ABSTRACT

As technology advances, citizens increasingly rely on mass media for information about their political world. While the type and availability of media vary with levels of economic development and democratization, most of the world’s citizens interact with mediated communication in some form, and much of that communication deals explicitly or implicitly with race and ethnicity. In postindustrial societies, print sources gave way to radio, radio to television, and television to the Internet, such that images and messages related to race continue to be pervasive. Whether it is found in news or entertainment sources, it is important to consider the mediated information that we encounter about race and ethnicity as distinct from (though related to) that which we experience ourselves.