Cornell researchers are preparing a new study of how messages about race and class affect public attitudes toward policies intended to address inequity. The project will test whether different ways of explaining a policy change how audiences understand its purpose and impact.
The work is supported by a Russell Sage Foundation research grant, according to a Cornell Brooks School announcement. Neil Lewis Jr. and Jeff Niederdeppe, both Cornell faculty members, will work with Kristen Brock-Petroshius of Stony Brook University on the project.
The researchers plan to compare messages focused on race, class or both across policy subjects. They also intend to study how the effects differ by an audience's racial identity and political ideology.
Another part of the study will examine why a message may resonate or fail. The team identified possible factors including empathy toward racial groups, views about what caused an inequity, zero-sum thinking and racial resentment.
Building on earlier policy-communication work
Lewis is an associate professor of public policy and communication in Cornell's Brooks School of Public Policy and College of Agriculture and Life Sciences. Niederdeppe is the Brooks School's senior associate dean of faculty and research and a professor of communication in the agriculture college. Brock-Petroshius is a social welfare scholar at Stony Brook's School of Social Welfare.
Lewis and Niederdeppe previously collaborated on studies of how people respond to messages about racial and class disparities in COVID-19 outcomes and the expansion of the child tax credit. That earlier work is part of the rationale for the new project.
Niederdeppe said prior work suggests people across political and racial identities can respond to discussions of race in public policy “with the right framing.” He said the team wants to understand how messages about a policy's intended effects land with different audiences.
Lewis said the team wants to continue studying these questions despite pressure on researchers to avoid them. Niederdeppe said the goal is to build evidence that can support more productive discussions about policies intended to counter past harm.
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