societies Article Status Threat, Social Concerns, and Conservative Media: A Look at White America and the Alt-Right Deena A. Isom 1,* , Hunter M. Boehme 2 , Toniqua C. Mikell 3, Stephen Chicoine 4 and Marion Renner 5 1 Department of Criminology & Criminal Justice and African American Studies Program, University of South Carolina, Columbia, SC 29208, USA 2 Department of Criminal Justice, North Carolina Central University, Durham, NC 27707, USA;
[email protected] 3 Department of Crime and Justice Studies, University of Massachusetts Dartmouth, Dartmouth, MA 02747, USA;
[email protected] 4 Bridge Humanities Corp Fellow and Department of Sociology, University of South Carolina, Columbia, SC 29208, USA;
[email protected] 5 Department of Criminology & Criminal Justice, University of South Carolina, Columbia, SC 29208, USA;
[email protected] * Correspondence:
[email protected] Abstract: Racial and ethnic division is a mainstay of the American social structure, and today these strains are exacerbated by political binaries. Moreover, the media has become increasingly polarized whereby certain media outlets intensify perceived differences between racial and ethnic groups, political alignments, and religious affiliations. Using data from a recent psychological study of the Alt-Right, we assess the associations between perceptions of social issues, feelings of status threat, trust in conservative media, and affiliation with the Alt-Right among White Americans. We find concern over more conservative social issues along with trust in conservative media explain a large Citation: Isom, D.A.; Boehme, H.M.; portion of the variation in feelings of status threat among White Americans. Furthermore, more Mikell, T.C.; Chicoine, S.; Renner, M.