance of Facebook as a news sources was 2.46 (SD=1.13) on a scale of 1 to 5, where 1 is low and 5 is high. This fell in the middle of the range when compared with the top ranked source assessed by importance (TV news, M 4.40, SD=0.88) and the lowest (email providers, M 1.92, SD=0.97). Users rarely visited Facebook with the purpose of finding news (M 1.59, SD=0.73). However, they estimated around 24% of the posts they see were concerned with political news, and when encountered, these stories are frequently read (M 3.53, SD=1.18). However, the level of interaction as measured by liking, commenting, sharing or status updates was low (M 1.94 SD=1.09; M 1.37, SD=0.79; M 1.51, SD=0.85 and M 1.4, SD=0.78 respectively). The ‘gratification’ categories where Facebook as a news source scored the highest were for killing time (M 2.97, SD=1.29), entertainment (M 2.92, SD=1.05), and surveillance (M 2.77, SD=1.01). When compared to newspapers and TV news, it was found that Facebook has a lower score for niche breadth, meaning that it serves a specific rather than general news function. Facebook also had a lower overlap score when compared with the other media, thereby performing a complementary function, while TV news and newspapers perform similarly. TV news scored better for providing balanced information, surveillance and social utility while Facebook scored highest for killing time. There was no difference in the category of entertainment. There was a similar picture when comparing Facebook with newspapers. Conclusion – The authors conclude that while users do not actively seek political news through Facebook, they are exposed to political news through this medium. Respondents did not consider the news to be well balanced, and that currently Facebooks’ niche is restricted to entertainment and killing time. The authors note that this may be disappointing for news organisations, but there is potential to expose large audiences to political news when they are not actively seeking it. The findings represent a specific time point in a changing landscape and future research will need to take these changes into account. Comparisons with other online news sources and the use of objective measures to validate self-reported data would be valuable areas for future research.


1994 ◽  
Vol 64 (4) ◽  
pp. 479-530 ◽  
Author(s):  
Barak Rosenshine ◽  
Carla Meister

Reciprocal teaching is an instructional procedure designed to teach students cognitive strategies that might lead to improved reading comprehension. The learning of cognitive strategies such as summarization, question generation, clarification, and prediction is supported through dialogue between teacher and students as they attempt to gain meaning from text. This article is a review of sixteen studies on reciprocal teaching, which include published studies found in journal articles and unpublished studies indexed in Dissertation Abstracts International. All the studies included in this review were quantitative in methodology. When standardized tests were used to assess comprehension, the median effect size, favoring reciprocal teaching, was .32. When experimenter-developed comprehension tests were used, the median effect size was .88. We also discuss the role of cognitive strategies in enhancing comprehension, the strategies that were most helpful, instructional approaches for teaching cognitive strategies, the quality of the dialogue during reciprocal teaching, and suggestions for future research and practice.


2021 ◽  
Vol 0 (0) ◽  
Author(s):  
Iris van Venrooij ◽  
Tobias Sachs ◽  
Mariska Kleemans

Abstract To reduce negative emotional responses and to stimulate prosociality, constructive journalism promotes the inclusion of positive emotions and solutions in news. This study experimentally tested whether including those elements indeed increased prosocial intentions and behavior among children, and whether negative emotions and self-efficacy are mediators in this regard. To this end, children (N = 468; 9 to 13 years old) were exposed to an emotion-based, solution-based, or non-constructive news video. Results showed that emotion-based and solution-based news reduced children’s negative emotions compared to non-constructive news. No direct effects for prosocial intentions were found, but solution-based news led to less prosocial behavior (i. e., money donated) than emotion-based and non-constructive news. Moreover, negative emotions served as a mediator, self-efficacy did not. The more negative emotions were elicited by a news story, the higher the prosocial intentions and behavior. In conclusion, a constructive style of reporting helps to reduce children’s negative emotional responses but subsequently hinders prosociality.


Author(s):  
Huanxu Liu ◽  
Jingwen Yang ◽  
Yuki Yamada

AbstractDespite the considerable amount of research devoted to understanding fraud, few studies have examined how the physical environment can influence the likelihood of committing fraud. One recent study found a link between room brightness and occurrence of human fraud behaviors. Therefore, the present study aims to investigate how temperature may affect fraud. Based on a power analysis using the effect size observed in a pilot study, we recruited 105 participants and randomly divided them into three temperature groups (warm, medium, and cool). We then counted fraud behaviors in each group and tested for potential significant differences with a Kruskal–Wallis test. Additionally, we used a correlation analysis to determine whether the perceived temperature affected fraud. As a result, regardless of participants’ subjective sensory experience or their physical environment, we did not find that temperature-related factors influence the incidence of fraud. We discussed the potential reason for the results and suggested directions for future research.


2020 ◽  
Vol ahead-of-print (ahead-of-print) ◽  
Author(s):  
Murumba Inekwe ◽  
Fathyah Hashim ◽  
Sofri B. Yahya

Purpose The purpose of this study is to examine the effect of public governance and economic growth on corporate social responsibility (CSR) performance in Egypt, Morocco, Mauritius, Nigeria and South Africa. It also assesses the trend of CSR performance in these countries over time. Design/methodology/approach The study is based on a sample of five countries in Africa for the period 2012-2017. The multivariate regression model was used in testing the research questions/hypotheses. Robustness tests were performed to provide evidence to strengthen the findings of the study. Findings Findings suggest that both good governance and economic growth are significantly positively associated with CSR performance. However, while good governance has a relatively substantial effect size, economic growth has a small effect size. Overall, both variables have a considerably low confidence interval ratio and therefore stand a good chance of holding up in future research. Research limitations/implications The analysis is limited to within-country effects, thereby forgoing the opportunity to explain between-countries effects. Second, the sample size is relatively small because of the limitation of data availability on CSR in Africa; hence, population generalization is not intended but theory generalization. Practical implications Findings have implications for studies on CSR performance in Africa that fail to consider the socio-political and socio-economic level of development as contextual variables in the research design. Originality/value Prior studies on CSR have focused majorly on CSR performance–corporate financial performance relationship. Furthermore, there are several calls in the literature for research for a new direction on CSR in the context of developing countries, especially Africa. This paper responds to these literature gaps.


Innovar ◽  
2017 ◽  
Vol 27 (66) ◽  
pp. 57-74 ◽  
Author(s):  
Katherina Kuschel

This review presents a synthesis and a critique of the development of the existing workfamily (WF) literature during the last decade in order to highlight gaps and limitations in current research. The study revises 83 peer-reviewed articles, book chapters and conference presentations (2004-2014) related to WF in economics, management and psychology disciplines, and classifies the current research into three broad themes for future research paths: i) definitions and theories; ii) background and outcomes of wf conflict, balance and enrichment; and iii) methodological gaps. Advances have been made this decade on meta-analysis and the understanding of the positive side of WF interface. Future research opportunities in this field will include a deeper understanding of how to effectively cope with WF conflict, how to achieve WF enrichment, the use of different methods (qualitative, longitudinal and experimental studies) on samples of new occupations, and how researchers could address methodological problems (causality, endogeneity, simultaneity, effect size, and self-selection bias) to better handle the complexity of WF issues.


2010 ◽  
Vol 104 (11) ◽  
pp. 1577-1585 ◽  
Author(s):  
Linda A. W. Jans ◽  
Erik J. Giltay ◽  
A. J. Willem Van der Does

Depressive symptoms are common during pregnancy and the post-partum period. Although essential n-3 PUFA may have beneficial effects on depression, it remains unclear whether they are also effective for perinatal depression. The purpose of the present study was to assess the efficacy of n-3 supplementation for perinatal depression, by performing a meta-analysis on currently available data. After a thorough literature search, we included seven randomised controlled trials in the meta-analysis, all with EPA and/or DHA supplementation. Most studies were judged to be of low-to-moderate quality, mainly due to small sample sizes and failure to adhere to Consolidated Standards of Reporting Trials guidelines. Some studies were not primarily designed to address perinatal depression. A total of 309 women on n-3 fatty acid supplementation were compared with 303 women on placebo treatment. n-3 Supplementation was not found to be significantly more effective than placebo at post-treatment with a pooled effect size (Hedges's g) of − 0·03 (95 % CI − 0·18, 0·13; P = 0·76) using a fixed-effects model. Heterogeneity was low-to-moderate (I2 = 30 %). In a subgroup analysis of three small studies of pregnant women with major depression, there was some indication of effectiveness (effect size 0·17; 95 % CI − 0·21, 0·55). In conclusion, the question of whether EPA and DHA administration is effective in the prevention or treatment of perinatal depression cannot be answered yet. Future research should focus on women who are clinically depressed (or at risk). The quality of research in this area needs to improve.


Author(s):  
Aniko Bodroghkozy

This chapter examines television news' reporting of the Selma campaign for voting rights that led directly to the passage of the 1965 Voting Rights Act. Television cameras present on the Edmund Pettus Bridge on Sunday March 7, 1965, were able to capture the beating, gassing, and brutalizing suffered by voting rights demonstrators as they attempted to march to Montgomery. The uproar generated by that footage generated more support, volunteers, and moral clout for the civil rights movement. This chapter considers how one news program, The CBS Evening News with Walter Cronkite, presented the Selma campaign as an ongoing nightly news story, with particular emphasis on its coverage of the campaign's three martyrs: Jimmie Lee Jackson, Rev. James Reeb, and Viola Liuzzo. It also discusses the response of white Selmians in the “glaring light of television” and the commentary in the African American press regarding the television coverage of the campaign.


2012 ◽  
Vol 142 (1) ◽  
pp. 123-134 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jacqui Ewart

It's no secret that the representation of migrant groups in the media has been particularly problematic, as has been their access to mainstream media, and both issues have attracted a great deal of research. Far less attention has been paid by researchers to how these groups respond when they experience such difficulties, and the various forms of media they use to engage with a variety of issues pertinent to them and their settlement experiences. This article uses data from two projects: Australia's first, and to date only, national study of community radio audiences; and a more recent case study of a community radio station undertaken in the course of research into talkback radio audiences. It reveals that community radio stations and programs provide migrant communities with a space in which they can discuss and negotiate their civic and social rights and responsibilities. Drawing on the reflections of audience members who listen to and call specific radio programs, this article explores the under-examined but vital role performed by these stations and programs in the social and civic lives of immigrants. It reveals that ethnic community radio programs are helping some audience members to formulate notions of good citizenship, and thus engage with democratic processes, which is vital to feeling socially included. The research reveals immigrants are using community radio proactively to reach out to and connect with the broader Australian community, while also reminding themselves of their homeland, culture and language. However, this article warns that researchers have largely focused on the ‘good news story’ of community broadcasting and suggests that a more critical approach to future research is warranted.


2014 ◽  
Vol 58 (2) ◽  
pp. 373-396
Author(s):  
Gyung Hee Choi

In translation studies, genre and grammar have each flourished in their own right as a subject of study by a number of scholars. But research solely dedicated to the complementary relations between genre and grammar has been rare, particularly from the translation education perspective. Neither genre nor grammar can function properly without the other in a text because context (genre) and ‘wording’ (grammar) are inseparable. The aim of this paper is to examine the correlation between genre structure and grammar in the analysis of errors in student translations of news story texts. Drawing on Systemic Functional Linguistics (SFL), translations of two subtypes of news-reporting texts from English to Korean are analyzed. The main data include two source texts and their translations by nine Masters’students. The findings of this paper show that a large majority of translation mistakes arise from a lack of knowledge of genre structure and its interconnection with logical meaning (how clauses, sentences and paragraphs are combined). The research reported in this paper indicates that genre structure and grammar together constitute useful resources for teaching the translation of news-reporting texts, with more studies of genre structure in other subject fields desired.


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