Hot off the press: Media primes successfully influence attitudes towards Chinese people during COVID-19

Chinese people were allegedly responsible for the origin of the Corona virus due to their use of animals in live-markets. Social dominance is believed to underlie both speciesism and racism, however, “ethical disgust” might inverse this relationship towards a population notorious for their negative human-animal interactions. To investigate this, 111 non-Chinese Australian residents who responded to a social media post for an online study investigating attitudes towards animals and racial attitudes completed a measure of speciesism, then were randomly allocated to read either a negatively, or positively framed newspaper article depicting Chinese people interacting with dogs, or an unrelated control article. Participants then completed a measure of racism towards Chinese people. Findings did not support an association between speciesism and racism, however, participants exposed to the negative media prime showed significantly higher racial attitudes compared with participants exposed to the positive media. These findings support the influence of media on racial attitudes.

Communication and Race

Communication and Race

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2834-6947

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