6.4 Evidence Flashcards
Media representations of class, gender, ethnicity and age groups
Baumberg et al
Class
Found an extraordinarily disproportionate focus on benefit fraud: 29% of news stories referenced fraud. In comparison the government’s own estimate is that a mere 0.7% of all benefits claims are fraudulent.
Ruth Patrick
Class
Has analysed the representations of those on benefits and in poverty on reality television shows such as ‘Benefits Street’ and Benefits Britain: Life on the Dole.
Table of Contents
In this post I summarize some recent sociological research which suggests newspapers and ‘reality T.V. shows represent benefits claimants in a limited range of stereotypical ways, focusing on them as lazy, undeserving scroungers engaged in immoral, wreckless and criminal behaviour.
A lot of the research below also reminds us that media representations in no way reflect the reality of being unemployed and claiming benefits in the UK.
This research is relevant to the A-level sociology media topic: representations of social class.
Stereotypes of benefits claimants in newspaper articles
Baumberg et al’s (2012) research ‘Benefits Stigma in Britain’ analysed a database of 6,600 national press articles between 1995-2011.
Baumberg et al found an extraordinarily disproportionate focus on benefit fraud: 29% of news stories referenced fraud. In comparison the government’s own estimate is that a mere 0.7% of all benefits claims are fraudulent.
Common language used to describe benefits as ‘undeserving’ included:
Fraud and dishonesty (including those such as ‘faking illness’);
Dependency (including ‘underclass’ and ‘unemployable’);
non-reciprocity/lack of effort (e.g. ‘handouts’, ‘something for nothing’, ‘lazy’, ‘scrounger’); *
outsider status (e.g. ‘immigrant’, ‘obese’)
Language used to describe benefits claimants as ‘deserving’ included:
need (‘vulnerable’, ‘hard-pressed’);
disability (‘disabled’, ‘disability’).
In general, Tabloid newspapers such (especially The Sun) focused on representing benefits claimants as undeserving, while broadsheets such as The Guardian were more likely to focus on representing benefits claimants as ‘deserving’.
news reporting unemployment.jpg
NB – The Sun and The Mail are Britain’s two most widely circulated newspapers.
Stigmatising benefits claimants
Finally, the study found an increase in articles about benefits claimants which focused on the following stigmatising themes:
fraud
‘shouldn’t be claiming’ (for reasons other than fraud)
never worked/hasn’t worked for a very long time
large families on benefits
bad parenting/antisocial behaviour of families on benefits
claimants better off on benefits than if they were working
claimants better off than workers
immigrants claiming benefits
More neutral/ positive themes included:
compulsion of claimants (e.g. workfare, benefit conditionality)
cuts to benefits
need
As with the themes of ‘deserving’ and ‘undeserving’, Tabloids produced more stigmatising content than the the broadsheets.
negative reporting benefits claimants.jpg
Stereotypes of benefits claimants in reality T.V. shows
Ruth Patrick (2017) has analysed the representations of those on benefits and in poverty on reality television shows such as ‘Benefits Street’ and Benefits Britain: Life on the Dole.
The number of such shows has exploded in recent years, but while they claim to provide and honest ‘realistic’ insight into lives of Britain’s benefit claimants and those living in poverty, Patrick and others argue they are sensationalised and present stereotypical representations of those on welfare.
If we look at the opening scenes for the first series of Benefits Street for example, these featured:
sofas on the pavement,
men on streets drinking cans of lager,
women smoking cigarettes on their doorsteps.
Overall such shows present benefits claimants as lazy shirkers who don’t want to work, and as people who are different to the hard-working majority.
Such shows emphasize the difference between the working majority (‘us’) and the workless minority (‘them’) and invites us to identify ourselves against benefits claimants, and possibly to see claiming benefits as something which is a choice, long term and morally wrong, rather than as something which is a necessity, usually a short term stop-gap before a return work.
This interview with Jordan, who took feature in Benefits Britain as a claimant offers an insight into how negative representations of the unemployed are socially constructed by media professionals:
Jordan claims that he usually keeps his flat tidy, but was told by the producers to deliberately not tidy it up before they came round to shoot, because it would make people feel more sorry for him.
He also claims that the media crew bought alcohol and cigarettes for the shoot, and told the ‘claimants’ that if they didn’t consume them before the shoot was over they’d take them away again, which led to lots of images of the cast drinking and smoking, when Jordan claims he would only usually do this on special occasions.
Magazine advertising and gender
Helen Macdonald
As mentioned at the beginning of this article, the gender stereotypes used in magazine of advertising make assumptions about men and women that may or may not be true. They are likely to be true of some men and some women but there will be very few people who fully conform to the magazine’s neatly packaged feminine woman and masculine man.
Readers today are more sophisticated than ever before and are likely to be aware that not all of a magazine’s content does relates to their lives and likes. ‘Postmodern’ readers may well take parts from several magazines to create a mix and match magazine that is perfect for them. For example, a young man may choose whether to read Loaded or Maxim according to the cover star, subscribe to Four Four Two and sneak a look at his mum’s Women’s Own; a young women may enjoy the serious articles in Marie Claire but ignore the fashion, subscribe to Total Film and sneak a look at her brother’s Bizarre. Both readers are conforming to parts of the gender stereotypes presented to them but are also moving outside of them.
In order to effectively study gender or any other demographic such as race or class, generalisations need to be made about people who are all different individuals. In the case of gender in lifestyle magazines we can conclude that magazines target their audience according to gender in order to appeal to a specific audience that is still broad enough to ensure high sales, to ensure continued readership and to attract certain advertisers by being able to guarantees a certain ‘type’ of reader.
In doing this the magazines are using gender stereotypes but also perpetuating them.
Macdonald notes a particular category of female (‘ladettes’) that challenges these stereotypes and breaks down gender barriers. It does so through representations emphasising women’s ability to behave in the same way as men. This suggests that gender representations are ‘not static and women are permitted to take on certain masculine behaviours in certain situations’.
Changing gender roles and representations
There have been several films in recent decades with ‘strong’ lead female characters who are fierce, tough and resourceful, and thus arguably subvert hegemonic concepts of masculinity. Arguably a watershed moment in this was the 1979 film ‘Alien’ in which the female lead character Ripley outlives her male colleagues and ultimately kills the Alien threat.
Since then a number of female heroines have featured as the lead characters in various action movies such Terminator 2, the Tomb Raider films, Kill Bill, and The Hunger Games.
However, rather than subverting hegemonic concepts of masculinity, it could be argued that such films still perpetuate the ‘beauty myth’ as all the above lead female characters are slim and attractive.
Bechdel test devised to test women’s roles in movies
In 2015 the Global Media Monitoring group
gender
Conducted quantitative content analysis of 1960 sources covering 431 announcers and reporters.
They found that:
The overall presence of women as sources was 28%.
Compared to 2010 data, the number of women sources as a proportion of all sources, had decreased by 3 per cent.
Women continued to remain largely confined to the sphere of the private, emotional and subjective, while men still dominate the sphere of the public, rational and objective.
Women were significantly under-represented in hard news stories and in all the authoritative, professional and elite source occupational categories and are, instead, significantly over-represented as voices of the general, public (homemaker, parent, student, child) and in the occupational groups most associated with ‘women’s work’, such as health and social and childcare worker, office or service industry worker.
Looking at the function women performed in stories, their contribution as experts (20%) and spokespeople (25%) were low, instead, they were mostly called upon to voice popular opinion (54%) or speak from their personal experience including as eye-witnesses or speak from their own subject position.
Institute for Fiscal Studies
Older people are an increasingly affluent population segment; the Institute for Fiscal Studies estimated that around 80% of wealth in the UK is held by those aged 50+ and the ‘global grey pound’ (the spending power of older people) is attractive to the advertisers who fund large areas of the media.
Male Gaze
Mulvey
Mulveys male gaze
*Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema was an essay written by Laura Mulvey
*An essay which coined the term “Male Gaze” which soon went on to become a very well know and discussed theory
*In film, the male gaze occurs when the audience is put into the perspective of a heterosexual man. A scene may focus on the curves of a woman’s body, putting you the viewer in the eyes of a male
*However it is only the Male Gaze theory if these curves are highlighted with specific conventions such as slow motion, deliberate camera movements and cut aways
*The theory suggests that the male gaze denies women human identity, relegating them to the status of objects to be admired for physical appearance
*The theory suggests woman can more often than not only watch a film from a secondary perspective and only view themselves from a mans perspective
Remember the stat from mis representation, only 16% of media creaters are female.
*However the presence of a woman in mainstream film texts is something that is vital
*Often a female character has no real importance herself, it is how she makes the male feel or act that is the importance.
The female only exists in relation to the male
*The male gaze leads to Hegemonic ideologies within our society Hegemonic = ruling or dominant in a political or social context
Mulvey argues, for women the result of media being presented from the perspective of men and through the male gaze, women find themselves, at times, taking of the male gaze. Women then gaze at other women in the same way as a man would, and thus end up objectifying other women
Mulvey states that the role of a female character in a narrative has two functions
1.As an erotic object for the characters within the narrative to view
2.As an erotic object for the spectators within the cinema to view
Mulvey also discussed the term Scopophilia
Scopophilia
Literally means ‘Love of Watching’
Movie-making and movie-viewing have long been analysed as socophilic practices.
We sit in a darkened movie theatre and observe the activities of people on the screen who are unaware that they are being watched (The term Scopophilia derives from Freud’s study of the psyche)
Forever feminine : women’s magazines and the cult of femininity
Marjorie Ferguson
Studied the influence of women’s magazines on perceptions of femininity. She suggested that women’s magazines socialise women into a ‘cult of femininity’ by focusing on such topics as beautification, child-rearing, housework and cooking. They seemed to tell their readers what they should be interested in, and this was a fairly narrow range that excluded, for example, paid work or an interest in current affairs.
More Sugar
Mary Jane Kehily
McRobbie’s analysis of the multiple ways in which Jackie worked demonstrates that the different features of the magazine are involved in reproducing a culture of femininity cohering around the concept of romance. From this perspective Jackie can be seen as preparatory literature for a feminine, rather than a feminist career; the search for a ‘fella’, the privileging of ‘true love’ and an induction into repetitive beauty routines which can be seen as an introduction to domestic labour.
Martin Barker’s research suggests other ways of looking at these magazines which problematizes the feminist assumption that Jackie is ‘bad for girls’. His analysis indicates that a knowledge of the history of the production of magazines can contribute to an understanding of the ways in which magazines can be seen as specific cultural products, produced within a context of technical and social compromises and constraints which change over time. Factors relating to the physical production of magazines such as machinery, resources, artistic input and marketing, complexify notions of ‘reproduction’ where to see Jackie as ideological purveyor of a culture of femininity overlooks many other factors which make the magazine what it is. Barker’s reading of Jackie postulates that the magazine has an agenda that is based on ‘living out an unwritten contract with its readers’. The contract’ is premised on active engagement of the reader with the magazine - the magazine invites a reader to collaborate by reading in particular ways:
“The ‘contract’ involves an agreement that a text will talk to us in ways we recognise. It will enter into a dialogue with us. And that dialogue, with its dependable elements and form, will relate to some aspects of our lives in our society.”
Barker points out that the contractual understanding between magazine and implied reader is reliant on social context. The act of reading can be seen as a process capable of creating feelings of mutual recognition and familiarity between the reader and the features of the magazine. Barker’s reading of Jackie and other magazines develops a textual analysis which emphasizes the interactive engagement of the reader with the magazine, where both parties are involved in a conversation premised on shared social experiences and expectations.
McRobbie has commented on the way in which girls’ collective reading of Jackie may be oppositional, citing an example of a group of girls truanting from lessons to do a Jackie quiz in the toilets. Within the school context such activities can be seen as a point of resistance to the organizational structure of the school day where magazine reading serves to disrupt and fracture everyday routines rather than fit in with them. However, as Walkerdine has pointed out, not all acts of resistance against school authority have revolutionary effects: they may have ‘reactionary’ effects too. In this case young women locate themselves within a class-cultural dynamic where they actively choose reading magazines and ‘learning’ femininity as an alternative to attending lessons
Study of Just Seventeen
Angela McRobbie
carried out a similar study of magazines aimed
at teenage girls. She found that these magazines rely on a formula of written stories, photo-stories and problem
pages. The central message is that girls should focus on capturing and thinking about boys. The male is
portrayed as dominant while the female is passive, adapting to the interests and needs of the male. Such
magazines had little if anything about, for example, careers or school subjects, or sports and outdoor activities.
Both writers saw the magazines they studied as negative because they were helping girls and women adapt to
their lesser role in society, and also because they excluded the feminist alternatives.
McRobbie became interested in debates about decoding and analysing the representation of over-sexualised images, stereotypes and advertising in the media. She began to examine surprising shifts in girls’ magazines such as Just Seventeen, which promoted a different kind of femininity, largely owing to the integration of feminist rhetoric—if not feminist politics—into juvenile popular culture.[7] By downplaying boyfriends and husbands-to-be, and instead emphasising self-care, experimentation, and self-confidence, to McRobbie girls’ magazines seemed evidence of the integration of feminist common sense into the wider cultural field.
Wayne et al
Ethnicity
Found that nearly 50% of news stories concerning young black people dealt with them committing crime.
Cushion et al
Ethnicity
Analysed Sunday newspapers, nightly television news and radio news over a 16 week period in 2008-9 and found that black young men and boys were regularly associated with negative news values – nearly 70% of stories were related to crime, especially violent gang crime.
Cushion and Wayne further pointed out that black crime is often represented as senseless or as motivated by gang rivalries, which little discussion of the broader social and economic context.
Back
Ethnicity
Conducted discourse analysis of inner-city race disturbances and argued that the media tends to label them as riots, which implies they are irrational and conjures up images of rampaging mobs, which in turn justifies a harsh clampdown by the police.
There is little consideration given to the view that such disturbances may be the result of legitimate concerns, such as responses to police and societal racism, which need to be taken seriously.
Moor et al
Ethnicity
Found that between 2000 and 2008 over a third of stories focused on terrorism, and a third focused on the differences between Muslim communities and British society, while stories of Muslims as victims of crime were fairly rare.
They concluded there were four negative media messages about Muslims:
- Islam as dangerous and irrational
- Multiculuralism as allowing muslims to spread their message
- Clash of civlisations, with Islam being presented as intolerant, oppressive and misogynistic.
- Islam as a threat to the British way of life, with Sharia law.
analysis from the ICAR
Ethnicity
Noted that asylum seekers were often portrayed as being a threat to British social cohesion and national identity, with such people often blamed for social unrest.
