CoChat
Sign Up
Cited by 185Crime, Deviance, and Social ControlSocial Power and Status DynamicsSocial Capital and Networks

Stained Red: A Study of Stigma by Association to Blacklisted Artists during the “Red Scare” in Hollywood, 1945 to 1960

Pontikes, Elizabeth, Negro, Giacomo, Rao, Hayagreeva·2010·American Sociological Review
DOI 10.1177/0003122410368929
Open this paper in CoChat — free account

Abstract

We suggest that moral panics exert spillover effects through stigma by mere association. Individuals are harmed even if their ties to stigmatized affiliates are heterophilous, and high-status individuals can also suffer. This creates a broadcast effect that increases the scale of the moral panic. Analyzing the U.S. film industry from 1945 to 1960, we examine how artists’ employment in feature films was influenced by their associations with co-workers who were blacklisted as communists after working with the focal artist. Mere association reduces an artist’s chances of working again, and one exposure is enough to impair work prospects. Furthermore, actors’ careers are impaired when writers with whom they worked are blacklisted. Moreover, the negative effects of stigma by mere association hold even when the focal artist has received public acclaim. These findings have broad implications. When a few individuals or organizations are engaged in wrongdoing and publicly targeted, stigma by association can lead to false positives and harm many innocents.

Integrity signals

Registry

Crossref · 10.1177/0003122410368929

Cites

71 of 71 references verified0 citation errors · 0 not checkable

Statistics

Recomputing p-values needs the paper’s full text.

Claims the paper makes

This paper’s full text isn’t openly available, so its claims and self-check weren’t run. The registry and citation checks still apply.

Claims other papers make about this one

Each is checked against this paper’s own text: does it say what the citing paper says it does?

  • Authoritarian, and sometimes democratic, governments have sought to control conventional media through censorship, state-based media systems, synergy between censorship and state media, and cooperation with or pressure on private media producers.

    “Authoritarian, and sometimes democratic (112), governments have sought to control conventional media, including through censorship (113, 114), state-based media systems (115, 116), the synergy between censorship and state media (117, 118), and cooperation with (or pressure on) private media producers (119, 120).”

    From Physical and virtual repertoires of contention (2022) · cites this paper as [112]

Cites

Flagged first, then by citations

1 of the 72 references couldn’t be matched to a known paper.

Cited by

Sorted by citations

Related

Authors
Pontikes, E., Negro, G., & Rao, H.
Affiliations
  • University of Chicago (US)
  • Emory University (US)
  • Stanford University (US)
Corresponding author
Pontikes, Elizabeth
ORCID
Venue
American Sociological Review
Publisher
SAGE Publications
Published
2010-06
Volume
75
Issue
3
Pages
456-478
ISSN
  • 0003-1224 (ISSN-L)
  • 1939-8271
DOI
10.1177/0003122410368929
OpenAlex
W2147046775
Cited by
185
References
72
Citations by year
2026: 11 · 2025: 17 · 2024: 23 · 2023: 11 · 2022: 19 · 2021: 17 · 2020: 14 · 2019: 3 · 2018: 12 · 2017: 9 · 2016: 12 · 2015: 12 · 2014: 8 · 2013: 10 · 2012: 5
FWCI
17.56
Type
journal article
Language
en
Open access
closed
Licence
journals.sagepub.com/page/policies/text-and-data-mining-license (tdm)
Locations
American Sociological Review (publishedVersion)
Funders
University of Toronto
Topics
  • Social Sciences › Sociology and Political Science › Crime, Deviance, and Social Control
  • Social Sciences › Sociology and Political Science › Social Power and Status Dynamics
  • Social Sciences › Sociology and Political Science › Social Capital and Networks
Keywords
moral panic, spillover effects, Hollywood blacklist, film industry, actors, screenwriters

About these checks

Registry, retraction, Cites and statistics results are computed, not judged, with one exception: a printed reference that no index lists is read once by a model before it counts as a citation error. Claims are extracted by a model and kept only when their quote appears verbatim in the text; each cited source is then checked, with a model’s help, for whether it says what the claim relies on. Those verdicts can be wrong — read the claim’s quote and the cited source before relying on one.

Statistics and arithmetic are recomputed, not judged.

Confidence bands are shown only for fields calibrated on our annotated test set. None is calibrated yet, so no band is shown.

What counts as a claim ›How we measure confidence ›How we check this ›

Are you an author, or do you see a problem with this page? Request a review