The Media Portrayals of Minorities Project was launched in 2012 at Middlebury College. We use digital sources to better understand depictions of minorities in the media. Our goal is to track and explain how and why media representations of groups shift over time, vary across place, or compare to one another. We use a mix of computer-assisted and human coding techniques that allow us to analyze large quantities of media data. Our approach provides a new way of understanding how the media establish, reproduce, and influence the portrayals of minority groups in media.

Who we are

Erik Bleich

Erik Bleich is the director of the Media Portrayals of Minorities Project. He is Charles A. Dana Professor of political science at Middlebury College. Bleich publishes widely on race and ethnicity in liberal democracies, and is the co-editor of Migrants, Minorities and the Media: Information, Representations and Participation in the Public Sphere. His work has also appeared in The Atlantic, Al Jazeera English, Asahi Shimbun, The Conversation, Financial Times, The Guardian, Huffington Post, Prospect Magazine, and The Washington Post. He has been an invited guest on NPR’s Here and Now, WNYC’s Brian Lehrer show, France 24, Danish Public Radio, CBC Radio’s Day 6, and BBC World Service’s The Inquiry.

A. Maurits van der Veen

A. Maurits van der Veen is a faculty affiliate of the Media Portrayals of Minorities Project. He is Associate Professor of Government at William & Mary, where he directs the STAIR lab. He develops text analysis procedures that we use in Media Portrayals of Minorities Project research and is a co-author on numerous research projects.

Husam AlZubaidy

Husam AlZubaidy, Middlebury College ’23, is an International Politics and Economics Major with a specialization in the Arabic language. He joined the lab in Spring 2023 after completing the Fall term data methods course where he researched refugee portrayals in US and UK media, especially coverage of Syrian and Ukrainian refugees.

Andy Cao

Andrey (Andy) Cao, Middlebury College ’25, is a Sociology and Environmental Policy joint major from Western Massachusetts. He joined the lab in Spring 2023, and he is excited to study and engage with the role of identity politics in increasing polarization.

Abigail Chang

Abigail Chang, Middlebury College ’23, is an English major and linguistics minor from Connecticut. She joined the lab in 2021 after taking the winter term methods course, during which she studied media portrayals of far-right and far-left groups.

Arthur Martins

Arthur Martins, Middlebury College ’23.5, is an English and Gender, Sexuality, and Feminist Studies major from Brasília, Brazil. He joined the lab in January 2023 and is interested in mapping how culture wars evolve and adapt across borders, especially at the intersection of race, gender, and sexuality.

Nikki Sadat

Nikki Sadat, Middlebury College '23.5, is an International and Global European Studies major and Political Science minor from Los Angeles, California. She joined the lab in spring 2022 and is interested in studying media portrayals of Iran and the Iranian diaspora.