| Abstract: | By covering underrepresented areas in the world, Al Jazeera English (AJE) can facilitate intercultural understanding among Americans. However, AJE is not widely available on television in the United States. Further, many Americans hold pre-formed suspicions of the channel. Through an online experiment, we find that pre-reception audience bias against AJE exists and correlates with prejudice against Arab Americans, limiting its conciliatory potential. However, Americans can change their views toward AJE depending on how it is covered by other media, or what we call “intermedia framing,” including both satiric soft news and hard news. An experiment finds that satiric news coverage decreases anti-Arab American prejudice and, when combined with exposure to AJE, elevates evaluations of the network. |
