Newspaper Coverage of Interethnic Conflict

Over the past three decades, United States foreign policy, new immigrant communities, and increasing global economic interdependence have contributed to an increasingly complex political economy in America′s major cities. For instance, recent immigration from Asia and Latin America has generated cultural anxiety and racial backlash among a number of ethnic communities in America.

Newspaper Coverage of Interethnic Conflict: Competing Visions of America examines mainstream and ethnic minority news coverage of interethnic conflicts in Miami, Washington, D.C., and Los Angeles. Authors Hemant Shah and Michael C. Thornton investigate the role of news in racial formation, the place of ethnic minority media in the public sphere, and how these competing visions of America are part of ongoing social and political struggles to construct, define, and challenge the meanings of race and nation. The authors suggest that mainstream newspapers reinforce dominant racial ideology while ethnic minority newspapers provide an important counter-hegemonic view of U.S. race relations.

Hemant Shah is Professor of Journalism and Mass Communication and Asian American Studies at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Before moving to Madison, he earned a doctorate in mass communication at Indiana University and taught at Iowa State University. His BA is in communication and sociology from University of California-San Diego and his MA is in communication studies from Purdue University. He has published extensively in the in the areas of international communication and media representations of race and ethnicity in Communication Theory, Critical Studies in Mass Communication, Howard Journal of Communication, Journalism Monographs, and Journalism and Mass Communication Quarterly. Michael C. Thornton is Professor of Afro-American Studies, Asian American Studies and Sociology at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. After receiving a B.S. from Michigan State University and a Ph.D. from the University of Michigan, he went on to teach at Eastern Michigan University and Cornell University. His work highlights issues related to ethnic/racial identity, relations among groups of color, aging and family. Areas of particular interest are ethnic identity among blacks and Asian Americans, Asian American and black mutual perceptions and attitudes towards other groups of color, ethnic differences in caring for the elderly, multiracial families and racial socialization. Titles of published papers reflective of his work are "Strategies of Racial Socialization among Black Parents," "Race Versus Ethnic Heritage in Models of Family Economic Decisions," "Economic Well-Being and Black Adult Feelings Toward Immigrants and Whites, 1984," "African Diaspora Passages from the Middle East to East Asia," "Black, Japanese and American: An Asian American Identity Yesterday and Today," "Correlates of Racial Label Use among Americans of African Descent: Colored, Negro, Black and African American," "Religiosity and Black Adult Feelings Toward Africans, American Indians, West Indians, Hispanics and Asian Americans," "Multiple Dimensions of Racial Group Identification among Adult Black Americans," and "U.S. News Magazine Images of Black-Asian American Relationships, 1980–1992."