Recent years have seen a push for more diversity in newsrooms, especially in the aftermath of protests against police brutality. The argument that newsrooms should reflect the communities they serve is echoed in findings from Center for Media Engagement research where people from communities often underserved by the media shared how newsrooms can help bridge the divide.
A new study published by Emily Van Duyn, associate professor at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Jay Jennings, Center for Media Engagement research associate, and Natalie Jomini Stroud, Center for Media Engagement director and professor at The University of Texas at Austin, explores how different racial and ethnic groups respond to bylines from journalists who share their race or ethnicity.
Study Details
Study 1
In the first study, participants in Chicago completed phone interviews where they were read a headline like “City negotiating road repairs and construction in Chicago.” At random, participants were also given either no byline or a byline that past research has shown to indicate a certain race or ethnicity: Darnell Jackson, Juan Garcia, or Jeffrey Mueller.
Participants were then asked how likely they would be to read the article and how much they agreed with the statement “People like me are covered by the news in Chicago.”
The results showed that Black participants and white participants were not more likely to read a story when it was accompanied by a byline that matched their race or ethnicity. Hispanic participants, however, were less likely to read a story when accompanied by a byline associated with a Hispanic person’s name. The race or ethnicity associated with the byline did not affect whether people felt represented in the media.
Study 2
In the second study, a national group of participants completed an online survey where they were shown the headline “Cellphone radiation study finds biological changes in animals; human effects unclear.” Hispanic and Black participants were shown bylines by either a journalist of their race or ethnicity or by a white journalist. White participants were shown bylines from one of the three races or ethnicities.
Like in the first study, participants were then asked how likely they would be to read the article and how much they agreed with the statement “People like me are covered by the news.”
The results showed that Black participants were more likely to read stories by a Black journalist, but white participants and Hispanic participants were not more likely to read a story by a journalist of their same race or ethnicity. If anything, Hispanic participants were slightly less likely to read a story if it was written by a Hispanic journalist and white participants were slightly more likely to read a story if it was written by a white journalist, but these result were not statistically significant. The race or ethnicity associated with the byline did not affect whether people felt represented in the media.
Follow-up Studies
Five follow-up studies were conducted to examine whether the differences that appeared in the first two studies persisted in different contexts, specifically the findings for Hispanic participants. None of the tests resulted in findings that supported the results of the first two studies.
Findings
In general, the race or ethnicity of the journalist did not affect whether people felt represented in the media. There were mixed results when it came to whether a journalist’s race or ethnicity affected a person’s likelihood of reading a news story. In some cases, Black news consumers were more likely to read an article by a Black journalist. This was not true for Hispanic news consumers, who were, in some cases, less likely to read an article written by a Hispanic journalist. In follow-up studies, however, this finding didn’t hold.
The finding related to Hispanic participants could be due to a variety of factors such as news consumption differences (Hispanic audiences, for instance, are more likely to use Spanish-language news outlets) or differences in the way people from different racial or ethnic backgrounds think about their group.
Takeaways
The mixed findings from these studies don’t offer clear suggestions for newsrooms. Results from the second study signify that diversifying journalists and news staff could help newsrooms connect with Black audiences. On the other hand, some results indicate Hispanic readers might turn away from stories by Hispanic journalists, though this finding didn’t hold up in the additional studies.
It’s important to note that there are limitations to the way the studies were conducted. What the results do suggest is that more research is needed to address the influence of racial and ethnic diversity as presented in bylines and to see how journalists’ race or ethnicity affects audience behavior.
Most importantly, the results do not advocate against diversifying newsrooms. Previous Center for Media Engagement research suggests that newsroom diversity can help bridge divides with communities that feel underrepresented in the news, specifically with Black communities. Though the implications of sharing race or ethnicity through a byline aren’t clear, past research indicates newsrooms can help connect with their local communities by committing to hiring diverse staff.