Portrayals of Black Women in Media

Undergraduate Honors Thesis

Citations

Citeable URL: https://scholar.colorado.edu/concern/undergraduate_honors_theses/9306t069d

Abstract

This project studied the impact of stereotypical portrayals on Black women through their visibility and parasocial contact. We hypothesized that Black female participants would feel more visible and connected to astereotypical portrayals of Black women, and that negative, stereotypical portrayals would evoke less visibility and connection. Participants were (N = 476) Black women recruited on Prolific. They were asked to watch a clip fitting into one of four categories ranging from positive to negative and stereotypical to astereotypical. They were then asked to respond to several measures asking (1) a set of three questions to see how well they paid attention to the clip, (2) how visible they felt after watching the clip (Remedios & Snyder, 2018), (3) how they enjoyed the clip and current mood (Pietri, et al., 2021), and (4) how they were able to connect to the Black female character emotionally (Pietri, et al., 2021). Results demonstrated that the negative stereotypical condition caused Black women to feel the least visible, and they were unable to connect well with this portrayal. Feelings of invisibility were impacted by the importance of Valence (positive vs negative) in Stereotypical, but not Astereotypical, videos. These findings demonstrate the negative impact of negative, stereotypical portrayals of Black women in media on the members of this group and provide support for the elimination of these depictions from media at large.

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