Similarities Found in Media Coverage of Palin and Ferraro

Twenty-four years after Geraldine Ferraro campaigned as the vice presidential candidate of the Democratic party, has anything changed in the way the media handles a woman candidate for vice president?

In the case of Sarah Palin, “The Palin Watch” project at The University of Alabama says the media has used similar frames to describe these women, in spite of their obvious idealogical differences. They identified at least three common themes in media coverage of the first two women to run for the number 2 spot: 1) their questionable experience, 2) their selection as a political stunt, and 3) their selection as a gamble.

From the article:

Twenty-four years and a gulf of ideology separates the first two women to share the nation’s major party tickets. But has the way the media talks about Sarah Palin and Geraldine Ferraro changed? Not so much, according to ongoing research by members of “the Palin Watch” at The University of Alabama.

Newspapers around North America have used similar media frames to describe these very different women, who made vice-presidential runs at different times for different parties. Both of these women’s candidacies were framed around, 1) their questionable experience, 2) their selection as a political stunt, and 3) their selection as a gamble.

Experience: Both Palin and Ferraro were discussed in terms of their questionable experience, perhaps because both were relative unknowns on the national stage. Unlike many VP nominees, they had not participated in the Presidential primaries. In 1984, the Washington Post observed that Ferraro compared poorly with other House representatives of her generation. In 2008, the Sunday New York Times noted individuals and groups that cited Palin’s lack of experience.

Political stunt: Both Palin and Ferraro were discussed as token stunts to appease particular voting demographics. In 1984, the Wall Street Journal and New York Times referred to the demands of feminists that presumably guided Mondale’s choice and Ferraro’s campaign. In 2008, the New York Times identified McCain’s choice of Palin as not only an appeal for votes from embittered Hillary Clinton loyalists, but a “knuckling under” to the religious right.

Gambling: Both choices were referred to as a political gamble (as opposed to a positive, bold stroke), consistent with the inexperience and tokenism frames. In 1984, the Christian Science Monitor suggested that choosing Ferarro was Mondale’s attempt to “deal the cards differently,” while the Atlanta Daily World called the choice a “gamble” predicated on the strength of women’s support. In 2008, the Toronto Globe and Mail called the choice of Palin “one of the bigger gambles in U.S. political history,” while the Los Angeles Times counted the Palin selection as part of McCain’s penchant for gambles.

“The Palin Watch” project is directed by Dr. Janis Edwards, associate professor of communication studies in the UA College of Communication and Information Sciences and editor of a forthcoming book on gender and political communication in America. Edwards has written extensively on the roles and rhetoric of women candidates and first ladies, and their representation in political cartoons and other media formats for a number of academic journals and conferences.

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Visualizing Election Polls in Animated, Interactive Ways

Newswise — New software developed by University of Utah computer scientists allows reporters and citizens to interact visually with election results, political opinion polls and other surveys. The technology will make it easier to answer questions such as what percentage of white women support vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin, comparing college-educated versus high school-educated white women, and those who also hunt?

Do you want to know the percentage of white women who support vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin? What about college-educated versus high school-educated white women? Or those who also hunt? University of Utah computer scientists have written software they hope eventually will allow news reporters and citizens to easily, interactively and visually answer such questions when analyzing election results, political opinion polls or other surveys. The software displays data in the form of ³radial² charts that are doughnut-shaped and include features of traditional pie charts and bar graphs. The charts are interactive and animated so they change as a computer user asks to analyze poll results as a function of various demographic data. ³We have developed new techniques for exposing complex relationships that are not obvious by usual methods of statistical analysis,² says Richard Riesenfeld, a University of Utah professor of computer science and co-author of a study outlining the new way of visualizing polling data. Geoff Draper, a doctoral student and researcher with the university¹s Scientific Computing and Imaging Institute, devised the new method as part of his Ph.D. thesis. Riesenfeld is his thesis advisor. ³I wanted to create a way to make it easy for the masses to analyze data,² and that includes news reporters and television news anchors, says Draper, who is scheduled to present his study on Oct. 19 during the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) Information Visualization Conference in Columbus, Ohio.

Analyzing the Numbers: From Elections to Diseases to Terrorism When pollsters release their results, extensive survey data often are boiled down to a few key questions. TV news anchors and reporters cannot easily manipulate the data on the air to quickly answer a question that may arise, such as ­ in a college town ­ how full-time students feel about Obama and McCain. To produce tables and graphs with common poll-analysis software, users must receive training, and then manipulate a spreadsheet containing large grids of numbers. ³If you generate a graph and don¹t like the way it looks, you cannot change the graph just by manipulating the graph itself,² says Draper. ³You have to go back to the source data. You have to throw away the graph and start over.² Charts in the new software are animated and change in real time as a person uses a computer mouse to drag and drop parameters ­ such as ³female,² ³black² or ³income over $50,000² ­ into the center of the doughnut-shaped chart displaying poll results. "Rather than navigate an external interface, queries [new questions about poll results] are constructed directly within the visualization itself,² Draper and Riesenfeld wrote in their study outlining the new method. Despite developing the software to analyze poll or election results, ³the tool is general enough to let you analyze any type of demographic data,² Draper says, noting that a university might use it to easily categorize students by various demographic groups. The software also could be used by health officials to analyze demographic characteristics of patients with a certain disease, or by homeland security officials and police to look for common factors among known terrorists or other criminals.

How the New Software Works The software produces charts with three parts: -- An outer ring listing one or more questions asked during a survey, such as, ³What is your opinion of John McCain?² and ³What is your opinion of Barack Obama?² -- An inner doughnut hole that is used to narrow the question to certain demographic groups. If the hole is empty, the answers to the questions come from all respondents to the poll. But the software user can click on a menu, then drag into the hole parameters such as ³college graduate or post-graduate² and ³earn between $100,000 and $150,000 per year.² -- The poll results are shown in a large middle ring between the outer ring and the inner hole. The large ring is divided into curved bars ­ somewhat like pie slices with their tips chopped off ­ and each bar lists an answer and related percentage (such as ³Mostly favorable, 48.1 percent² under ³Opinion of John McCain²). When the center hole is empty, the results list the percentages of all survey respondents with opinions of McCain and Obama that are ³very favorable,² ³mostly favorable,² ³mostly unfavorable² and so on. When parameters such as education and income are dragged and dropped into the center hole, the results shown reflect only the opinions of those groups shown, such as college grads and post-graduates with incomes between $100,000 and $150,000 per year. Draper says his poll-analysis software is not quite ready for prime time. ³Right now it is an academic project. My goal is to get the idea out there and let other software developers incorporate our visual methods into their products. The software would be useful for news reporters to go on the air and move the icons around and show how different demographic groups voted, how they feel about certain issues. Eventually, it might be used by the general public.² Draper tested the software using exit polling data for the November 2007 election on two ballot measures and the election of Salt Lake City Mayor Ralph Becker. He asked two political science professors and 52 novices to try it. They were asked to use the software to perform nine analysis tasks, such as, ³What percentage of women voted for Ralph Becker?² and ³Of those voters whose location is east of State Street, what percentage earned a post-graduate degree?² Eighty-eight percent said they enjoyed using the software and 71 percent completed all the tasks without errors. Draper named the new software Simple Query Interface with a Radial Layout, or SQiRL (pronounced ³squirrel²).

A video demonstrating the new poll-analysis software may be viewed at the following address. It may take a few minutes to load: http://solar.sci.utah.edu/media/visalert/2008_Dartboard/2008_Dartboard-H.264_960x540.mov (Credit video to Geoff Draper and Chems Touati, University of Utah Scientific Computing and Imaging Institute.)

For more information about the University of Utah College of Engineering, see: http://www.coe.utah.edu
-- Thomas Canalichio Director of Media Outreach Newswise http://www.newswise.com/libraries/latest/ 215 5th Street S.W., Suite 100 Charlottesville, VA 22903 434-296-9417

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Whites Avoid Discussing Race

Newswise — White people ­ including children as young as 10 -- may avoid talking about race so as not to appear prejudiced, according to new research. But that approach often backfires as blacks tend to view this 'colorblind' approach as evidence of prejudice, especially when race is clearly relevant.

101 white undergraduate students were paired with either a white or black female partner in the study led by researchers from Tufts University and Harvard Business School. The pairs were presented with 30 photographs of faces that varied in race, gender and background color. The objective was to guess which of the photographs the partner was holding by asking as few yes-or-no questions as possible.

Even though asking about the race of the person in the photograph was a sound strategy for completing the task, white participants were far less likely to do so with a black versus a white partner. Moreover, when the black partner was the first one to have a turn asking questions, whether she mentioned race had a dramatic effect. White participants whose black partner asked about race mentioned race on their own turn 95 percent of the time. When the black partner never asked about race, white participants only did so 10 percent of the time.

These results are from two separate sets of experiments led by researchers from Tufts University and Harvard Business School. Their findings are reported in the October issue of the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology and the September issue of Developmental Psychology. Both journals are published by the American Psychological Association.

³Efforts to talk about race are fraught with the potential for misunderstandings,² said the studies¹ lead author, Evan Apfelbaum, a PhD candidate at Tufts University. ³One way that whites try to appear unbiased is to avoid talking about race altogether, a tendency we refer to as strategic colorblindness.²

In one study, 101 white undergraduate students were paired with either a white or black female partner who pretended to be another participant. The pairs were presented with 30 photographs of faces that varied in race, gender and background color. Each white participant¹s objective was to guess which of the photographs the partner was holding by asking as few yes-or-no questions as possible.

Even though asking about the race of the person in the photograph was a sound strategy for completing the task, white participants were far less likely to do so with a black versus a white partner. Moreover, when the black partner was the first one to have a turn asking questions, whether she mentioned race had a dramatic effect. White participants whose black partner asked about race mentioned race on their own turn 95 percent of the time. When the black partner never asked about race, white participants only did so 10 percent of the time.

³There was clear evidence the white participants¹ behavior was influenced by the precedent set by their partner, but especially when that partner was black,² said Samuel Sommers, assistant professor at Tufts and co-author of both papers. ³Whites are strategically avoiding the topic of race because they¹re worried that they¹ll look bad if they admit they notice it in other people.²

The researchers also wanted to see how outsiders interpreted such interactions. In another experiment, 74 black and white college students evaluated videos of whites engaging in the photo task. The results showed that whites¹ effort to appear colorblind backfired. Black observers rated whites¹ avoidance of asking about race as being evidence of prejudice. What¹s more, when the researchers showed silent video clips of whites from the study to another group of individuals, those whites who avoided asking about race were judged as less friendly, just on the basis of their nonverbal behavior.

³The findings suggest that when race is clearly relevant, whites who think that it is a wise social strategy to avoid talking about race should think again,² said Apfelbaum.

Even children appear to adopt this strategically colorblind approach. In another set of experiments, 101 white children between the ages of 8 and 11 were asked to perform a similar photo task. The children were told that asking as few yes-or-no questions as possible would mean they would get a higher score on the task.

The results showed that the older children, ages 10 and 11, avoided asking about race more than the younger children, even though this led them to perform less efficiently than their younger counterparts on the task. In a control version where all the faces in the photos were white, the older children outperformed the younger children, as expected. ³This result is fascinating because it shows that children as young as 10 feel the need to try to avoid appearing prejudiced, even if doing so leads them to perform poorly on a basic cognitive test,² said Kristin Pauker, a PhD candidate at Tufts and co-author of this study.

The authors associated with both studies said their findings offer several important implications. ³Our findings don¹t suggest that individuals who avoid talking about race are racists,² Apfelbaum explained. ³On the contrary, most are well-intentioned people who earnestly believe that colorblindness is the culturally sensitive way to interact. But, as we¹ve shown, bending over backward to avoid even mentioning race sometimes creates more interpersonal problems than it solves.²

Article: "Seeing Race and Seeming Racist? Evaluating Strategic Colorblindness in Social Interaction," Evan P. Apfelbaum, PhD candidate, and Samuel R. Sommers, PhD, Tufts University; Michael Norton, PhD, Harvard Business School; Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, Vol. 95, No. 4. (Full text of this article is available from the APA Public Affairs Office and at http://www.apa.org/journals/releases/psp954918.pdf)

Article: ³Learning (Not) to Talk About Race: When Older Children Underperform in Social Categorization,² Evan P. Apfelbaum, PhD candidate, Kristin Pauker, PhD candidate, Nalini Ambady, PhD, and Samuel R. Sommers, PhD, Tufts University; Michael I. Norton, PhD, Harvard Business School; Developmental Psychology, Vol. 44, No. 5. (Full text of this article is available from the APA Public Affairs Office and at http://www.apa.org/journals/releases/dev4451513.pdf)

The American Psychological Association (APA), in Washington, DC, is the largest scientific and professional organization representing psychology in the United States and is the world's largest association of psychologists. APA's membership includes more than 148,000 researchers, educators, clinicians, consultants and students. Through its divisions in 54 subfields of psychology and affiliations with 60 state, territorial and Canadian provincial associations, APA works to advance psychology as a science, as a profession and as a means of promoting human welfare.

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