Cornell College politics professor Hans Hassell’s research is cited in a Feb. 2, 2017, article about President Trump’s immigration ban.
The article, which also quotes Hassell, appears on Undark.org, an editorially independent, foundation-supported, digital publication of the Knight Science Journalism Fellowship Program, headquartered at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
The author notes that the research undertaken by Hassell with two other researchers from the University of California, found that media “played a part in promulgating misapprehensions surrounding the broader category of immigrants.” The study by Hassell and his colleagues, published in the Journal of Race, Ethnicity and Politics, analyzed stories about immigration published by The New York Times between 1980 and 2011. Hassell told Undark that he suspects a similar negative bias in media coverage of immigrants today, yet sees an opportunity for a shift.
According to the article:
“As this executive order is taking place, there have been a lot more stories about the good that immigrants are doing in communities,” Hassell says. “What remains to be seen is whether that will be enough to change the balance of how media coverage plays out and its effect on political partisanship.”