Intervening in the Media's Influence on Stereotypes of Race and Ethnicity: The Role of Media Literacy Education

2015/03/01 by Erica Scharrer, Srividya Ramasubramanian · 139 citations
Arts and Humanities · Psychology · Social Sciences · #Child Development and Digital Technology #Curriculum #Ethnic group #Gender studies #Information literacy #Literacy #Literacy, Media, and Education #Media literacy #Multilingual Education and Policy #Pedagogy #Prejudice (legal term) #Psychology #Qualitative analysis #Qualitative research #Race (biology) #Social psychology #Social science #Sociology

paper · doi:10.1111/josi.12103

published in Journal of Social Issues 71(1), 171-185 (Wiley)

openalex publication_date 2015/03/01 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/28

Abstract

This article provides a review of the research record on the potential for media literacy education to intervene in the media's influence on racial and ethnic stereotypes, and explores the theoretical concepts that underlie these efforts. It situates media literacy theory and practice within particular emphases in the field and synthesizes qualitative and quantitative studies. Quantitative research on the effect of media literacy training and mediated counterstereotypes on reducing racial/ethnic prejudice is described. In addition, we report qualitative data from an ongoing study of early adolescents who took part in a media literacy curriculum on stereotypes. The research record reveals that although the topic is severely understudied, media literacy education holds great promise for its ability to shape media‐related knowledge, attitudes, and behaviors and encourage an active and critical stance toward media.

Citations

• Why the Media's Role in Issues of Race and Ethnicity Should be in the Spotlight
• Documenting Portrayals of Race/Ethnicity on Primetime Television over a 20‐Year Span and Their Association with National‐Level Racial/Ethnic Attitudes

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• Documenting Portrayals of Race/Ethnicity on Primetime Television over a 20‐Year Span and Their Association with National‐Level Racial/Ethnic Attitudes
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• How news media literacy is taught in Australian classrooms. [europepmc]
• Demographic predictors of objectification theory and tripartite influence model constructs: The U.S. Body Project I. [europepmc]
• The effect on judgment of attributing religious affiliation to a terrorist suspect. [europepmc]
• When ethnic minorities hit the headlines: The longitudinal associations between news features and adolescents' ethnic prejudice. [europepmc]
• Media literacy interventions: meta-analytic review of 40 years of research. [europepmc]

Related

• The State of Media Literacy
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