The Vicarious Intersectional Trauma (VIT) Conceptual Model: A Framework for Studying the Health-Related Impact of Exposure to Intersectional Violence on Social-Media

Constructing the Vicarious Intersectional Trauma Conceptual Model

One approach to understanding the pathways in which traumatic racial encounters affect health among marginalized racial groups is the Racial Encounter Coping Appraisal and Socialization Theory (RECAST) (R. E. Anderson & Stevenson, 2019). RECAST posits that racial socialization among marginalized racial groups moderates the relationship between racialized stress and self-efficacy in a path to coping and well-being. Although RECAST has the potential to have a significant impact on research and interventions related to racialized stress and trauma, we believe RECAST can be adapted to account for three key societal factors: (1) social media as a systemic vehicle of race-based hate, violence, and abuse; (2) the experience of vicarious intersectional trauma through repeated exposure of racists encounters on social media; and (3) the impact of gender on racial socialization, racist acts, and the ultimate perception and processing of those acts.

One of the methods to adapt RECAST to address these societal factors is through the process of theory development called theory elaboration. In general, theory development is a necessary component of any evidence-based field of study. Psychology prides itself as a scientific field that uses hypothetico-deductive methods to produce sound evidence. However, scholars have argued that the lack of overarching theories in the field has produced an excess of theories which have impeded scientific progress (Gigerenzer, 2010). As theorists flood the field with new theories rather than honing existing theories, it creates clutter instead of a defined and clear path to knowledge production. Theory elaboration addresses the issue of theoretical excess by trimming, combining, and expanding existing theories into a more comprehensive approach to examine a phenomenon. Theory elaboration is best used when several theories or frameworks exist that examine the same phenomena but from different perspectives. The result of theory elaboration is a more holistic framework that is inclusive of different approaches.

Our work adapts RECAST into a new conceptual framework to facilitate an understanding of the trauma and other health-related implications of consuming race-based intersectional violence on social media over extended periods. Therefore, we propose a conceptual model for understanding how viral incidents of assault and racism on social media negatively impact health and promote trauma among marginalized groups. We call this framework the Vicarious Intersectional Trauma (VIT) Conceptual Model. To conceptualize this framework, we adapt RECAST through an interdisciplinary approach, with theories from psychology, communications, and sociology. Specifically, we propose a novel framework that situates RECAST as a foundational perspective but expands it by integrating Agenda Setting Theory, Cultivation and Intersectionality Theory. The VIT Conceptual Model adapts the work of R. E. Anderson and Stevenson (2019) by providing a framework useful in studies examining the impact of exposure to social media on negative health outcomes (see Figure 1 below).

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Figure 1.

Vicarious intersectional model.

By adding Agenda Setting Theory, Cultivation Theory, and Intersectionality Theory, we provide a framework capable of measuring gendered racial stress. Our model also accounts for strategies used by the media to inform what images users see, how frequently they see images, and how they make meaning of what they view. The overarching assumptions of the VIT Conceptual Model are that: (1) social media is part of a larger social structure (media) that strategically depicts members of society by race and gender specific typologies; (2) social media provides users with constant access to intersectional acts of violence and hate; (3) users who are negatively depicted are subject to ongoing instances of vicarious gendered racism; (4) those acts of vicarious gendered racism have negative health implications for viewers; (5) and that the health-related cost of vicarious racism is mediated by individual coping strategies and media literacy. Our framework does not trim the parental influences that exist in RECAST but includes parental influences under gender and racial socialization. Therefore, the purpose of the paper is to describe a new framework that expands RECAST to include prolonged social media exposure, vicarious trauma, and Intersectionality Theory to facilitate a better understanding of health inequity and negative health outcomes. To illustrate this model, we will focus on vicarious trauma experienced by Black Americans through prolonged social media exposure to race-based police violence.

Why is such a model needed? A study published in The Lancet estimated that although the United States only accounts for 4% of the global population, it is responsible for 13.2% of all the global deaths related to police violence. Between 1980 and 2018, 30,800 people were killed by police violence in the United States (GBD 2019 Police Violence US Subnational Collaborators, 2021). The mortality rate for people killed by police during that period was highest among Black Americans, followed by Latinx Americans. Labeling such deaths “a public health hazard” the article concluded that “Systemic and direct racism, manifested in laws and policies as well as personal implicit biases, result in Black, Indigenous, and Hispanic Americans being the targets of police violence” (GBD 2019 Police Violence US Subnational Collaborators, 2021, para. 6). Although such violence is not new; constant and instantaneous public access to videos of such violence on social media is the new normal. In a time when individuals spend such a large percent of their time-consuming media it is imperative to explore the health-related costs.

Source of Inequity: History of Hate and Traumatic Experiences for Black Americans Through Structural Racism

Our conceptual model posits that racialized trauma is an endemic phenomenon within the Black community. Black Americans have experienced publicized gendered racism since the inception of slavery. Prominent examples involve violence at the hands of slave patrols during the antebellum period, public lynchings, and sexual abuses from Reconstruction to the Jim Crow Era, televised displays of Black Americans being hosed down and chased by dogs during the Civil Rights era, and the initial modern day viral attack of Rodney King in 1991 (Durr, 2015; Prosser et al., 1995). A federal study found that young Black men are 21 times more likely to be shot and killed by police than their White counterparts (Salt, 2020). As of November 2021, police had murdered 831 civilians; 231 of those killed were Black (Statista, 2021a). In fact, police officers are more than twice as likely to kill Black civilians: at a rate of 37 per million versus 15 per million for White Americans (Statista, 2021b). A 2019 study revealed 40% of the nation’s law enforcement officers failed to submit reports to the FBI about police who kill innocent civilians (Peeples, 2020). Although the killings are conducted through the executive branch at the local and state level, the failure to enforce consequences through the judicial branch belies the systemic nature of this violence against the Black community. Cases against police officers are rarely prosecuted and even less likely to be found guilty because of the 1989 U.S. Supreme Court’s unanimous ruling in Graham versus Connor that gave police the benefit of the doubt when it comes to the use of deadly force (Tarm & Glenn, 2021). This Supreme Court doctrine is more than 30 years old and is ingrained in police department culture and suggests that judges and juries should not second guess officers who must make split-second decisions in deadly-force cases (Kirkpatrick, 2021). Criminologists argue that the wide latitude the courts have afforded police serves as an obstacle to reducing such deaths.

Unfortunately, the cases that are reported and eventually become “viral” depict some of the most violent acts of hate, which means vicarious victims in the Black community likely experience elevated trauma each time an incident becomes public. These cases make the news and spread like wildfire on social media, especially among Black Americans in emerging adulthood. For example, the death of Trayvon Martin highlights the nuance of state-sanctioned violence against members of the Black community. In July 2012, George Zimmerman, a night watchman who wanted to become a policeman, was charged with manslaughter in the shooting death of Trayvon Martin, 17, who was Black and unarmed (CNN, 2021). In the death of Martin, Zimmerman self-deputized and enacted what he considered appropriate and lawful violence against a teenage boy. Through the not-guilty verdict, the state approved his self-deputization. The Black community relived the trauma of Martin’s murder including his final screams for help from the 911 recording played at the public trial of Zimmerman. After Zimmerman was acquitted of the murder of Martin in July 2013, more than 300,000 posts appeared on the Black Lives Matter Twitter hashtag (M. Anderson et al., 2018). Although the viral nature of these images and sounds may appear to be organic or starting at the grassroots level, communication theories imply that the viral spread of traumatizing media content is also encouraged by legacy media, such as ABC, NBC, and The New York Times. However, in reality we understand that this is carefully orchestrated through mass media to manipulate a vulnerable population to increase profits by perpetuating stereotypes through clicks and views.

The Role of Media in Prioritizing Content: Agenda Setting Theory

Agenda Setting Theory proposes that the media does not tell you what to think; but instead, it tells you what to think about by promoting certain stories and issues (McCombs & Shaw, 1972). Media gatekeepers set one level of agenda setting, that is, the editors and producers who manage newsrooms and decide what news you will see, hear, or read. Social media, however, adds another dimension to agenda setting. On social media, the content providers are private citizens who then become gatekeepers through their blogs and social media content through producing and sharing, or through the sharing of others’ content on platforms such as Instagram, Facebook, YouTube, or TikTok (Gilardi et al., 2022). A study by Pew Internet Research Center seemed to confirm the power and influence that “citizen journalists” have in setting the agenda in the public sphere on and off social media. The Center recorded spikes in posts to the #Black Lives Matter Twitter hashtag as news of the deaths and harassment of Black people by police spread over social media. The hashtag recorded 218,000 posts the day after the first bystander video of George Floyd’s murder was posted online. After protests began and spread around the world the daily use of the hashtag surpassed 1 million (M. Anderson et al., 2020).

The Role of Regular Access to Violence Via Social Media: Cultivation Theory

In Cultivation Theory, Gerbner and Gross (1976) proposed that the more viewers are exposed to media images, the more susceptible they are to believing the images and the messages are valid and real. The more violence viewers see, the more they believe the world is a dangerous place that Gerbner (1969) described as the “Mean World Syndrome.” The negative effects, according to Gerbner, are cumulative. Gerbner (1969) determined that if people watched more than 4 hr of TV per day (he defined them as heavy TV watchers) the more likely they will view the world as more violent than it really is. Cumulative exposure to media messages is a key part of Cultivation Theory. In the age of social media, it seems that Cultivation Theory and the “Mean World Syndrome” are just as problematic now as they were in the 1960s. A survey of 996 Black college students at a historically black university, who self-reported their daily screentime use, revealed that they spent a little more than 7 hr per day on social media (Smith et al., 2021). While 51% of their daily screentime was devoted to educational pursuits, 30% of their screentime was devoted to leisurely pursuits that may have included access to media with violent messages and vicarious racism. Their time on social media is near twice the 4 hr that Gerbner defined as a heavy TV watcher who was likely susceptible to the “Mean World Syndrome.” While we found no data specifically exploring how Black Americans in emerging adulthood access social media, Nielsen (2016) revealed that 91% of Black millennials owned a smartphone, which was how they primarily accessed social media. They ranked second to Asian Americans, 94% of whom owned a smartphone. The study also found that Black Americans tend to rank higher than white Americans in using social media. Instagram, Snap Chat, and TikTok are the most popular platforms used by young people of color (Auxier & Anderson, 2021).

Gerbner et al. (1980) tweaked Cultivation Theory by introducing resonance. The researchers contend that higher levels of cultivation occur among heavy watchers of TV because what they see on TV reflects real-life experiences, thereby producing resonance in their lives. Potter (2014) explained it this way. “People who live in dangerous high-crime neighborhoods and watch a lot of TV get a double dose of exposure to crime. Therefore, these people should exhibit a higher-than-average degree of cultivation from the television exposure because those TV exposures resonate with their real-world environment” (p. 1019). In general, nearly seven out of 10 young people under the age of 35 get their news and information from a mobile phone, which is linked to a social media app (Kalogeropoulos, 2019). Resonance would suggest a higher level of cultivation for people who live in high crime neighborhoods and whose main source of news and information is social media because social media is available 24/7.

In a study related to resonance, the Academy of Pediatrics used Cultivation Theory to frame their concerns over media violence and its impact on young people. The influential children and adolescent doctor advocacy group warned that long-term exposure to media violence has the potential to beget violence in society. In addition to influencing youth modeling of violent behavior, entertainment media inflate the prevalence of violence in the world, cultivating in viewers the “mean world” syndrome, a perception of the world as a dangerous place. Fear of being the victim of violence is a strong motivation for some young people to carry a weapon, to be more aggressive, and to “get them before they get me” (American Academy of Pediatrics, 2009, p. 3.). Patton et al. (2014) added that the Internet and social media are often the vehicle “through which youth perpetuate acts of violence against their peers, such as bullying, harassment, dating aggression, and gang-related crimes” (para 1). Long-term exposure to and the sharing of violent content on social media (Cultivation Theory) might explain some of the violence, particularly gun violence that is plaguing some crime-ridden urban cities. That trauma is likely to have negative health and mental consequences over time.

Cultivation Theory served as one of the theoretical foundations for a study of 119 Black students from college and universities in the southeast. The regression analysis revealed that higher levels of exposure to news related to violence and police brutality were strong predictors of mean world perceptions and feelings of paranoia around police officers. The feelings were moderated to some extent by Black Americans who had prior (peaceful) contacts with police officers (Adesanya, 2017). Cultivation theory also suggests long-term exposure to violent media messages and images increases the urge to view violent acts and desensitizes people to violence in the real world (Signorielli et al., 2019). Thus, the desensitization factor of Cultivation Theory has been used to explain the bystander effect as well as people seeking increasingly more violent media (DeWall et al., 2011, p. 245). Researchers have used Cultivation Theory to argue that long-term exposure to negative media messages and images results in the normalization of negative behaviors. Cultivation theory framed a study of high school students who looked at the TV reality Shows “16 and Pregnant” and “Teen Moms.” The producers of the shows thought that the TV series would serve as a warning against teen pregnancy. In fact, the study showed that students seemed to have “normalized” the behavior of teen moms. They viewed being a teen mom as being normal and a good thing (Martins & Jensen, 2014).

In summary, Cultivation Theory suggests there is great potential for Black communities to be negatively impacted physically and mentally by violent, racist, and dehumanizing images and messages on social media over time because (1) what little data there is suggests that members of the Black community spend more time on social media than Whites; (2) unlike early TV, social media content is available 24/7; (3) such traumatic content is easily accessible for watching and sharing; and (4) where social media is the main source of news and information, resonance may result in higher levels of cultivation. Combined, the Agenda Setting and Cultivation Theories can serve as a theoretical means to examine the systemic use of media as a source of trauma for the Black community.

The Impact of Gender on Racial Socialization and Racism: Intersectionality Theory

Intersectionality Theory is an appropriate theory to add to a conceptual model intended to provide a framework which analyzes how identities such as race, ethnicity, and gender are socially constructed, and inform individuals’ lived experiences (Collins, 2015; Crenshaw, 1991). In her review of intersectional studies, Collins (2015) detailed how intersectional theory can improve studies of marginalized populations. One potential application is rethinking existing frames. We know that images of violence depict racism, but they also depict gender specific racist tropes, and that must be noted. A second potential application would be Intersectionality Theory’s ability to study identity. Collins (2015) claimed that studies of identity provide insight into group solidarity that forms because of specific identity types. Perhaps if Black social media users are made aware of their shared exposure to vicarious gendered racism, and its impact on their physical and mental health, they could form solidarity and pay attention to calls for greater media literacy. According to Collins (2015), intersectional research “references the critical insight that race, class, gender, sexuality, ethnicity, nation, ability and age, operate not as unitary, mutually exclusive entities, but as reciprocally constructing phenomena that in turn shape complex social inequalities” (p. 2). Because these identifiers are reciprocally constructing phenomena, we must consider all aspects of identity, not race alone. Multiple identifiers come together set the stage for how individuals respond to each other in social encounters.

The term “gendered racism” refers to the ways in which racism impacts people of different gender identities. In the case of Black women specifically, this phenomenon is referred to as misogynoir. The arrest of Sandra Bland provides an anecdotal example of misogynoir. Sandra Bland was pulled over for a routine traffic stop but received violent and inhumane treatment based on her Black race and female sex. According to the viral footage of her arrest, Sandra Bland was brutally assaulted during a routine traffic stop. The audio includes Bland repeatedly asking the officer if he “feel like a man” as well as her calling him a B****, implying that he must be a man with no sense or gender norms or a fellow female since he attacked her. Because Black women navigate multiple minoritized identities, officials who seek to reproduce white supremacy often brutalize and victimize Black women with no remorse or recourse. Additionally, in her interviews with Black female college students, Williams (2021) provided empirical evidence of vicarious misogynoir.

Szymanski and Stewart (2010) noted that race-based prejudice, harassment, and violence experienced by Black women are examples of gendered violence. Most of the research in this area has examined the experiences of Black men and women. For example, when compared to Black women, research has shown that Black men experience more frequent racist incidents (Schwing et al., 2013) and experience higher levels of racial stress (Utsey et al., 2002). In a study examining gendered racism among Black men in the workplace, participants reported that White colleagues perceived them as threatening, menacing, or overly aggressive (Wingfield, 2007). Another study that examined Black men’s experiences at predominantly white educational institutions found that, as participants approached graduation, racial microaggressions and societal problems contributed to an increase in the participants’ experience of mundane, extreme, environmental stress (MEES) (Wingfield, 2007). Additionally, research on Black youth’s experiences with police has shown that differences by gender. A qualitative study by Brunson and Miller (2006), found that young Black men reported being victims of police violence and being treated as suspects regardless of their involvement; whereas young women were more likely to report experiencing police sexual misconduct and being stopped for curfew violations. In a quantitative examination of a national poll, researchers found that Black women were less likely to believe that they had been treated unfairly by the police when compared to their Black male counter parts (Gabbidon et al., 2011). Furthermore, we have seen that police violence against Black men garners more media attention and public outcry than assaults against Black women. The media’s attempts to dehumanize Black men and perpetuate the depiction of them as violent has a latent consequence for Black women. Less media attention means less public outcry and demands for justice (Jacobs, 2017). Gendered racism has impacted racial socialization in the Black community through the trauma held in Black America’s collective memory. A term from sociology, collective memory is how groups remember their past (Roediger & DeSoto, 2016). May and Buford (2000) studied how Black men created individual and collective memories through face-to-face conversations about race at a Chicago bar. The study showed that the sharing of stories was an integral part of maintaining collective memory that shed light on their negative interracial experiences but was also cathartic and empowering as a coping mechanism. Likewise, the collective memory of stories about KKK rallies, lynching, intimidation, and rape that occurred prior to, during, and after slavery, and the deaths of innocent Black civilians by White police officers today, are shared and passed down mostly by word of mouth from generation to generation within the Black community and through social media. Those stories, too, are painful, empowering, and cathartic (May & Buford, 2000). For Black Americans in emerging adulthoods and their elders, it seems collective memory laid the foundation for parental racial socialization through “The Talk,” which is viewed as a rite of passage that Black elders have with their sons and daughters about how to survive encounters with police. Elders did not want them to end up like some of their ancestors who lost their lives at the hands of slave patrols, the KKK, White police officers, and White citizens intent on vigilante justice (Mahaeven et al., 2020).

Former U.S. Attorney General Erik Holder used collective memory in 2013 when he had “The Talk” with his teenage son just as his father had it with him. Holder talked about “The Talk” during a speech at the NAACP annual convention in Orlando, Fla., after a Florida jury handed down a not guilty verdict in the George Zimmerman trial (Franke-Ruta, 2013). Speaking at the convention several days after the not guilty verdict, Holder, the first Black person to hold the top law enforcement job in the United States, said:

This was a father-son tradition I hoped would not need to be handed down. But as a father who loves his son and who is more knowing in the ways of the world, I had to do this to protect my boy. I am his father, and it is my responsibility, not to burden him with the baggage of eras long gone, but to make him aware of the world he must still confront (Franke-Ruta, 2013, p. 8).

Through the Attorney General’s words, we can observe how Black parents are using gendered racial socialization as a strength and resource of the Black community to combat vicarious forms of racism, in this case the death of Trayvon Martin, and influence the coping mechanisms that emerging Black adults may have as well as attempt to ensure the physical and mental safety and health of Black youth. Please note that the authors of this paper intentionally use the name of George Zimmerman to highlight his involvement in the death of Trayvon Martin.

Applications and Future Directions: The Impact of Vicarious Intersectional Racism on Physical and Mental Health

We described earlier how violent and negative messages spread online and create a source of vicarious trauma for viewers. Cultivation Theory proposes that long-term exposure to violent images, such as the sharing of Black Americans being brutalized by police, has numerous negative social, political, economic, and health consequences for communities of color. Prior research has shown traumatic stress affects short and long-term physical and emotional health. People who experience traumatic stress are at higher risk for chronic diseases such as obesity, cardiovascular disease, and gastrointestinal disorders (Pacella et al., 2013). Although the exact pathology of how traumatic stress affects health is still under investigation, researchers have developed several theories to explain this relationship. For example, theories that examine the relationship between obesity and traumatic stress range from biological processes (e.g., release of glucocorticoids following a traumatic event which foster the development of excess fat cells) to psychosomatic mechanisms (e.g., uninhibited, or emotional eating as a coping response to traumatic stress) (Sowder et al., 2018). The effect of traumatic stress on members of the Black community is of particular concern because in addition to experiencing higher prevalence of health disparities linked to traumatic stress such as obesity and cardiovascular diseases, Black Americans are more likely to develop PTSD following a traumatic event, have the highest lifetime prevalence of PTSD of any racial group in the United States, and are less likely to seek treatment compared to their White counterparts (Alegría et al., 2013; McLaughlin et al., 2019). Additionally, stress from too much time on social media can lead to similar negative health outcomes, including heart disease, obesity, as well as depression, anxiety, suicide, and other mental health issues, which became more noticeable during the pandemic. The ultimate solution to the issue of vicarious racism is to eradicate racism at its root; however, this is a long-term solution. According to our conceptual model, psychologists and clinicians can help mitigate the effects of vicarious racial trauma through two means (1) the education of positive media literacy and coping skills and (2) the support of strengths-based racial and gender socialization.

Media literacy provides tools to think critically about the media, and a “framework” to access, analyze, evaluate and create messages in a variety of forms while building “an understanding of the role of media in society, as well as essential skills of inquiry and self-expression necessary for citizens of a democracy” (Center for Media Literacy, 2021). It uses an empowering narrative to teach skills so that people can be more discerning about the media they consume (Heins & Cho, 2003). The empowerment theme is common among the many media literacy nonprofits, academic centers, and think tanks that exist today (Heins & Cho, 2003). The United States is a leading country when it comes to the production of media that is consumed globally but is following behind when it comes to understanding media’s impact on society and implementing media literacy strategies in educational programs (Heins & Cho, 2003). Most industrialized countries have media literacy education as part of their basic K-12 curricula because they have a more centralized educational system. Heins and Cho (2003) concluded that “State education departments have incorporated media literacy and critical thinking in their curricular standards. But the comprehensiveness and sophistication of the different programs around the country vary enormously, and the federal financial commitment is still quite small” (p. 4).

While there has been a growing effort to provide media literacy education in K-12, efforts lag at the college level (Schmidt, 2012). Lack of media or social media literacy education is of particular concern at the nation’s approximately 102 HBCUs in the United States and the U.S. Virgin Islands. Cubbage et al. (2017) called for social work programs at HBCUs to provide media literacy training and media awareness within their curricula. Google announced in 2020 that it will provide digital skills training to 20,000 students at HBCUs, as part of a $15 million plan that will eventually include all HBCUs (Umoh, 2020). However, this initiative is based as a job training program, not a curriculum to teach media literacy skills. As far as we can tell, no HBCU has developed a formal curriculum focusing exclusively on media or social media literacy, although there may be classes being taught on the subject. Psychologists can make rich contributions to the development of media literacy curricula. First, the field of psychology is uniquely grounded in stages of cognitive development from birth to old age. Understanding how the brain views, processes, and interprets images differently across the lifespan is necessary to create a holistic media curriculum. Age will also affect coping mechanism and strategies. Thus, another avenue of research is to examine which coping mechanisms serve as foundational skillsets for younger children and which mechanisms and skills are more advanced and need to be scaffolded for emerging and older adults to use.

The second area that psychologists can affect is the support of healthy gender and racial socialization. The role of psychology in combatting systemic racism can be traced back as far as Drs. Kenneth and Mamie Clark’s Doll Study which demonstrated how segregation had a negative effect on racialization of Black children. Conversely, psychologists have also demonstrated that positive racial socialization may have positive behavioral outcomes. The findings of a meta-analysis of 102 studies on ethnic and racial socialization concluded that ethnic-racial socialization was positively associated with self-perceptions, interpersonal relationship quality, and internalizing behavior (Wang et al., 2020). Similarly, studies on how gender and race affect the use of particular coping mechanisms would augment the tools that are available to clinicians as they care for clients who have experience vicarious intersectional trauma. One particular area of growth in research is the role of gendered racial socialization, or how gender affects or changes messages surrounding racial socialization. For example, Thomas and Speight (1999) report in an early investigation of gendered racial socialization that Black parents focus on messages of racial pride and achievement with adolescent girls, but Black parents focus on how to cope with negative stereotypes and racism. More recently, scholars have produced evidence that although racial socialization messaging differs for Black girls, the messages are still effective in promoting psychological well-being (Winchester et al., 2022). Thus, in addition to promoting media literacy, psychologists should investigate and implement healthy means of gendered racial socialization.

Conclusion

The Vicarious Intersectional Trauma (VIT) Conceptual Model adds to the health and social psychological literature by expanding the existing RECAST theory to encompass the unique and complex challenges we face in a social media infused environment. As communication theories, Agenda Setting and Cultivation Theory adds to RECAST in three ways. First, Agenda Setting Theory explains how social media works as a system to expose emerging AAs to discriminatory racial encounters through media gatekeepers and platforms. Next, Cultivation Theory suggests that emerging AAs who view discriminatory racial encounters via social media over a period of time will internalize the encounters as “real” and not just as images. Thus, it expands RECAST to include media and suggests that viewing these images have the same impact as witnessing discriminatory racial encounters in real life. Last, Cultivation Theory posits that prolonged media exposure of police brutality toward AAs will affect some emerging AAs ability to appraise (a key component to RECAST) encounters as racially discriminatory because of desensitization. Intersectionality theory adds a theoretical lens to address the influence of our intertwined social identities on our perceptions and ways in which we experience the world. This theory adds a nuance of interpretation that considers the roles of race, gender, and may extend to other identities such as sexuality etc. Combining these theoretical perspectives allows us to examine the underexplored underlying mechanisms that media uses to compound inequities in mental and physical health through vicarious intersectional trauma among marginalized communities. We strongly suggest that scholars use this framework to understand the health effects of prolonged social media exposure on other marginalized groups such as other racial or gender marginalized groups.