Hopkins will examine how racial issues have become so prominent in American political and public discourse in recent decades and how this shift has affected whites’ political opinions and behavior. He will measure how different sources of public discourse, including newspapers, television transcripts, press releases, and presidential speeches, have addressed and exacerbated racialized issues and events. He will examine the hypothesis that social media fosters increased attention to racialized issues and events. Hopkins will also use a combination of panel data and survey experiments to examine the effects of racialized political issues on public opinion and voting behavior.