The research design for this study consisted of two interrelated components: an ethnographic component and an experimental one. The first component qualitatively searched for any patterns that might link informant decoding behaviors, group discussions and “race.” The second component sought to quantitatively evaluate these patterns and determine to what degree, if any, group discussion influenced individual decoding of the selected news text.

More specifically, I sought to answer the following research questions:

1. What key assumptions were encoded in the news text screened for the study groups?

2. Immediately following the screening, did individual group members tend to perceive the events negatively, positively, or somewhere in between?

3. How did group members discuss – negotiate – the meanings of the news text amongst themselves?

4. To what degree did groups accept or oppose textual assumptions?

5. Did group discussion affect individual perceptions of the events or news text?

6. Did group discussion topics, styles, or opposition vary by raced groupings?

7. What role, if any, did intertextual memories play in group decodings of the text and events?

8. What role, if any, did “raced ways of seeing” play in the meaningmaking process?

Sampling procedure

Informants were selected in the first stage of a two-stage snowball sample in order to target three group “types:”

1. College-aged, black-raced informants from South Central Los Angeles and black-raced students living on Los Angeles' affluent Westside (n = 5)

2. College-aged, Latino-raced informants from South Central Los Angeles and Latino-raced students living on Los Angeles' affluent Westside (n = 5)

3. White-raced college students living on Los Angeles' affluent Westside (n = 5)