Oscar H. Gandy

Racial Identity and Media Orientation: Exploring the Nature of Constraint

Our relationships with the mass media are at least partly determined by the perceived utility of the information we gather from them. We look to the media to fulfill certain functions-surveillance, correlation, socialization, and entertainment (Wright, 1986). We develop mechanisms through which we understand our environment and the forces at play therein. These are often enacted through cognitive shortcuts, or heuristics. These cognitive schema are influenced by who we are (our background), what we do (our direct, personal experiences), and what we see, hear, and learn through our exposure to mass media. Media representations play an important role in informing the ways in which we understand social, cultural, ethnic, and racial differences. Racial identity may play an especially powerful role in shaping our responses to mass media. Racial identity and racial group orientation are at the heart of research programs that are exploring the unique character of African American belief systems and their influence on the behavioral choices made by African Americans. This article examines the nature of racial group identity in an effort to determine its role in the formation of African American media orientations. The framework governing our analysis treats racial identity as one of many forms of individual identity that, in combination, help to shape our relations with others. Racial identity, as an organizing mechanism, is

Racial Identity, Media Use, and the Social Construction of Risk among African Americans

Despite the conflict and turmoil we have observed among media scholars who have been concerned with discovering the nature of media effects, there are very few among us who would deny that media help to shape the ways in which we understand the world (Hagen & Wasko, 2000; Livingstone, 1998). Our present uncertainty regarding the precise role that media play in this process exists in large part because we have become less parochial in our views about causation. We have chosen, or have been forced to expand, the number and variety of individual and contextual factors that we believe play an important role in shaping or moderating the ways in which media content comes to be processed, stored, and put to routine use (Renckstorf, 1996). Among the more important influences we have identified are those associated with our identities as members of groups. Of course, our identity as a member of a group defined primarily by race or ethnicity is just one component of an extremely complex identity structure (Frable, 1997; Jaret & Reitzes, 1999). The salience or centrality of racial identity varies across individuals, groups, contexts, and moments in time (Cornell & Hartmann, 1998). Managing this complexity in an effort to understand the nature of media influence is a daunting challenge. This article is an attempt to engage this complexity.

Public Opinion Surveys and the Formation of Privacy Policy

The laws that condition the boundaries that separate the public from the private spheres shape our expectations of privacy. Public opinion helps to shape the development and implementation of those laws. Commercial firms in the information-intensive industries have been the primary sponsors of public opinion surveys introduced into testimony as assessments of the publics will. Representatives of business and consumer organizations have relied upon the same industry-sponsored surveys to frame their arguments in support of or in opposition to specific privacy policies. In the past 25 years, references to public opinion have been used to frame the public as concerned, differentiated and, most recently, as willing to negotiate their privacy demands.

Inequality It's All in the Way You Look at It

The influence of race, education, and information seeking are explored as factors determining perceptions of the nature and extent of racial inequality. African Americans and Whites are seen to differ significantly in their estimates of White and Black poverty, the extent to which African Americans are worse off than Whites, and the circumstances that explain this disparity. Exposure to news and other information about race and affirmative action has a significant main effect on social comparisons and attributions, consistent with the cultivation hypothesis. Tendencies toward mainstreaming or convergence of opinion under conditions of close attention to racial news and information are observed only with regard to estimates of the proportions of racial groups in poverty.The influence of race, education, and information seeking are explored as factors determining perceptions of the nature and extent of racial inequality. African Americans and Whites are seen to differ significantly in their estimates of White and Black poverty, the extent to which African Americans are worse off than Whites, and the circumstances that explain this disparity. Exposure to news and other information about race and affirmative action has a significant main effect on social comparisons and attributions, consistent with the cultivation hypothesis. Tendencies toward mainstreaming or convergence of opinion under conditions of close attention to racial news and information are observed only with regard to estimates of the proportions of racial groups in poverty.

Engaging rational discrimination: exploring reasons for placing regulatory constraints on decision support systems

In the future systems of ambient intelligence will include decision support systems that will automate the process of discrimination among people that seek entry into environments and to engage in search of the opportunities that are available there. This article argues that these systems must be subject to active and continuous assessment and regulation because of the ways in which they are likely to contribute to economic and social inequality. This regulatory constraint must involve limitations on the collection and use of information about individuals and groups. The article explores a variety of rationales or justifications for establishing these limits. It emphasizes the unintended consequences that flow from the use of these systems as the most compelling rationale.

Assessing the Managerial Roles of Black Female Public Relations Practitioners Using Individual and Organizational Discriminants

These buzz words of the 80s have provided insight into the changing communications industry and have prompted researchers and media professionals alike to analyze the fact that women are, in increasing numbers, taking over previously male-dominated fields. Demographically, the representation of women in the U.S. workforce has increased steadily during a 10-year period beginning in the 1970s. Women (18 years and older) comprised roughly 38% of the workforce in the 1970s. By 1980, that percentage had increased to more than 42% (Davis, 1980; Grossman, 1982). Two thirds of all public relations practitioners were projected to be women by 1990 (Dozier, Chapo, & Sullivan, 1983). While women have been making gains in the workplace, they have also had an impact in the nations journalism classrooms. In 1984, nearly 73% of the students studying public relations were women (Peterson,

Preventing domestic violence in the african american community: assessing the impact of a dramatic radio serial.

This article reports on the evaluation of “Its Your Business,” a dramatic radio serial promoting domestic violence prevention in the African-American community that was made available for national broadcast. Radio stations in 4 study cities committed to airing the broadcasts. However, in only 1 of the 4 was the broadcast carried out in even a limited way. Consequently, only data from one city could be used to assess impact. Even there only 9 percent of the sample could confidently be called exposed, answering a recall question correctly and claiming to hear more than 2 episodes. These moderately exposed respondents scored higher than non-exposed respondents on 21 out of 27 anti-domestic violence beliefs and behaviors; 10 differences were statistically significant. However, the moderate exposure group only displayed stronger outcomes than a group who claimed exposure but could not recall much about the program in 2 out of the 27 outcomes at a statistically significant level. We conclude that the association of moderate exposure and anti-domestic violence outcomes was most likely an artifact of selective perception, and not a result of exposure alone. The evaluation points to the need to better understand how exposure can be achieved to complement our work on developing messages.

Paradigmatic Drift: A Bibliographic Review of the Spread of Economic Analysis in the Literature of Communication.

Between 1965 and 1988 the Journal of Broadcasting (and Electronic Media), Journalism Quarterly, and the Journal of Communication published 351 articles that focused on some economic aspect of communication. The numbers published increased in all three journals over the period studied. Comparisons among these journals are made according to sources used, themes and issues addressed, and levels of analysis and methods employed. A citation analysis identified core referents for these articles and provides evidence that communication scholars cite other communication journals more than they do outside economic fields.

African Americans and Privacy: Understanding the Black Perspective in the Emerging Policy Debate

In January 1991, Lotus Development Corporation announced its intention to abandon efforts to develop a new software product because of what it understood to be a groundswell of public opposition. This product, Lotus Marketplace, was to have provided its customers with personal information about the resources and habits of the members of some 120 million U.S. households. The sorts of information Lotus would supply were already easily attainable from a host of information suppliers serving the direct marketing industry, but what made the Lotus product different was that it would be available on CD-ROM disks, which could be searched by anyone with an Apple Macintosh computer, a video-disc player, and

Through the Prism of Race and Controversy: Did Viewers Learn Anything from "The Africans"?.

695 for the first 5,000 names. Lotus and its partner, Equifax, had apparently lost an early battle in what promises to be a hotly contested war to determine who has the right to control the collection, sharing, and use of personal information. The contemporary debate about privacy takes place in the context of substantial changes in the structure of the American political economy. The effort to rationalize the production, distribution, and sale of goods and services has involved the widespread computerization of many of the routine processes involved in these spheres. The coordination of these increasingly complex systems has come to require the collection, storage, and use of unimaginable amounts of information-much of which is information about identifiable individuals. Modem telecommunications systems provide for reli-