Within the last few years especially, race and the media have become inextricably linked; in fact, it seems as though every other news story contains a racial aspect. And with this continuous stream of race related news, and the considerable amount of influence that the media has on public perception and action, it may be pertinent to question what affect these race related news stories are having. Media reports and news stories are incredibly wide reaching, and law enforcement officials are not impervious to having their subconscious biases swayed as any other citizen would. And while we know that race relations and the media are interconnected, we hope that by quantifying the effect that the coverage of race in the news has on police actions (specifically traffic stops), it may be possible to raise self awareness around this issue in order to combat it. Perhaps if a police officer knew that they were statistically more likely to pull over a black driver after being exposed to a news story negatively portraying black people, they would be able to keep this in mind when on patrol.
In general, we are interested in how events that are centered around singular racial groups have an effect on police stop bias when said events are heavily broadcasted in the media. Specifically, we hope to use Google search rates combined with San Diego public police data to find how stop rates for races change as racial topics gain public interest. Ultimately, we predict that Hispanic and Black drivers’ stop rates will increase following a negative race related media story, when compared to their stop rates before said event, and their stop rates in similar seasonal time frames.