Media Representations

Representation in general and focusing on it in particular through the representations of social groups and individual figures

Stereotyping:

• origins and function of stereotyping in media forms and some of the complex issues around such depictions.

• how media tell us about social relations as well as presenting questions about the ‘politics’ of representation as they pertain to the responsibilities of media producers and the role of media companies

Examine the meanings of individuality as depicted in the guise of media stars, personalities and celebrities, and what these suggest to us about the social values embodied in our encounter with such depictions.

Identify and outline issues involved in thinking about representation and media.

Define the concepts of representation, stereotyping and associated subcategories.

Deploy rhetorical, semiological, genre and narrative skills to analysing media representations.

Engage with debates around the depiction of individuals and social groups in media.

We find out about what is going on through a variety of media sources – Twitter, the TV news, documentaries, newspaper front pages, magazine gossip columns, web pages

We also find out about individual people (the ordinary and the extraordinary), about ‘other’ social and national groups as well.

Feeling very knowledgeable and educated about the world as a result of our media consumption? Think twice…

What is the nature of this knowledge? How reliable or accurate is it? How informed and enlightened are we exactly in this mediatised and information-saturated age? To what degree are we asked to engage with the processes and means by which information comes to us and to be critical about it and this process? Who is responsible for such information?

Media forms may have their own rhetoric and language that position us as audience members for entertainment purposes, but they are not divorced from the social, cultural, political and historical contexts of their making.

This is why representation is such an important area for consideration. It informs our outlook on various groups and cultures – our own and those of others – potentially in turn affecting how social relations are played out.

To represent as meaning ‘equivalence’ or ‘corresponding to’. This sense would most obviously fit one of the semiological terms we encountered previously: ‘icon’

This relates to the types of relationship between any sign and its referent as outlined by Peirce: iconic signs look like the thing that they represent

A picture of Brad Pitt looks like, Brad Pitt. But such a picture is not literally the thing it represents despite our tendency automatically to say of such an image, ‘It’s Brad Pitt.’

The symbolic relationship refers to an arbitrary but conventionally agreed one.

Representation concerns the idea of something or someone acting as a proxy or substitute for something or someone else. Representative as agent or delegate – such as an MP.

We find this sense of agency or proxy at work when a newspaper speaks of the interests of its readers, or when a radio newscaster asks of a reporter in the field or an interviewee ‘what our listeners will want to know is…’.

The way in which things or individuals are deemed to typify or epitomise particular qualities: “Spanish tennis player Rafael Nadal embodies the virtues of sportsmanship”

Re-prensented

In media studies the issue of representation is often dealt with quite specifically in a focus on the portraits of individuals and particular social groups

Let’s imagine some typical representations and the issues raised around the depiction of individuals:

We can agree on the straightforwardness of the claim that here is a picture of Trump.

Semiologically speaking, images are iconic (the representation looks like the thing it represents), working at the denotative, analogical, literal level.

Yet, at a further level of signification we could claim (subject to detailed analysis and argument) that such figures as represented serve to ‘connote’ further levels of meaning and more complex and generalised ideas – aspects of contemporary society or culture. What are those?

In contemporary society such representations mediate and contribute to the construction of our knowledge and understanding of that wider society and all the individuals and groups that exist within it – including those that we ourselves think we belong to (Spanish people, football fans, music lovers, democrats, etc.).

Media representations of groups are not independent of the rest of society and neither are they and what they represent unchanging (superficially at least), nor do they go unchallenged.

How the media make use of and construct representatives shapes how we recognise ourselves and categorise and identify social groups in particular and recognisable ways

To categorise individuals means generalising about them, identifying them as part of a wider class or group of things, people, etc. who possess some quality and qualities of experience in common – to themselves and to those who perceive them.

To talk of the working class, for instance, identifies people by their economic status in the labour market; to talk of gay women identifies a group by both biological status and sexual orientation;

To cite such categories, however objective we aim to be, begins to call up a range of ideas – connotations and myths – about these groups that are at the same time diffuse and limited.

What does talking French connotate?

Referring to anyone as a ‘type’ is to define an individual by what they represent rather than for their unique qualities as individuals

Typification involves a form of shorthand, signified by appearance, behaviour, belief, etc.

An archetype is a ‘perfect’ or idealised person or thing that exhibits certain core values and identities that offer a model or pattern for the way in which cultures are viewed.

The Mother: Timeless and universal. Deeply embedded in myths, stories, and human behavior.

Pre-mass-media archetypal figures include the heroes and villains of mythology and ancient religions such as Hercules, Andromeda, Zeus etc.

Represents some kind of cultural or subcultural ideal

Idealized person / thing that embodies deep beliefs and core values regarding a culture

Offers a pattern about how a culture can be viewed

Held up as role models (heroes) OR as examples of what not to be (villains)

Superman evinces the idea of coming to America experienced by any other immigrant and becoming the embodiment of America. His possible meanings are represented by his benign appearance and deeds, embodying ‘truth, justice and the American way’.

What if he had landed in Turkey?

A stereotype is an oversimplified and generalized belief about a group of people or things, often based on assumptions, prejudice, or incomplete understanding.

They thus contribute to the way in which other groups understand and relate to those who are presented through such stereotypes.

We can add too that stereotypes are usually about those who are not just a minority but who have less power in society than the majority.

It is the speed and intensity of the assumptions and predictions that are made about other persons on a slender basis that makes stereotyping so lethal and objectionable. But stereotypes are sometimes seemingly inescapable and even necessary to media texts and the information and pleasure that we gain from them.

Not only in media, but also in daily life ordinary conversations: “Women drivers!”

On the one hand, they provide an ordering process in the face of the contingency and ‘messiness’ of reality, offering a ‘short cut’ to meaning that nonetheless refers to ‘the world’, on the other vilified for their negative qualities.

Stereotypes are effective by virtue of the fact that they have some semblance to reality, that, however extreme or reductive, they contain a ‘grain of truth’. What grain of truth do you think of “Women drivers?”

‘Gender’: Masculinity and femininity are social and cultural in nature

Gender as ‘performative’ rather than innate or fixed. It certainly seems that both males and females have their gender asserted through a stylised repetition of acts.

Mass media texts around the world are dominated by images of ideologically asserted ‘femininity’ and ‘masculinity’: how men and women are expected to look and behave.

Who takes responsibility for stereotypes and how they appear? Who is being spoken about or for, and in what manner? What of the issue of who speaks and who represents?

Who are in the position to produce texts, who own media companies?

Greg Dyke, the former Director General of the BBC. He once described that organisation as ‘hideously white’.

Rwandan genocide, national radio was tasked with generating hatred between the Tutsi and Hutu tribes (Thompson, 2007).