US Media,Selective Exposure,and the Promotion of COVID-19 Vaccinations in Black and Latino Communities

Abstract

Through selective exposure, this study examined the role the US news media played in encouraging or discouraging minority races from getting vaccinated. Through content analysis and focus groups, we were able to demonstrate that most media messages focused on prior beliefs in their reporting, therefore, discouraging the black and Latino minorities from getting the COVID-19 vaccinations. Further, while blacks and Latinos based their fears of the vaccines on health effects, white respondents were more concerned about government surveillance and the desire to go back to “normal” life after the quarantine. Ultimately, white respondents were more positive about vaccination arguing that they were tired of the quarantine and wanted normal life back.

Keywords

selective exposure minorities confirmation bias congeniality bias COVID-19 vaccines

Since the Hutchins commission of 1947, the quest for a responsible media that speaks for the voiceless has been key to journalistic practice (Blanchard, 1977). The need for the media to use its powerful position to voice out for society stood as the hallmark for the 1949 “Fairness Doctrine”—a doctrine that required licensed news media to present fair and balanced coverage of information for the benefit of their communities (Aufderheide, 1990). As Siebert et al. (1956) had earlier noted, if the media cannot handle its responsibility, then some agency of the public should take that role. Unfortunately, the possibility of that agency seemed to have hit a nadir, with the role of the “Fairness Doctrine” proving evanescent. By 1987, the US Federal Communication Commission had managed to weaken and repeal the doctrine even when the official removal from the books happened in 2011. The efforts to bring it back continue to elicit debates, with proponents arguing that its dismissal implicitly validates the libertarian contention that the government has no legitimate role in regulating media markets to prevent social harm, invalidates the government’s affirmative duty to protect positive freedoms, thus impeding the attempt to ensure media diversity (Pickard, 2018). These feeble attempts have proven futile especially in the age of social media the practical regulations are almost unfathomable. As a result, the media have reverted to libertarian practices enmeshed in the utopia that excessive freedom to publish whatever they want (Kim, 2015) governs the digital era of journalism. What is more worrisome is that the news media has increasingly become a tool for propaganda (Groeling, 2013), and thus using their political milieu to polarize society across the existing differences of political affiliation, race, gender, etc. (Benedictis-Kessner et al., 2019; Gondwe, 2017).

Clearly, media ownership and the quest for profit have led to what Chomsky and Herman (1994) referred to as the “democratic postulate to imply the contention that the media are independent and are committed to discovering and reporting the truth” (p. xi). In other words, the media is inevitably interlocked with other institutional sectors of ownership, management, and social circles, “effectively circumscribing their ability to remain analytically detached from dominant elite sectors” (Klaehn, 2002, p. 147). For McChesney (2001) “the market forces are in a particularly powerful position to get their way. . ..and use the media in a self-servicing way” (pp. 3–9). As a result, several factors that account for how the media operate under the influence of market forces are deeply rooted in historical stereotypes of gender, race, political ideology, etc. These inform the media narratives and thus promote market forces in the name of democratic postulation (Chomsky and Herman, 1994, p. xi). That is why the definition of news is often associated with negative occurrences.

It is assumed that the news media creates ideological messages with a deliberate purpose of exacerbating the already existing gaps of race, gender, and political partisanship (Stroud, 2010). This means that media practitioners have understood the effectiveness of selective exposure, and thus, in their news content, they deliberately create messages that conform with the audience’s cognitive dissonance, while creating more conservative and polarized public opinions (Hutchens et al., 2019). The strategy has been used to encourage individuals to pursue a particular ideology/action or refrain from it (Velasquez et al., 2021). This understanding has attracted several discourses and symposia in the United States as observed in the burgeoned literature on fake news, immigration, and race in the recent past years. Unfortunately, this conundrum has been extended to how the news media continues to report the COVID-19 vaccination campaigns across racial differences.

This study sets out to examine how the US news content selectively created and exposed COVID-19 vaccination messages to black and Latino communities. The purpose was to assess whether the information in the news was designed in a way that encouraged the black and Latino communities to take vaccines. The paper investigated how the US news media contributed to the backsliding or the safeguarding of the US government’s message of having everyone vaccinated. Central to this study is the idea that since minorities have previously been used as objects of experiments (i.e., the Tuskegee experiment) in the creation of vaccines, their trust in the COVID-19 vaccinations will decrease. Ideally, the media, against the stringent backdrop, has the mandate to bring back the trust of the vaccines among the minorities in their message design.

Literature and Theoretical Review

The Process of News Production and Selective Exposure

Studies that have sought to understand and contextualize the notion of selective exposure draw their insights from how the audience selects information that ideologically aligns with them. Ideally, this is the basis of selective exposure where the audience seeks out information that supports their ideological underpinnings. Studies of this kind are survey-driven with researchers relying on respondents’ self-reports. Such studies have been questioned for their methodological validity in the sense that the questions they ask tend to ignore the motivations for the audience in choosing one media over the other (Nelson & Webster, 2017). Nelson and Webster further ascertain that we cannot talk about selective exposure without looking at the persistence of popularity. Essentially, people’s ideologies are not independent but that the quality of their ideology is rooted in the equation of popularity. In other words, news consumers are driven by cues that suggest that the news content they are looking at is what other audiences of their kind are consuming (p. 2).

In one of the studies, for example, Wojcieszak (2021) that several elements or predictors must exist in the news content for the audience to attract selectivity. Of the many, the following four are essential: information utility, issue relevance, political attitudes, and credibility. Wojcieszak (2021) further observed that political attitude and credibility tend to be the most important of the four. Accordingly, credibility does not imply truthfulness of the content, but is characterized by the source of the story (i.e., the bigger the name, the more credible) and expertise. For example, a story told by a financially established leader will be more trusted than one told by a blogger. In the same way, a doctor will be more trusted because of their credentials even when their information is inaccurate.

Therefore, the media, in the process of production tend to deliberately incorporate frames that highlight elements of political attitude and credibility. While political attitudes feed the ideological alignments, credibility reaffirms those ideologies by source quoting and situating the news content within an identifiable social group. As Tajfel (1982) and Turner (1985) had earlier observed in their respective theories of social identity and self-categorization, people derive pride and self-esteem from the groups to which they belong and are motivated to protect or enhance a positive view of self. Ultimately, this has become the style of writing news content among many journalists and it is acceptable as the normative standard. As a baseline, news writing and reporting skills require that you know your audience—including their tastes and preference; and be able to support your information with “credible sources.”

The Notion of Selective Exposure

Since the 1940s, the notion of selected exposure has chronicled a series of discourse and symposia about its effects. Dubbed as the “theory of cognitive dissonance” in the field of psychology, selective exposure refers to the idea that people seek information they agree with to avoid dissonance that could cause psychological discomfort (Festinger, 1957; Knobloch-Westerwick et al., 2020). Although the theory of selective exposure is about the audience aligning with information that they agree with, the news media have used their positions to exacerbate the audience’s tastes and preferences—sometimes emphasizing issues that advance the agenda of the media. As a result, the media selectively create messages designed to interact in individual brains with the purpose of luring individuals into the selection of one type of content over the other (Melki & Kozman, 2021). A plethora of research suggests that the process of selective exposure is driven more by a tendency to confirm prior beliefs (e.g., Garrett, 2009; Garrett & Stroud, 2014; Valentino et al., 2009) or to seek useful information (e.g., Atkin, 1985; Barnidge et al., 2020; Knobloch-Westerwick et al., 2020).

Accordingly, Barnidge et al. (2020) hold to the fact that motivations are difficult to observe and measure. Therefore, the media leverages on the existing emotional state of individuals or groups, informational utility, and social identity to construct divisive messages (p. 83). For emotional state, the media takes advantage of the emotional state characterizing an individual or group to reinforce the psychological underpinnings. For example, the media can use the existing fears that black people have been experimented upon as in the Tuskegee case to reinforce a particular ideology that conforms with their audience. This implies that the media does not design a message that is outside the comfort zone of its consumers. Instead, they observe the historical antecedents and create a message based on those occurrences, with foreknowledge of what the audience likes or dislikes—thus the idea of confirming prior beliefs.

In their meta-analysis of selective exposure, for example, Hart et al. (2020) argued that since people are inherently motivated to defend their attitudes and beliefs informed by their prior experiences, selective exposure leverages on such antecedents to lure people into believing that what the media is feeding them conforms to their beliefs. This means that the media has the power to set an agenda and twist information to the desired outcome. That is why Eagly and Chaiken (1998) referred to it as congeniality bias while Jones and Sugden (2001) called it confirmation bias. The two forms of bias indicate the fact that first, there is an idea of prior beliefs that inform the creation of information. Second, the information recipients are not only receiving but also seeking the usefulness of that information. These, according to Freedman and Sears (1965) are what drive the message consumer to the highest utility.

Further, the authors argue that congeniality bias and confirmation bias can be operationalized separately in the sense that the media can decide to focus on either prior beliefs or simply the usefulness of the information. In their study, for example, Winter et al. (2016) showed that despite the multiple-motive perspective on information selection, individuals’ selective use of news cues was mostly driven by attitude-consistent information from highly recommended articles. This argument is further advanced by Allan (2017) who argues that despite leading a person to information, confirmation bias can also make that person think in a certain way. In other words, confirmation bias, like agenda-setting levels one and two can lead individuals to think of something, and how to think about that something (Westen et al., 2006).

Taber and Lodge (2006) observe that Confirmation bias can also be dissected into two: confirmation versus disconfirmation. Like Allan (2017) the two authors argue that confirmation bias, though effective under specific political issues (Sude et al., 2019; Westerwick et al., 2020) tends to align with positive outcomes. This is because they occur only among motivated recipients, implying a contingent moderation of attitude importance. On the other hand, disconfirmation bias refers to the exposure and selection of attitude discrepant information, which according to Festinger (1957) is the result of high levels of dissonance. This dissonance can thus be used to change one’s attitude or political point of view. In their study, for example, Sude et al. (2019) were able to show that attitude consistent exposure reinforced attitudes, whereas exposure to attitude discrepant content had the opposite effect.

Further compounding suggests that selective exposure is more viable and consistent when people are exposed to information in their natural settings as opposed to laboratory experiments (Freedman & Sears, 1965). This is because, in their natural settings, prior beliefs are not fictitious, but real (Stroud, 2017) and thus help stimulate patterns of selectivity among different levels of belief (Taber & Lodge, 2006). However, it is important that a specific political issue be present (in the case of this study, the Tuskegee experiment case); and that the audience be exposed to some confirmation or disconfirmation bias. In their survey, Woko et al. (2020) document the role that the Tuskegee experiments played in today’s minorities’ acceptance levels of the COVID-19 vaccines. Their findings suggest that because of their prior beliefs, black participants showed lower vaccination intentions than non-black participants. These findings are consistent with Lueck and Spiers (2020)’s findings that prior beliefs played a major role in psychologically determining the individual intentions of getting COVID-19 vaccines. While this has been well established, gaps in research still exist as to how the media continue to play a role in either encouraging or discouraging COVID-19 vaccinations among the minority groups in the US. In other words, the role that the US media plays in promoting COVID-19 vaccines has only been assumed and not scientifically established. On the other hand, there is still a dearth of research on various perspectives and opinions that different races get from the same information provided by the same media. This study aimed to fill such gaps in the literature and thus asks the following question.

RQ1: What will be the focus of news stories about COVID-19 vaccinations and minorities in the US media?

Under this question, we examined the main issues in news stories about COVID-19 vaccines. Essentially, we want to know what the media narratives focused on to deliver their messages to minority communities in the US.

RQ2: What will be the central theme in Black and Latinos’ discussions about the COVID-19 vaccines?

Unlike RQ1, the second research question was aimed at investigating the central themes emerging from the minority communities as a result of stories reported about the COVID-19 vaccines. In other words, we ask how different individuals are affected by news stories that are selectively exposed to them by the media. Hypothetically, we assume that several themes will be generated based on the race of the message consumer.

RQ3: Will there be a difference in perception about the COVID-19 vaccines between Blacks, Whites, and Latinos?

RQ3 stems from RQ2 in the sense that it seeks to specifically know the perceptions that emerge among different races as a result of being selectively exposed to media messages. The aim is to explore whether perceptions will vary based on the race of the message consumer.

Materials and Methods

Two methodological approaches were used: Quantitative Content Analysis (QCA) and focus groups. For our content analysis, we followed a traditional approach through which we collected all news stories about the COVID-19 vaccines from newspapers and broadcast news content from journalists and not commentators. The story unity was to be published between January 5th, 2021, and April 30th, 2021 for it to meet the criteria. The period of January 5th to April 30th was purposively selected because it is a time when the media agenda about COVID-19 vaccines was most prevalent. Essentially, stories about the proven vaccines began around January 5th and heightened through April 30th. While acknowledging the importance of constructed weeks in content analysis, this study resorted to collecting all the stories given the period of our study. In other words, we found it easier and more representative to collect all the stories with the justification that the timeframe of our study was not suitable for constructed weeks.

The idea is further justified by Neuendorf and Kumar (2015) who argue that the limiting factor for content analyses is not the size of content, but that the content meets a rigorous definition of inclusion. Stemler (2015) further justifies this argument while drawing to the developing software that has made it easy to collect and content analyze big data with much less effort compared to the past. Therefore, given the number of stories talking about COVID-19 vaccines in minority communities, it became inevitably necessary that all stories that met the criteria be collected. Nonetheless, we ignored stories from independent bloggers and/or social media to focus on news items from established mainstream media in the US. when most people in the US had been vaccinated.

On the other hand, we created three focus groups based on three different races: Those that identified as African Americans, Latinos, and White. The groups were created after the approval and issuance of IRB on February 19th, 2021. Our focus groups were organized and conducted as soon as IRB was issued.

Sampling

To get a representative sample for both our content analysis and focus groups, we began by selecting stories talking about COVID-19 vaccines in minority communities from all mainstream media outlets in the US. Two trained coders and the research manually and painstakingly collected all stories from the mainstream media about COVID-19 vaccines for the stipulated period. We created a google spreadsheet in which both the coders and the researchers pasted the links to the stories selected. Our final sample included 633 news items, but after scrutinizing each story only 294 stories met the criteria for the sample size.

The procedure for the focus groups was snowball sampling. The researcher and the two trained coders reached out to individuals willing to participate in the focus groups from three Universities in Colorado: the University of Colorado—Boulder, Naropa University, and Colorado State University. We reached out to students, staff, and faculty from the three universities. Those who responded to our call were asked to suggest friends who were willing to participate in the study with an incentive of being included in a draw for at least four $25 gift cards. Each participant that expressed interest was asked to fill in a google form questionnaire describing their demographic characteristics. The idea was to capture the three races for our study. Those who did not identify as either Black, White, or Latino were excused. As a result, we had more than 10 White and 10 Latino who expressed interest in the study, and only nine (9) African Americans. For balancing, we limited the number of participants among the White and Latinos to 10 each.

Our limiting criterion was based on first-come, first-serve, but also looked at whether the sample represented the three universities. Gender was also a determining variable. Ultimately, six (6) females and four (male) represented the white race across the three universities, seven (7) females and three (3) males represented the Latino race, and five (5) females and four (males) represented the black race. The female participation in the study provides a strong threshold for the representative sample.

Content Analysis Variables

We coded the news items based on source, slant, and format. In coding for the source, we drew insights from Hernández and Madrid-Morales (2020), and Beckers et al. (2018) to document whether the news item was from a newspaper, radio, or television network. We also investigated the story to determine whether it originated from an official, non-governmental institution, opposition government, or ordinary people. Second, we coded for the slant in the news item by examining whether the story was positive (overtly focusing on the benefits of COVID-19 vaccinations with little or no mention of why minority races in the US might be skeptical of the vaccines); negative (if the story’s main focus was more dedicated to the negative experiences of the minorities, e.g., the Tuskegee experiments); and neutral (it did not emphasize one aspect of the story about COVID-19, e.g., both negative and positives of vaccinations were given equal credence and coverage in the story). And finally, the format was coded by looking at whether the story was brief news, a news analysis, or a news story as reflected by Figenschou (2010). Coding was done by two trained coders and the researcher. Prior to coding the full sample, we computed intercoder reliability scores using ReCal2 (Freelon, 2010). The average intercoder reliability was 95% agreement and .82 Krippendorﬀ’s alpha, with no variable less than 85% agreement and .80 Krippendorﬀ’s alpha.

Focus group procedure

Three focus groups for each race were conducted on three different days after receiving IRB approval. Each of them took an average of 53.7 minutes. Prior to focus group, participants were assigned to read three articles from the sample that the two coders and the researcher had identified as negative (because they were highly inclined toward the left), positive (because they only emphasized the positive side of the vaccine while ignoring the historical antecedents), and neutral (because they were either focusing on either the positive or negative and/or did strike the balance). Figure 1a to c are the three stimuli articles that were assigned to participants before the actual focus group exercise.

Figure 1.

(a) Example of a negatively inclined story, (b) example of a positively inclined story, and (c) example of a neutrally inclined story.

Second, participants were invited to a zoom interview that was recorded and later transcribed. We further designed a questionnaire while drawing ideas from Madrid-Morales et al. (2021)’s approach. Essentially, the authors used a structured approach that focused on thematic events. This was similar for our study in the sense that the themes generated were informed by our research questions, theoretical underpinnings, and the related literature.

Data Analysis

Both content analysis and focus group data were analyzed with Nvivo, a software package used for computer-assisted qualitative text analysis. For content analysis data, we collected all the 294 stories in their entirety and placed them in a single document which we uploaded into Nvivo. And for focus group data, we began by audio recording all the discussions and transcribed them using the Zoom software. Then we coded each transcript using a list of themes compiled from the guiding questionnaire and discussion summaries of each focus group. Other emerging themes during the coding process were also included into the list. For validity purposes, the two trained coders were first to code and then the researcher. Ultimately, a list of five (5) themes and 57 codes were arrived at and further organized around the proposed research questions.

Findings

Content Analyses

The first research question (RQ1) that sought to find out the central theme in the news stories about COVID-19 vaccinations and minorities was answered with the aid of content analysis. Under this category, we looked at the story source, story topic, story type, and story frame (as either episodic or thematic). The analysis was done by observing the following: (1) What was the source of the story and who was the authority in the story (where ordinary minorities affected included in the story?) (2) The type of story and what characterized its prominence, and (3) The slant of the story.

Of the 294 news items, 155 (52.72%) of the news stories were characterized as coming from TV broadcasts, 93 (31.63%) of the news stories as coming from newspapers, and 46 (15.65%) of the news stories as radio broadcasts. Of the total sample, only 8% (24 stories) included at least one ordinary citizen as the source, and most of those stories were found in radio news broadcasts posted on the radio’s websites, that is, NPR. However, such stories were also characterized by black and Latinos giving their opinions on the vaccines.

When it comes to story topic, most stories resided within the larger political frameworks while pointing to science as a justifying factor. As noted, most stories were episodic, with only 8% characterized as thematic. However, almost all the 294 stories mentioned the Tuskegee experiment as justification for why the Latinos or Black minorities would or would not choose to get vaccinated. Other stories seemed to personalize the themes by bringing in the political variances such as the mentioning of either the democratic or republican party. Further, others went to an extent of dissecting the arguments as belonging to either Biden and his administration or the Trump regime. Other variables like the social and cultural underpinnings of the minority groups in their natural settings or their historical antecedents also informed the story topic. Table 1 below presents a summary of the findings.

Table 1.

Overall Sample Characteristics.

Variable	TV		Newspaper		Radio
Variable	Freq	%	Freq	%	Freq	%
Story source
Routine	102	65.81%	59	63.44%	10	21.74%
Intermedia source	39	25.16%	21	22.58%	14	30.43%
Enterprise	14	9.03%	13	13.98%	22	47.83%
Total	155	100	93	100	46	100
Story topic
Political	117	75.48%	55	59.14%	6	13.04%
Social	9	5.81%	7	7.53%	14	30.43%
Scientific	21	13.55%	21	22.58%	17	36.96%
Cultural	7	5.52%	10	10.75%	9	19.57%
Total	155	100	93	100	46	100
Story type
Hard news	86	55.48%	12	12.90%	11	23.91%
Brief news	43	27.74%	15	16.13%	2	4.35%
Opinion	3	1.94%	22	23.66%	14	30.43%
Feature	23	14.84%	44	47.31%	20	43.48%
Total	155	100	93	100	46	100
Story frames
Episodic	119	96.76%	39	41.94%	18	39.13%
Thematic	36	23.23%	54	58.06%	28	60.87%
Total	155	100	93	100	46	100

Note. Percentages were estimated to the nearest whole number.

Focus Group Findings

Findings for our focus group data were thematically reported with foci to RQ2 and RQ3. As noted, RQ2 sought to examine what characterized discussions about the COVID-19 vaccines among the Black and Latino race. Hypothetically, we assumed that, unlike white individuals, most Black and Latino individuals will discuss the ideas of COVID-19 vaccinations with suspicions while referencing to the Tuskegee experiments.

Central themes when discussing COVID-19 among Whites, Blacks, and Latinos

Under this theme, several arguments characterized by race were observed. First, black respondents seemed to focus their attention on the negative implications of the vaccines while referencing to the historical antecedents of the Tuskegee experiments. The analysis of the transcribed data in Nvivo indicated no mention of the benefits of the vaccines among black respondents. Instead, most respondents continued to refer to the Tuskegee atrocities and the subsequent challenges that most black people go through. Others extended this to police shootings and brutality while feeding the idea that white people wanted to see the black race extinct or at least controlled to a particular population size. For example, one respondent had this to say, “we have seen it through history that white people are uncomfortable with the presence of black minorities. . .there is enough evidence to support that, and especially when it comes to the development of medicines and vaccines. . .I think we all know that the current vaccines are a trial and whom do you think they will try on? If not African Americans, then Africans.”

On the other hand, respondents from the Latino group seemed more skeptical, but with less grounding in their focus. While the Tuskegee experiments emerged as central themes in their arguments, none of the respondents could provide specific evidence of when the Latinos were used in experiments. Most of them kept referring to the mistreatment of blacks in the United States. In other words, their fears seemed to be informed by the historical antecedents of the black race. However, a few expressed concerns about the recurring immigration issues of the Latinos to the US and how that could be a reason for the US to target the Latino population at this age. “Most white people consider the Latinos a nuisance given what the media feed us about them. . .we heard Trump’s narrative, and I see no reason why they could use COVID-19 vaccines to control us. . .If they could spend money to build a wall to stop us, what will stop them from using other means.” Beyond this, there are several mentions of the benefits of getting vaccinated.

White respondents’ arguments were mostly characterized by the need and benefits of getting vaccinated, how tired they were of the quarantine, and the desire to go back to normal life. Most comments from the respondents seemed to focus on the positive side of the vaccines, with little mention of the negative repercussions that were mentioned in the news items. If anything, most individuals did not see themselves as possible victims of the vaccine effects. When the negative effects were mentioned, there was a reference to the black community, with little or no possible thought that the same could happen to a white individual. Particularly, only a few mentioned the Tuskegee experiments with sympathy to the black race but still believed that getting the COVID-19 vaccination was the best option and lesser evil endeavor. Others went beyond to condemn some stories as causing division. As one had to say, “I have been disappointed with the media for a long time. . .at this time, the media should have been focusing on how to encourage people to get vaccinated other than bringing up long past differences. . .what is the motive? How is this going to help people get vaccinated?”

One among the 10 respondents expressed concern about the vaccines assuming that it was a government strategy to start surveilling its people. “Who knows what they are putting in our bodies? Maybe it’s something like mercury that could stay in our bodies so that the government would know what we are always doing. Since 9/11 and the Patriotic Act of 2001, the government has been trying to find ways of surveilling people across the globe. . .maybe that’s it,” the respondent said jokingly. Overall, the main theme among the White respondents was the benefit of the vaccines, being tired of the quarantine, and wanting to go back to normal life. Therefore, there was a strong push for people to get vaccinated so that life could get back to normal activities.

Perception of COVID-19 vaccines among Whites, Blacks, and Latinos

Thematically, the findings seemed to prove our hypotheses. After being presented with the news items from the media, both Latinos and black individuals seemed to focus on the negative aspects of the vaccines. The sentiments were especially felt among the respondents representing the black race. As one respondent had indicated, “We know their tricks and we are tired of them. . .personally I’m not gonna fall for this one. . .the Tuskegee experiments are eye openers, and we know that there is no guarantee that this cannot be repeated.” Other respondents seemed to collegially agree with the argument except that they indicated the fear that vaccinations would become inescapable. One respondent had this to say, “sadly they have made it so hard that it will be a necessary requirement for one to access basic service.” “Already universities are requiring vaccinations, and I believe this will happen for travels, shopping, and other essentials. . .I think we are doomed”.

Respondents from the Latino group presented divided opinions, but with the majority aligning to the idea that vaccinations were targeted to control a particular race. As one respondent had put it, “We know that most white people hate Latinos, we know how infiltrated they are about the Latino immigrants, and it is so hard not to think that the vaccines among the Latinos will have negative effects. . .maybe make us impotent or even kill us.” Those that seemed to support the COVID-19 vaccinations justified their arguments with the death tolls affecting the minority communities. In one of the statements, one respondent had this to say, “If white people wanted to kill us, they would kill us in different ways other than the vaccines. . .that is too easy and straightforward. . .they could do it in the food, in aid, etc.. . .I think it’s obnoxious and dumb to imagine that they would choose to kill us through vaccines. . .to be on a safer side, I will take the vaccines and will continue to encourage people to get vaccinated.”

On the other hand, most white respondents emphasized the importance of getting vaccinated with most of them indicating how tired they have become being quarantined. “I just want life to get back to normal and I cannot wait to get vaccinated,” said one respondent. Other respondents, while agreeing with their fellows, expressed concern about the Tuskegee experiments. “It is very unfortunate that minorities and especially black people had to go through such torment as that of the Tuskegee experiment,” said another respondent. “I want to believe that we have outgrown that era and we now look forward to saving everyone other than killing them.” Further, another respondent brought in a hypothetical idea of COVID-19 and the vaccines arguing, “I don’t think it is in any way beneficial to kill a certain race via vaccines in this era. . .do not quote me on this one, but I want to believe that it is a business venture and a time will come when the whole world will be buying vaccines yearly to survive. . .jobs will be created and people will get rich. . .welcome to the new world order of soft powers.”

Discussion

This study examined US media messages and the role they played in encouraging or discouraging minority groups from getting the COVID-19 vaccines. By content analyzing the news stories about COVID-19 and minority groups in the US media, and through focus groups with 10 of each of the three races (Black, White, and Latinos), we were able to demonstrate that, (1) Most news stories put emphasis on historic antecedents of the Tuskegee experiments as their way of encouraging vaccinations among the minorities—stories would start with why minorities would distrust vaccines, and end with anecdotes of the importance of vaccinations; (2) Blacks and Latinos, in their conversations emphasized aspects of the Tuskegee experiments in their stories while ignoring the possible importance of getting vaccinated; (3) Compared to Whites, Blacks, and Latinos showed more skepticism of the vaccines. White respondents indicated a great need for getting vaccinated with the argument that they wanted to get back to their normal lives. In other words, as indicated by one of the respondents, they were tired of the quarantine. Also, the narratives between the races about their skepticism varied: While some white individuals were skeptical of vaccines with reference to government control of their freedom and surveillance, blacks and Latinos were more concerned about the health effects that the vaccines could have.

These findings are consistent with the selective exposure/cognitive dissonance argument which assert that that people seek information they agree with to avoid dissonance that could cause psychological discomfort (Festinger, 1957; Knobloch-Westerwick et al., 2020). As observed, most stories did seem to reinforce the existing narratives of the three studied races. Particularly, we observed that stories were framed in a way that they would start with why minorities distrust vaccines and end with anecdotes of the importance of vaccinations. In each of the stories, the blacks Latinos, and white respondents were able to identify themselves and choose a point of view that supported their prior beliefs. In other words, despite being exposed to the same story, each race read and emphasized an aspect that aligned with their existing beliefs. Blacks and Latinos seemed to emphasize aspects of the Tuskegee experiments in the stories while ignoring the possible importance of getting vaccinated. As mentioned, the Tuskegee experiments inform prior beliefs of the minority groups in the US, therefore perpetuating the existing stereotypes. On the other hand, white respondents did not express concern about any possible health hazards that might come from the vaccines. Their worries were more informed by the fear of government surveillance, infringement of their freedom. Clearly, these findings are consistent with the findings of many other authors including Melki and Kozman (2021) who assert that the media selectively create messages designed to interact in individual brains with the purpose of prompting those individuals to select one type of content over the other.

What makes this study unique is not the similarities in the findings, in understanding how the media can consciously or unconsciously create messages that encourage or discourage causal action. Given the importance of the vaccines, it was necessary that mainstream media understand and reconsider ways of delivering messages that promote positive actions. The same process of selective exposure could be used to promote positive action. As Eagly and Chaiken (1998) had earlier suggested, understanding the difference between congeniality and confirmation bias is key when creating messages of selective exposure. This is because the two can either be used to perpetuate prior beliefs or move away from them in search of reliable and positive responses. In this case, the media should have focused on confirmation bias, of which we believe can prime and frame information for positive action among audiences that are struggling in their decision-making. This is because confirmation bias allows the information recipient to appreciate the reception and usefulness of that information. And as Freedman and Sears (1965) had argued, this is what drives the message to the highest utility.

It is true that confirmation bias is found to be more efficient when connected to a specific political issue (Westerwick et al., 2020). Arguably, many would assert that the media used the Tuskegee experiment case as one of the specific issues. While this is supported, the fact that the media is capable of priming, framing, and/or creating an agenda, also makes it possible that the media can create specific political issues. In this case, the media would focus on creating news agenda of the specific political issues intended for the audience to appreciate the usefulness of that information—and in this case the need to get vaccinated. Studies of this nature have been confirmed. For example, Taber and Lodge (2006) postulated the so-called discomfort bias through which they demonstrated that individuals could refute and disregard some messaged if they were selectively designed as to enforce some attitude discrepancy. This argument is consistent with Sude et al. (2019)’s finding that that attitude consistent exposure reinforced attitudes, whereas exposure to attitude discrepant content had the opposite effect.

Overall, this study pivots on a single yet threshold measure of how the news in the US reported stories about the COVID-19 vaccinations to encourage minorities to respond to vaccinations. The assumption was that the media has a central role in encouraging vaccinations among the minorities. However, the strategies used to determine whether the information consumers will respondent positively or negatively. Our study suggests that the media did not seem to have given a serious thought to the implications of their reporting of the COVID-19 vaccinations among minority races in the US. While we do not assume that it was deliberately done, we argue that the media focused its reporting strategies on congeniality bias and prior beliefs while ignoring the benefits of confirmation bias. Note that, while confirmation bias can be perceived as both, we draw from Taber and Lodge (2006) to differentiate it from disconfirmation bias. As a result, their quest to encourage vaccines among the minority races was barely achieved. It is true that prior beliefs inform the idea of selective exposure, but the emphasis on one aspect revealed major implications that seem to discourage rather than encourage vaccinations. The common concerns that the US media does polarize society in the name of democratic postulation (Gondwe, 2017) are thus warranted, and the present study elucidates the relevant processes via perceptions of opinions among the black, Latino, and white communities.

Like most studies, our research was limited by several factors including the size of our data, thus limiting generalizability. The fact that the samples were drawn from college students makes it hard to assume that the findings will be similar among the uneducated respondents. However, we cannot rule out the contributions especially since our assumptions were confirmed. Future research should expand on the data and the type of respondents. We recommend that future research be conducted among natural settings and environments in which the respondents live.

Footnotes

Declaration of Conflicting Interests

The author declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Funding

The author received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

ORCID iD

Gregory Gondwe

Author Biography

Dr. Gregory Gondwe (gregory.gondwe@csusb.edu) is an Assistant Professor of Journalism at California State University – San Bernardino.

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