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.

Features of this text

Pioneering and extensive comparisons of the mainstream and ethnic minority press

Unique comparative focus on relations among ethnic minorities

Both traditional quantitative and qualitative content analysis methods used to examine news stories

Informed by the sociological theory known as “racial formation,” which previously has not been applied to the field of mass communication research.

The general process of racial formation and the role of news in that process will be compelling to anyone studying the social construction of racial categories. Newspaper Coverage of Interethnic Conflict is highly recommended for students and scholars in the fields of Journalism, Mass Communications, Media Studies, Cultural Studies, and Sociology.