Communication and International Relations

Herbert Gans in 1979 identified ethnocentrism as an “enduring value” in the American news media. Several studies since have focused on ethnocentrism and other types of in-group favoritism in the news. Articles written about Social Identity Theory and the media have claimed that in-group favoritism affects both how the news is produced and received.

In her 2000 article, Social Identity Theory and News Portrayals of Citizens Involved in International Affairs, communication professor Nancy Rivenburgh reports the findings of her study of ethnocentrism in the news media and its effect on the nature of international reporting. The question addressed by the study was whether, according to Social Identity Theory, in-group favoritism affected the nature of international news coverage in major newspapers of three different countries.

The Rivenburgh study found that articles about international interactions were significantly more likely to emphasize positive actions of the reporters’ compatriots. Ironically, this tendency made the sample size of stories about negative citizen actions too small to definitively prove that reporting would tend to protect the national self by blaming the Other and/or spinning the incidents in a positive light.

Another article addressing in-group favoritism in the media is Yasmin Jiwani’s The Great White North encounters September 11: race, gender, and nation in Canada’s national daily, the Globe and Mail, written in 2005. Jiwani highlights the tendency for the Globe and Mail reporters, in the aftermath of the 9/11 attacks, to demonize Muslims in order to solidify Canadian national identity and the broader identity of “westerners” versus “easterners.” Jiwani also gives examples of in-group favoritism in coverage of other categories of issues, such as those of gender and religion. She shows us that ethnocentrism is not the only value to be considered in studying Social Identity Theory and news coverage.

In-group favoritism does not only affect the way news is reported; in her 2005 article, The divisive coverage effect: how media may cleave differences of opinion between social groups, Phyllis A. Anastasio reports the result of a social identity study conducted to find whether people would be biased in their reception of news about their in-groups. When given evidence of criticism, by ‘outsiders,’ of the negative actions of an in-group member, the study participants tended to judge their fellow in-group member less harshly. This shows that in-group favoritism also applies to how news is received.