media representation

 This week for our blog works we are continuing the topic of media ethics but this week we are focusing on the topic of representation in media and how it affects all people in relation to gender, age, sexual orientation, ethnicities, cultures, nationality, religion and creed. Some of these groups are underrepresented and unfairly represented in today’s media, and the videos we were asked to watch showed this.

Video one:

The first video titled “Why Representation Matters” was a short video with many different speakers who were all asked the same question “Why Representation Matters”. My favourite opinion from this video was given by Jasmine C. Leyla, in short, Jasmine said when you create spaces online where people of different races, body types and different sexual orientations don’t exist you are creating a lie that is harmful to the viewer. Another opinion that was given by a few different speakers was having content that they can relate to and having the ability to see someone that looks like them represented in media is important.

 

Video two:

The second video was titled “Stuart Hall’s representation theory explained”. The video starts by asking us a rhetorical question in relation to two news articles about Donald Trump, the two articles are put side by side, so we can compare the two. The article on the left depicts Donald Trump as a clown, and they have photoshopped a red nose and face paint on him with the title “Clown for Prez” this article seems to be more of a tabloid compared to the article on the right with shows Donald Trump with his fist in the air and the heading “Trumps American revolution”, these two different articles show trump in a completely different light and the question we asked is which is more a more accurate representation of Donald Trump. Even without reading the articles and only looking at the headlines, it is very easy to form an opinion on trump if you were shown one of these articles, this is because before you even read it to are forming an opinion based on how the article represents him. Another point I found interesting in this video was when he discussed the fact the most of us have probably never met Trump and most of us never will, but even, so we don’t know the man personally we all have strong opinions on him, and these opinions are only formed from our view of him with we get through media.

 

Video three:

The third video was titled “Miss Representation of Female Leadership”. This video discussed the representation of female politicians in media. This video highlighted the abuse and harassment female politicians face in today’s media and how this is discouraging young from also becoming politicians, at seven years old there is an equal number of boys and girls who want to be president of the united stated this number is about 30% but when you ask the same question to the same group of children when they’re 15 you can start to see this massive gap occurring. The media seem to focus more on what the women are wearing and commenting on how they look instead of focusing on that their policies are or what they have accomplished, and they will affect how society views these women. The media also tries to make women seem more emotional than men, and women are twice as likely to be described as emotional in the media. My making women seem more emotional makes them seem like they would be worse in a leadership position and bad in a crisis.

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