January 21, 2000

More Americans get their news from local television than any other medium. Competition for viewers is fierce, and hot-button stories such as crime and welfare, many of them casting a negative spotlight on minority communities, are a staple of most local newscasts.

While the time allotted to each story often is measured in seconds, the stream of video clips and sound bites that make up a newscast wields tremendous influence on the perceptions of viewers and subsequent public discourse.

It is at this complex intersection of race, communications and community transformation where you'll find the Center for Communications and Community of the UCLA Institute for Social Science Research.

"A growing body of research shows that media-driven stereotypes of poor minorities as 'prime suspects,' 'superpredators,' or 'welfare queens' have a disturbingly corrosive effect on public will. Racial imagery in the news, therefore, has a direct bearing on rebuilding activities in urban neighborhoods," said Franklin D. Gilliam Jr., a UCLA political science professor and director of the center.

"The challenge for community advocates is to empower community-based organizations to effectively interpret news stories, engage in public policy and fundamentally alter the shape and scope of public policy," he said. "At the same time, media institutions must also be encouraged to become sensitive to the power of racial and ethnic imagery in the news."

Seeking to promote balanced news coverage that mitigates racial stereotypes and creates a suitable environment for social change, the center organizes workshops and conducts original research designed to forge partnerships and foster understanding among the media, community-based organizations, policy-makers and academic researchers. The center, which began operations early in 1999, conducted its first workshop last Nov. 11-13 on the UCLA campus.

"A primary goal of the project is to build the communications capacity of community-based organizations," Gilliam said. "This is achieved with a strategic communications curriculum aimed at translating concepts, theories and data into practical applications for community-based groups. Implicit in this plan is heavy reliance on cutting-edge social research."

The center has already completed several research papers on the how the media interprets issues ranging from childcare to welfare recipients to juvenile crime, and the impact of those interpretations on minority communities.

"The center's research agenda is designed to feed and be fed by the practical applications developed in the strategic communications curriculum. We hope to simultaneously advance scholarship and media practices by determining the impact of reframing basic news stories with positive media depictions of minority groups and their members," Gilliam said.

Primary funding for the center's activities comes from the Annie E. Casey Foundation, a private, Baltimore-based charitable organization dedicated to helping build better futures for disadvantaged children in the United States. Other funding sources include the National Science Foundation, Ford Foundation, Rockefeller Foundation and W. T. Grant Foundation.