Charlton D. McIlwain

Minority Candidates, Media Framing, and Racial Cues in the 2004 Election

Rooted in political communication models of framing and priming and a rather unique theory of appeals to racial authenticity, the authors examine minority candidates in both majority-minority and majority-white districts during the 2004 election cycle.They explore and analyze potential framing and priming effects based on variations of candidates’ media coverage in a number of campaign scenarios. Results suggest that racial references are commonplace in biracial election contests (and are more likely to occur there than in all-white contests). Furthermore, newspaper coverage of biracial and all-black elections is more likely to contain a racial frame than stories about all-white races. The authors conclude with a discussion of the normative implications of these findings, as well as suggestions for further examination and testing.

Perceptions of Leadership and the Challenge of Obama's Blackness

This article analyzes the relationship between race and perceptions of leadership as a way of assessing the presidential prospects of Barack Obamas 2008 campaign. Analysis of the 1988 Super Tuesday National Election Studies data demonstrates that for White voters, perceptions of leadership serve as a proxy for racial evaluations of an African American candidate. A content analysis of newspaper coverage during the first 3 months of Obamas candidacy was conducted and demonstrates that questions of leadership and race are prominently featured in media reporting about Obama.

Quantifying the power and consequences of social media protest

The exercise of power has been an implicit theme in research on the use of social media for political protest, but few studies have attempted to measure social media power and its consequences directly. This study develops and measures three theoretically grounded metrics of social media power—unity, numbers, and commitment—as wielded on Twitter by a social movement (Black Lives Matter [BLM]), a counter-movement (political conservatives), and an unaligned party (mainstream news outlets) over nearly 10 months. We find evidence of a model of social media efficacy in which BLM predicts mainstream news coverage of police brutality, which in turn is the strongest driver of attention to the issue from political elites. Critically, the metric that best predicts elite response across all parties is commitment.

Black Messages, White Messages The Differential Use of Racial Appeals by Black and White Candidates

This article seeks to ascertain how implicit and explicit racial messages are constructed in televised political campaign advertisements. Utilizing a content analysis of 328 spots run in election contests between 1990 and 2000 where at least one candidate was African American, the authors provide results and analyses that demonstrate that both White and Black candidates are prone to utilizing racial messages. However, the authors show that a stark distinction exists between racial messages constructed by Whites and those by Black candidates.

Racial formation, inequality and the political economy of web traffic

ABSTRACT Few studies attempt to demonstrate whether and how systemic racial inequality might form on the web. I use racial formation theory to conceptualize how race is represented, and systematically reproduced on the web, and how both may reveal forms of racial inequality. Using an original dataset and network graph, I document the architecture of web traffic, and the actual traffic patterns among and between race-based websites. Results demonstrate that web producers create hyperlink networks that steer audiences to websites without respect to racial or nonracial content. However, user navigation reflects a racially segregated traffic pattern; users navigate to racialized versus nonracialized websites (and vice versa) more than what would be expected by chance. These results, along with disparities in website traffic rankings, provide evidence of, and demonstrates how a race-based hierarchy might systematically emerge on the web in ways that exemplify disparate forms of value, influence and power that exist within the web environment.

Racialized Media Coverage of Minority Candidates in the 2008 Democratic Presidential Primary

This article investigates the prominence of racial content in newspaper stories about Barack Obama and three other candidates running in the 2008 Democratic Party presidential primary. Content analyses of stories appearing in six national newspapers sought to ascertain how frequent racial references appeared in news accounts of the presidential contest, how salient the racial content was, and what factors explained race-related coverage. Consistent with previous studies, the presence of one or more racial minorities in the stories increased the likelihood and presence of racial references found in the story. However, results challenge the conventional wisdom that racial content is salient enough to serve as a prominent racial cue activating readers’ or voters’ negative racial prejudices. This study finds that more than any other factor, journalists’ desire to heighten the election’s competitiveness influenced the presence and degree of racial content present in stories.

Mitt Romney’s Racist Appeals How Race Was Played in the 2012 Presidential Election

This article identifies a marked difference in the type of race-based appeals that dominated Barack Obama’s presidential reelection contest in 2012 from his inaugural campaign in 2008. Racist appeals by Mitt Romney and the right in 2012 supplanted the racial appeals by Obama and the left in 2008. We focus our attention on a particularly salient form of racist appeal, one based on the long-standing stereotypes of black laziness and taking advantage. Specifically, we outline the historical underpinnings of these stereotypes. We then demonstrate how Romney and the right wove these underlying stereotypes into a seamless racist narrative—through political advertisements, online messaging, political speeches and debate statements—beginning with the Republican primary and continuing through the general election.

From deracialization to racial distinction: interpreting Obama's successful racial narrative

While many scholars attribute Barack Obamas success in the 2008 presidential election to his so-called deracialized campaign strategy, I argue that Obama constructed a persuasive message strategy that was fundamentally based on race. I argue that in pursuing what I call a racial distinction strategy, Obama mobilized race differently than previous Black candidates running in White-voter electoral majorities. Specifically, Obamas racial distinction strategy constructed a seamless racial narrative – deployed through constellations of subtle racial language and imagery – incorporating Obamas own personal biography within a broader narrative of the nation, specifically a narrative of American progress. The fact that Obama employed a racial distinction strategy, and the fact that he succeeded in doing so, sheds new light on, and leads us to reconsider the veracity of popular political theories such as post-Blackness, post-racialism and deracialization, along with the general ideology of colorblindness.

Third-Party “Hatchet” Ads: An Exploratory Content Study Comparing Third-Party and Candidate Spots From the 2004 Presidential Election

The Supreme Courts 2010 Citizens United ruling lifted several key rules limiting electioneering communication. These changes are predicted to have significant effects on political campaigns. Namely, the ruling allows third-party sponsored electioneering up until Election Day. Because of the widespread presence of third-party issue advertising in 2004 presidential race, that election offers researchers one of the first opportunities to compare the content of third-party spots with candidate sponsored spots. This study examined the differences between third-party and candidate-sponsored spots, to look at differences in areas of “magic word” inclusion (e.g., “vote for …,” “vote against …”), negativity, and overall message consistency. Our findings show that few candidates use magic words, third-party spots were significantly more negative, addressed more issues than candidate spots, and made fewer explicit references to issues. Based on our results, we recommend future research on the effects of ad negativity, sponsor salience, and third-party and candidate message consistency.