Summary

Mediated contact involves exposing audiences to people from other social groups (ethnic, religious, political, etc.) through media. It is an extension of intergroup contact theory, one of the most widely studied and successful prejudice reduction strategies in the social sciences. Mediated contact has effects on explicit and implicit attitudes, as well as physiological responses towards other groups. These effects generally serve to improve intergroup relations in terms of affective, cognitive, and normative outcomes. These outcomes can be understood in terms of a number of psychological processes, which here are synthesized into three thematic headers: Liking, identifying, and learning. Each of these themes taps into existing theoretical areas including parasocial relationships, social identification, and social cognition. Mediated contact has been shown to be effective across a wide variety of study methodologies and contexts, for a wide variety of participants, targeting a wide variety of social out-groups. Although the effects of mediated contact seem to be secondary to face-to-face experience, the fact that many people possess information about groups primarily through media make it an important area of study. While the current media landscape is often less positive and diverse than the ideals of mediated contact, research suggests that positive mediated contact can still have an impact on audiences in both the laboratory and the real world.