ERIC Number: ED672268
Record Type: Non-Journal
Publication Date: 2023-May
Pages: 61
Abstractor: As Provided
ISBN: N/A
ISSN: N/A
EISSN: N/A
Available Date: 0000-00-00
Race Below the Fold: Race-Evasiveness in the News Media's Coverage of Student Loans. EdWorkingPaper No. 23-771
Dominique J. Baker; Lauren Mena Shook; Jaime Ramirez-Mendoza; Christopher T. Bennett
Annenberg Institute for School Reform at Brown University
The media discourse on student loans plays a significant role in the way that policy actors conceptualize challenges and potential solutions related to student debt. This study examines the racialized language in student loan news articles published in eight major news outlets between 2006 and 2021. We found that 18% of articles use any racialized language, though use has accelerated since 2018. This increase appears to be driven by terms that denote groups of people instead of structural problems, with 8% of articles mentioning "Black" but less than 1% mentioning "racism." These findings emphasize the importance of treating the media as a policy actor capable of shaping the salience of racialization in discussions about student loans.
Descriptors: Race, Student Financial Aid, Loan Repayment, Loan Default, Debt (Financial), News Reporting, Language Usage, Racism, Blacks, African American Students, Mass Media Effects, Policy Formation, Natural Language Processing, Computational Linguistics, Social Differences, Racial Differences, Black Colleges, White Students, Minority Group Students, Word Frequency, Newspapers, Paying for College, Educational Policy
Annenberg Institute for School Reform at Brown University. Brown University Box 1985, Providence, RI 02912. Tel: 401-863-7990; Fax: 401-863-1290; e-mail: annenberg@brown.edu; Web site: https://annenberg.brown.edu/
Publication Type: Reports - Research
Education Level: Higher Education; Postsecondary Education
Audience: N/A
Language: English
Sponsor: Russell Sage Foundation; National Academy of Education (NAEd); Spencer Foundation
Authoring Institution: Annenberg Institute for School Reform at Brown University
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Author Affiliations: N/A