Media influences on ethnic majority attitudes toward ethnic minorities: A systematic review and meta-analysis

Abstract

The media are widely regarded as critical in shaping ethnic majority attitudes toward ethnic minorities. Yet despite this presumed influence, the mechanisms underlying this influence remain insufficiently understood. This systematic review and meta-analysis synthesizes existing research, identifying three key empirical pathways through which media are thought to operate: salience (prominence of information about ethnic minorities), valence (ranging from negative to positive evaluations of ethnic minorities), and consumption (the overall volume of media exposure). We further examine moderators specific to valence, namely sign (positive versus negative) and source (evaluation by ethnic majority ingroup or ethnic minority outgroup), as well moderators applying across all three pathways: media type (traditional versus social/online) and format (viewing versus reading). Our meta-analysis encompasses 1587 effect sizes from 155 articles published between 2010 and 2022, representing approximately 350,000 respondents. We find that media salience has a weak positive relationship with negative ethnic majority attitudes toward immigration, but not with attitudes toward ethnic minorities themselves. Media valence shows a weak positive relationship with attitudes, with smaller effects for positive valence on positive attitudes and larger effects for negative valence on negative attitudes. Moreover, valence shows a positive relationship with attitudes when the evaluation originates from ethnic out-groups, but no relationship when it originates from ethnic in-groups. Finally, we find no evidence of a significant relationship between media consumption and attitudes. We conclude by identifying critical gaps in the literature and by advocating for an integrative approach that considers how salience, valence, and consumption interrelate in shaping ethnic majority attitudes toward ethnic minorities.