Syracuse University SURFACE Dissertations - ALL SURFACE 1-1-2015 Screens and stereotypes: The transmission of images of women of color on Twitter and television Sherri Marie Williams Syracuse University Follow this and additional works at: https://surface.syr.edu/etd Part of the Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons Recommended Citation Williams, Sherri Marie, "Screens and stereotypes: The transmission of images of women of color on Twitter and television" (2015). Dissertations - ALL. 312. https://surface.syr.edu/etd/312 This Dissertation is brought to you for free and open access by the SURFACE at SURFACE. It has been accepted for inclusion in Dissertations - ALL by an authorized administrator of SURFACE. For more information, please contact
[email protected]. ABSTRACT For decades African-American women and Latinas have lamented the abundance of negative and unrealistic images of them reflected on television. Such images appear to be pervasive today on reality television shows, the most popular television show genre, where many historic negative stereotypes of women of color are conveyed. Social television, the practice of watching television and simultaneously commenting on social media, is now common among viewers. The aim of this research is to determine if the same old stereotypes of women of color on television are finding their way to the new medium of Twitter. This study is a textual analysis of tweets from viewers who watched episodes of seasons one and three one of the Vh1 reality show Basketball Wives LA and the WE TV reality program Mary Mary. Both shows feature women of color in the cast. This study found that the social television conversation among viewers of these shows detected racial and gendered stereotypes.