Grabbing the reins: media and the politics of groups and identity

This review essay offers an overview of the literature on media portrayals of groups and identities with a focus on groups that have been historically disadvantaged. I provide a survey of content analyses of media images and narratives as well as experimental studies designed to isolate the effects of such messages. The essay concludes with a brief discussion of the way groups are beginning to circumvent the gatekeepers through Internet communication (most notably, social media) and the ways that political scientists might begin to leverage partnerships with scholars in other disciplines to more fully understand the way media images relate to political attitudes and, ultimately, behavior.