Thursday, November 10, 2011

Racial-Ethnic Identity in the Media

Ethnic or racial identity is a person’s awareness of belonging to a certain social group based on race or culture. Someone with strong ethnic identity values emotional attachment to the group they identify with and displays behaviors and values consistent with the behaviors and values the group is built upon. A person with weak ethnic identity is less consistent with the behaviors or values of people in their ethnic or racial group. In his article “Effects of Ethnic Identification on Web Browsers’ Attitudes Toward and Navigational Patterns on Race-Targeted Sites”, Osei Appliah, investigates targeted marketing according to race. http://informatics.iupui.edu/files/Thesis_content_example1.pdf

Appliah’s article focuses mostly on Blacks targeted in an overwhelmingly White media. He explains a few studies that have shown more positive reactions towards advertisements when the viewer can identify with the people in the add by race. People with weak ethnic identity tended not to react differently towards a Black targeted add than they did a White targeted one. Though he didn’t comment on the effects on White people as they responded “just as favorably to ads and targeted media with Black models as they do to ads and targeted media with White models,” Appliah argues that weak Black identifiers may be less aware of their ethnicity and minority status and may, therefore, feel less distinctive” (Appliah 318). I hope by now we are heading towards a world where feelings of distinction are not defined by race; skin color or ethnic background shouldn’t contribute to someone’s self-worth, or lack of.

I think acknowledging minorities in the media is extremely important, but I think its importance lies in establishing equality between races and ethnicities. Why should a company need to target a product towards a certain race or ethnic group? Is this a new branch of racism, or a smart marketing technique? I would think any product that should be bought by a certain race or ethnicity would speak for itself, such as makeup for certain skin tones.

Much of the article was devoted to explaining an experiment investigating racial identity and racial targeted marketing. The participants were asked to investigate twenty websites and give critiques. They were not told that there were two versions of every site, differing only in the race of the models depicted.

It was predicted that Blacks with strong racial identity would spend more time looking at the sites with Black models, and give them a more positive rating than sites with White models. The results of the study supported this prediction. It’s not surprising that people with strong emotional identification with their race would be attracted to sites with people of the same race, but I did think it was interesting that they gave these sites better ratings when the only difference was skin color.

This article prompted me to investigate examples of racial targeted media. There are many subtle examples, but I thought more overt ones were interesting as well, such as http://www.bet.com/, which corresponds with the television network Black Entertainment Television. It would be interesting to assess the range of races, ethnicities, and strength of ethnic identity of this website’s viewers. Is it exclusively black or does this kind of race-specific media attract all kinds of races and ethnicities? I also wonder what kinds of reactions we would see if a ‘White Entertainment Television’ network was produced. Racial and ethnicity segregation is inevitable; people should celebrate their identity and the culture they come from, but I wonder if this identification provides too much opportunity for exploitation because of a person’s appearance.

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