Media Representations Flashcards
Gender, class, ethnicity, sexuality, disability, age
Representations of femininity: Symbolic annihilation
- Feminists: media spreads patriarchal ideology –> symbolic annihilation of women.
- Tuchman et al: womens achievements ignored/condemned by the mass media.
- 2012: men accounted for 84% of those mentioned in lead articles –> men more likely to be the subject of news stories than women.
Representations of femininity: Limited roles and stereotyping
- Tunstall: women presented as busy housewives, contented mothers, eager consumers and sex objects.
- Men portrayed as active in positions of power, rarely sexualised.
- Women interviewed in news as ordinary people, men presented as experts.
- Older women underrepresented on TV, older men overrepresented.
Representations of femininity: The Male Gaze
- Mulvey: women portrayed through male gaze –> Men see women as sexual objects.
- Bates: the music industry sexually objectifies women in lyrics and videos.
- Kilbourne: media present women as mannequins, this being used to advertise cosmetics and anything that improves appearance.
- Even women in positions of power are objectified e.g. Daily Mail headline ‘Legs-it’ –> photo of the Scottish First Minister and Prime minister Theresa May.
- Wolf: media promotes beauty myth –> assessed on appearance, have to conform to male ideas of female beauty –> women’s bodies as a project they need to improve.
Representations of femininity: The cult of femininity
- Ferguson: girls’ magazines prepared them for feminised adult roles –> creating a cult of femininity.
- E.g. how to cook, what to wear.
- This socialised girls into stereotyped values and roles of femininity often reflected in women’s magazines.
Representation of femininity: The underrepresentation of women in the media industry
- Women underrepresented in positions of authority.
- Marginalised in newsrooms and management.
- Face a glass ceiling at junior professional level, important in gathering news but not defining what should be reported.
- 60% of senior professional roles filled by men.
- 2011: 74% of news journalists in national newspapers were men.
Representations of femininity: Female Stereotypes
1.) The WAG: wives & girlfriends concerned with beauty, love, being a good partner, keeping their men.
2.) The sex object
3.) The supermum
4.) The angel: ‘good’, little sexuality, sensitive, domesticated.
5.) The ball breaker: sexually active, strong, ambitious.
6.) The victim: men as the cause of womens problems, but also the solution.
Representation of masculinity: Range of roles
- Men portrayed in a wider range of occupations, especially those of higher status.
Representation of masculinity: More positive representations
- Male voices more likely to be used in ‘voice-overs’ –> men as authority figures or experts.
- Dominant role of men –> Older men shown as sexual partners of younger women.
Representations of masculinity: Reinforcing hegemonic masculinity
Children Now:
- Males are violent
- Males are leaders
- Males are confident, funny and successful
- Males rarely cry or show vunerability
- Male characters shown in workplace
Representations of masculinity: Retributive masculinity
- Growth of men being portrayed as metrosexual (appearance based) and adopting complicit masculinity (sharing the domestic role)
- But there are still many magazines which emphasise traditional masculinity.
- Rutherford: retributive masculinity –> an attempt to reassert traditional masculinity by a focus on drinking, women and football.
Representations of masculinity: Male stereotypes
1.) The Joker: laughter to avoid emotion.
2.) The Jock: aggression to show power to win approval.
3.) The Strong Silent Type: In control, acts decisively, avoids talking about emotions.
4.) The Big Shot: Economically & socially successful –> high social status
5.) The Action Hero: strong, extreme aggression and violence.
6.) The Buffoon: lighthearted, but hopeless domestically or parenting wise.
What is the pluralists explanations to the representations of gender?
- Stereotyping is what audiences want.
- Want to attract audiences for profit.
- Has to satisfy the wishes of both audiences and media organisations.
What is the Liberal Feminists explanations to the representations of gender?
- Product of the underrepresentation of women in the media industry.
- Mills: The news room is a very male culture that can be off-putting to females.
- Lauzen: women more likely to be employed in costume design and makeup –> less status and less well paid than male areas like camera and sound.
What is the Marxists and Marxist feminists explanations to the representations of gender?
- Use the beauty myth to achieve profit –> creating a concern in cosmetics and fashion to promote sales by attracting audiences.
- Afraid of using non traditional stereotypes as they do not want to put audiences off.
- Devalues w/c femininity –> m/c femininity seen as hegemonic, through the presentation of false needs around beauty.
How can the importance of attracting advertisers, suggested by marxist feminists, be shown in the experiences of Cyndi Tebbel?
Cyndi Tebbel:
- 1997 Editor of a women’s magazine.
- Featured a size 16 model on the cover.
- Well received by readers, but a major advertiser (a cosmetics company) withdrew its advertising.
- She was forced to change the woman she put on the cover of the magazine.
What is the radical feminists explanation for gender representations?
- Reproduce patriarchy
- Wolf: beauty myth, told to focus on their appearance to distract them from challenging male dominance.
What is the postmodernists explanation for gender representations?
- Gauntlett: women and men no longer get uniform messages that suggest there is only one type of femininity and masculinity.
- Girl power icons have challenged traditional representations of women.
- A new emphasis in men’s media on men’s emotions and problems.
How are the representations of females changing?
- More emphasis on independence and sexual freedom for women –> growing diversity of media images of women
- McRobbie: popular feminism has emerged in female assertiveness –> being in control, self confident, and ambitious –> embedded in modern girly culture with an emphasis on ‘girl power’.
- Inness: female roles in TV –> women presented as powerful and taking on roles traditionally of men e.g. Katniss Everdeen.
- Green and Singleton: new media empowers women –> use Twitter and websites such as everydaysexism.com
Criticisms of changing media stereotypes for females
- Knight: portrayals include traditional femininity, women who take on these roles are traditional and glamourous e.g. Angelina Jolie.
–> Conform to male gaze and beauty myth - Women who use new media experience sexism in the form of trolling and threats, especially when female figures of authority or celebrities are commenting on women’s rights.
Changing representations of males
Gauntlett:
- Media portrayals of men are changing with a wider range of representations of masculinity e.g. metrosexuality.
- Men’s magazines, despite having some macho content, encourage men to understand women and be considerate and caring.
- The transformation of male bodies into sex objects in advertising –> women = active viewers (McRobbie)
What are the representations of the working class?
Butsch:
1.) Dumb and stupid buffoons:
–> well intentioned, but flawed
–> immature/irresponsible
2.) Source of trouble/conflict:
–> welfare ‘scroungers’
–> cannot control their children
3.) Chavs (Shildrick):
–> welfare dependent and involved in crime
–> blamed for their situation
4.) Romanticised communities
–> responsible and hardworking
–> close knit communities
What are the criticisms of negative working class representations in the media?
- There has been some positive portrayals of the working class
–> have been supportive and even commented on inequality
reps of middle class
reps of upper class
marxist explanations for reps of social class
neomarxist explanations
pluralist explanations
Representations of Ethnicity: Symbolic annihilation
- 2014: 1 in 7 roles was filled on TV by a person from an ethnic minority group.
- Black African Caribbeans were overrepresented, South Asians were underrepresented.
- Ethnic minorities more likely to be found in certain types of programmes, like entertainment
- Ghettoization: specialist programmes on minority issues
Representations of Ethnicity: Limited Roles
Malik:
- African Caribbeans less likely to be found in roles like political commentators or experts, or serious subjects e.g. politics.
- Less likely to be in major roles in big budget British films.
GMG:
- Black and Asian people were more likely to appear in supporting roles as temporary guests.
- Increase of representation in ethnic minorities, but not in prime TV and instead in the margins of TV e.g. children’s TV
- Black people less likely to be shown in professional roles, more likely to appear as musicians, sportspeople etc.
- Underepresentation of black women in the advertising industry.
What is tokenism?
- Often included to avoid accusations of discriminations
- Diversity of ethnic minority life rarely shown
- Experiences of different groups are presented as the same
Stereotypes to ethnicity
Van Dijik:
1.) Deviants and law breakers
2.) Posing a threat
3.) Causing problems and conflict
4.) Having limited talents/skills
5.) Problems internationally
Islamophobia
- Phillips: 2000s –> news reporting used the word ‘muslim’ to conjure up images of terrorism
- Wars: ‘fashionable islamophobia’
- Nahdi: tabloidization and infotainment has led to a decline in journalism standards, can be seen as a moral panic
How are representations of ethnicity changing?
1.) Increased appreciation for black culture
2.) Role of new media:
- Greater range of media aimed at ethnic minority audiences e.g. BBC, Asian network
- Ethnic minority youth are greater than average uses of new media: citizen journalism, e.g. #iftheygunnedmedown
3.) More major black and asian figures in the media:
- Abercrombie: appear more in soaps, presented with same interests as white characters.
Representations of children: stereotypes
1.) Victims
2.) Cute –> ‘feel good factor’ –> good for adverts
3.) Little devils –> involved in crime e.g. James Bulger
4.) Brilliant –> Exceptional and stand out in some format
5.) Accessories –> Coverage of celebrities –> children enhance parents reputation
6.) Kids these days –> Nostalgia
7.) Little angels –> innocent, vunerable, can do no wrong
Representations of Children:
Consumers:
Evans and Chandler: led to pester power, ability of children to manipulate their parents to buy consumer products for them.
Representations of the elderly:
Stereotypes
1.) Symbollic annihilation:
- Invisible elderly
- Cuddy and Fiske: US TV: 1.5% elderly
2.) Negative stereotypes:
- Landis: one dimensional representations e.g. grumpy
3.) Devalued:
- Woodward: cosmetic products
4.) Gender/class:
- M/c males –> authority
- females –> grandmothers/radio
Representations of youth:
Stereotypes
- Deviant
- Criminals
- Antisocial behaviour
- Rebelliousness
–> Folk devils (Cohen) –> Moral Panics (Hall) - Consumption (targetted by advertisers)
Changing representations: evaluation of youth
Youth:
- Brake: as respectable e.g. Junior mastermind, masterchef, pride of Britain awards.
Changing representations: evaluations of old age
Old Age:
- Older celebrities in media
- Positive representations (active aging) –> disposable income (grey pound)
Representations of disability: Symbolic annihilation
- 22% of all adults in the UK classed as disabled —> but underrepresented among those who work in the media & media content.
- 2.5% in popular TV programmes in 2013-4 were portrayed as disabled —> impairment being the main aspect of their character.
- Ofcom: 42% of appearances were in programmes about issues of prejudice, stereotyping and discrimination.
Representations of disability: negative representations
- GMG: the quantity of articles between 2004-2010 linking disability to benefit fraud had more than doubled in 5 years, nearly 1 in 5 articles described disability with terms like ‘scrounger’.
- TV and entertainment: nearly half of peak time programmes with mental illness storylines portrayed them as a threat to others, 63% of references to mental health were negative.
Representations of disability: Stereotypes
Barnes:
1.) As pitiable and pathetic
2.) Element of atmosphere or object of curiosity
3.) Object of violence
4.) Sinister or evil
5.) The super cripple: e.g. Channel 4’s coverage of the Paralympics with the tagline ‘Meet the Superhumans’
6.) Laughable or object of ridicule
7.) His/her own worst enemy: can overcome their difficulties if they think more positively
8.) As a burden
9.) As non sexual
10.) Unable to participate in everyday life
Representations of disability: charity telethons
- Sociologists criticise charity telethons
- E.g. Children in Need
- Reinforce negative stereotypes about disabilities
- Roper: rely on ‘cute’ children, who do not represent the range of people with disabilities in society. Their role is to make the public feel less guilty by giving money to people who are disabled, instead of informing about the facts.
- Karpf: telethons keep the disabled in their place as grateful and dependent.
Representations of heterosexuality: heterosexual females
- Defined by physical attractiveness, and subject to the male gaze (Mulvey)
- Batchelor et al:
—> Contraception represented as a females responsibility
—> Female characters discussed sex with their friends, males boasted about their sexual prowess
—> Girls presented as more interested in emotions, males more interested in sex
Representations of heterosexuality: heterosexual males
- Increasingly men are becoming represented as sexual objects
- Reflected in the growth of male magazines —> fashion, health and cosmetics —> metrosexuality
- McRobbie: women have become active viewers of men’s bodies being sexualised in advertising.
Representations of homosexuality: general information
- Media view of homosexuality is formed through a heterosexual male gaze.
- Fear of loss of profits if audiences and advertisers are offended —> homosexuality treated as deviant.
Representations of homosexuality: the symbolic annihilation of homosexuality
- Homosexuals have traditionally been ignored or made fun of in the media
- Stonewall: 2010 TV programmes homosexual and bisexual people portrayed in less than 5% of all programmes studied, 36% of the portrayals were negative
- Homosexuals life is most likely to appear in entertainment programmes, and rarely features in factual programmes like documentaries.
Representations of homosexuality: limited representations and stereotypes
- Dyer: if someone is homosexual, it is not visible/obvious, the media makes the visible —> invisible, with signs and symbols of homosexuality
Craig: 3 most common media representations of homosexuality
1.) Camp: Characters regarded as flamboyant and non threatening
2.) Macho: Relies on exaggerating masculinity, openly sexual, transforms practical male clothing into erotic symbols.
3.) Deviant: Evil or devious, gay characters completely defined by their sexuality.
- These portrayals match up with news values to attract audiences —> distorted views of homosexuality—> moral panics
- When homosexual characters appear in the media, they tend to be defined by their sexuality orientation
Representations of homosexuality: The sanitisation of gay sexuality
- Homosexual men rarely portrayed in a sexualised way —> appear as stylish and attractive to appeal to women, not other homosexual men
—> Avoids offending heterosexual audiences - The opposite appears for homosexual women: rarely appear in advertising or media as anything other than highly sexualised
—> Appear to the gay and lesbian market
—> Avoid offending heterosexual audiences and advertisers
—> Don’t challenge heterosexual ideology, but help maintain it as the norm
Changing representations of homosexuality
- Homosexual consumer market is now being realised as big (the pink pound) —> pluralists would say the media companies are beginning to respond to what homosexual audiences want in advertising and the provision of media products.
- Increase in transgender representation in the media, and they have been positive.
- Content on new media is user generated, representations of LGBT individuals are more positive —> however, homophobic comments can also be made.
