Is it Black and White? Testing racial framing effects of public reactions to newspaper vignettes of fatal officer-involved shootings

Objectives

To investigate how race shapes public perceptions of a fatal officer-involved shooting of an armed male citizen depicted in a scenario without racial identifiers, intraracial, and interracial.

Methods

We distributed an online survey whereby respondents indicated justification, measured by four questions about the fatal officer-involved shooting, after being randomly assigned to three conditions that differed by the racial composition of the officer and armed male citizen. The control condition omitted racial identifiers, and two conditions depicted an interracial and intraracial deadly encounter between a White officer and a White or Black citizen.

Results

White and non-White respondents similarly perceived the intraracial shooting, but White respondents perceived the control condition and the interracial shooting as more justified than non-White respondents.

Conclusions

An identical news article of a fatal officer-involved shooting can be perceived differently when altering the race of the officer and armed male citizen.