At the request of local non-profit Urban Community Arts Network (UCAN), undergraduate students at University of Wisconsin-Madison’s Department of Community and Environmental Sociology analyzed newspaper articles to understand local media portrayals of Hip-Hop. Students collected and analyzed 348 articles from Wisconsin State Journal, The Cap Times, and Isthmus.

Students looked for a variety of characteristics, ranging from location of content, to race of individual or groups in the article, to overall attitude of the author towards Hip-Hop. These findings indicate a potential bias in the way Hip-Hop articles are written in the Madison print media, though there is variation by publication. These findings are consistent with the racialized dominant narrative that Hip-Hop in Madison is perceived as violent.