TY  - JOUR
PY  - 2019//
TI  - They are all armed and dangerous! Biased language use in crime news with ingroup and outgroup perpetrators
JO  - Journal of media psychology
A1  - Vaes, Jeroen
A1  - Latrofa, Marcella
A1  - Suitner, Caterina
A1  - Arcuri, Luciano
SP  - 12
EP  - 23
VL  - 31
IS  - 1
N2  - The present research aims to verify the presence of linguistic biases in crime news reports (Study 1) and their role (Study 2) in activating a crime stereotype toward racial/ethnic minorities. In a first content analysis study, the natural occurrence of a set of linguistic biases was analyzed in Italian news articles that described comparable crimes committed by an in- or an outgroup aggressor. <br><br>RESULTS indicated that when the crime was committed by an outgroup (vs. ingroup) member, more aggravating and less attenuating adjectives were used. Moreover, the nationality of the perpetrator was not only mentioned more frequently, it also appeared in most cases as a noun. In Study 2, participants read a fictitious news article that either described an in- or outgroup criminal act with neutral or biased language. Their implicit associations between in- and outgroup members and weapons (vs. tools) were measured immediately afterward in the weapon paradigm. <br><br>RESULTS confirmed that a biased (vs. neutral) language use increased participants' crime-related associations with the outgroup in general only when an outgroup criminal was staged. The role of media portrayals in determining the cognitive representations of racial/ethnic minorities is discussed.     Keywords: media effects, crime news, linguistic biases, racial/ethnic minorities, stereotyping and prejudice    © 2017 Hogrefe Publishing<p />  <p>Language: en</p>
LA  - en
SN  - 1864-1105
UR  - http://dx.doi.org/10.1027/1864-1105/a000216
ID  - ref1
ER  -