representation meaning in media

Media Representations: What Are They and Why Do They Matter?

I grew up in Mexico City, Mexico. When I was younger, I would watch telenovelas with my friend Fernanda after school. We would both sit on her white, fur rug, our backpacks flung across the room.

For an hour every day, I saw all the women I could be: a ranchera keeping my land safe from a dastardly uncle, a time traveler, a queen. All the possibilities were in front of me.

I moved back to the United States in middle school. I watched television, but it lacked the color and excitement of the telenovelas I was used to in Mexico. The only Latinas that showed up in the shows I watched were gardeners or maids. I felt invisible and lost. It wasn’t until recently when I saw shows like “One Day at a Time” and “Jane the Virgin” that I felt like that kid watching telenovelas again.

Media representations are when people see themselves reflected in the things they watch, read, listen to and engage with every day. This is the experience I missed when I moved from Mexico to the United States. It’s also something Keah Brown, a writer from New York, experienced as a child watching "Rodgers and Hammerstein's Cinderella" with Brandy and Whitney Houston.

“It meant a lot to me see black women being treated like princesses and being desirable and worthwhile enough to fall in love,” said Brown. “And I think that's very important but at the same time we have a long way to go. I don't know any proper representation of disabled black women. I haven't seen that yet.”

Media representations are the main focus of Lisa Behm-Morowitz’s research at the University of Missouri. She is an associate professor of communication and is involved in the Media and Diversity Center on campus.

“(At the Media and Diversity Center), we’re interested in studying the ways that mediated portrayals may influence people’s perceptions of certain social groups,” said Behm-Morowitz.

Behm-Morowitz said seeing certain groups in media help people form their thoughts and ideas about those groups.

“If you think about it, you have limited contact with diverse groups in maybe your daily activities. And a lot of our contact, if you want to call it that, comes from media representations,” said Behm-Morowitz.

The researchers at the Media and Diversity Center help people with media literacy, to be more critical consumers of the things they watch. Behm-Morowitz said it’s important to seek out characters and stories that aren’t easy or stereotypical.

“An example of this might be ABC’s show Blackish, where I think there is a fairly nuanced portrayal of different types of issues--social issues, economic issues--that black Americans might experience,” said Behm-Morowitz.

Network executives and film producers are understanding the need for a more diverse set of characters, she said, but there’s still a long way to go.

In the meantime, people are creating their own media to see themselves represented. That’s what inspired RJ Lackie, a writer and web series creator from Toronto.

“I can't say I've saw any, really, depictions of gay characters that felt like real representation,” Lackie said. “It may not have even been until 2014 when HBO's "Looking" came out that I really saw a character that really resonated with that part of my identity and made me feel seen.”

He said this lack of representation made him dedicated to writing gay characters into his work.

“It's one of the reasons why as a screenwriter I want to make stories that have specifically gay main characters because we deserve to be at the center of things once and awhile,” Lackie said. “All marginalized people do.”

This week's show was produced by Erin McKinstry. Music for this week's episode comes from Blue Dot Sessions (Tuck and Point, available under CC BY-NC 4.0).

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Media Representation in the News

"New CAA study says diverse casting increases box office potential across all budgets" Los Angeles Times, 21 Jun. 2017
"Starting in 2019, if Your Film Isn’t Diverse, It Won’t Be Eligible for a BAFTA Award" Slate, 19 Dec 2016

Media representation refers to how the media portrays particular groups, communities, and experiences.

Media Representations of Disability Information and resources from the Disability Rights Education and Defense Fund
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The Representation Project Founded by filmmaker Jennifer Siebel Newsom, who has directed two films on media representation of gender
Sociological Images on Pinterest Collections of images around specific themes, such as Women vs People and Racial Objectification
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Media constructions of culture, race, and ethnicity.

Travis L. Dixon , Travis L. Dixon Department of Communication, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Kristopher R. Weeks Kristopher R. Weeks Department of Communication, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
and Marisa A. Smith Marisa A. Smith Department of Communication, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
https://doi.org/10.1093/acrefore/9780190228613.013.502
Published online: 23 May 2019

Racial stereotypes flood today’s mass media. Researchers investigate these stereotypes’ prevalence, from news to entertainment. Black and Latino stereotypes draw particular concern, especially because they misrepresent these racial groups. From both psychological and sociological perspectives, these misrepresentations can influence how people view their racial group as well as other groups. Furthermore, a racial group’s lack of representation can also reduce the group’s visibility to the general public. Such is the case for Native Americans and Asian Americans.

Given mass media’s widespread distribution of black and Latino stereotypes, most research on mediated racial portrayals focuses on these two groups. For instance, while black actors and actresses appear often in prime-time televisions shows, black women appear more often in situational comedies than any other genre. Also, when compared to white actors and actresses, television casts blacks in villainous or despicable roles at a higher rate. In advertising, black women often display Eurocentric features, like straight hair. On the other hand, black men are cast as unemployed, athletic, or entertainers. In sports entertainment, journalists emphasize white athletes’ intelligence and black athletes’ athleticism. In music videos, black men appear threatening and sport dark skin tones. These music videos also sexualize black women and tend to emphasize those with light skin tones. News media overrepresent black criminality and exaggerate the notion that blacks belong to the undeserving poor class. Video games tend to portray black characters as either violent outlaws or athletic.

While mass media misrepresent the black population, it tends to both misrepresent and underrepresent the Latino population. When represented in entertainment media, Latinos assume hypersexualized roles and low-occupation jobs. Both news and entertainment media overrepresent Latino criminality. News outlets also overly associate Latino immigration with crime and relate Latino immigration to economic threat. Video games rarely portray Latino characters.

Creators may create stereotypic content or fail to fairly represent racial and ethnic groups for a few reasons. First, the ethnic blame discourse in the United States may influence creators’ conscious and unconscious decision-making processes. This discourse contends that the ethnic and racial minorities are responsible for their own problems. Second, since stereotypes appeal to and are easily processed by large general audiences, the misrepresentation of racial and ethnic groups facilitates revenue generation. This article largely discusses media representations of blacks and Latinos and explains the implications of such portrayals.

content analysis
African American portrayals
Latino portrayals
ethnic blame discourse
structural limitations and economic interests
social identity theory
Clark’s Stage Model of Representations

Theoretical Importance of Media Stereotypes

Media constructions of culture, race, and ethnicity remain important to study because of their potential impact on both sociological and psychological phenomena. Specifically, researchers have utilized two major theoretical constructs to understand the potential impact of stereotyping: (a) priming and cognitive accessibility (Dixon, 2006 ; Scheufele & Tewksbury, 2007 ; Shrum, 2009 ), and (b) social identity and social categorization theory (Mastro, 2004 ; Mastro, Behm-Morawitz, & Kopacz, 2008 ; Tajfel & Turner, 2004 ).

Priming and Cognitive Accessibility

Priming and cognitive accessibility suggests that media consumption encourages the creation of mental shortcuts used to make relevant judgments about various social issues. For example, if a news viewer encounters someone cognitively related to a given stereotype, he or she might make a judgment about that person based on repeated exposure to the mediated stereotype. As an illustration, repeated exposure to the Muslim terrorist stereotype may lead news viewers to conclude that all Muslims are terrorists. This individual may also support punitive policies related to this stereotype, such as a Muslim ban on entry to the United States. Therefore, this cognitive linkage influences race and crime judgments (e.g., increased support for criminalizing Muslims and deporting them).

Social Identity Theory and Media Judgments

Other scholars have noted that our own identities are often tied to how people perceive their groups’ relationships to other groups. Social categorization theory argues that the higher the salience of the category to the individual, the greater the in-group favoritism one will demonstrate. Media scholars demonstrated that exposure to a mediated out-group member can increase in-group favoritism (Mastro, 2004 ). For example, researchers found that negative stories about Latino immigrants can contribute to negative out-group emotions that lead to support for harsher immigration laws (Atwell Seate & Mastro, 2016 , 2017 ).

Both the priming/cognitive accessibility approach and the social identity approach demonstrate that cultural stereotypes have significant implications for our psychology, social interactions, and policymaking. It remains extremely important for us to understand the nature and frequency of mediated racial and ethnic stereotypes to further our understanding of how these stereotypes impact viewers. This article seeks to facilitate our understanding.

Stage Model of Representation

In order to provide the reader with an introduction to this topic, this article relies on the published content-analytic literature regarding race and media. Clark’s Stage Model of Representation articulates a key organizing principle for understanding how media may construct various depictions of social groups (Clark, 1973 ; Harris, 2013 ). This model purports that race/ethnic groups move through four stages of representation in the media. In the first stage, invisibility or non-recognition , a particular race or ethnic group rarely appears on the screen at all. In the second stage, ridicule , a racial group will appear more frequently, yet will be depicted in consistently stereotypical ways. In the third stage, regulation , an ethnic group might find themselves depicted primarily in roles upholding the social order, such as judges or police officers. Finally, a particular social group reaches the respect stage in which members of the group occupy diverse and nuanced roles. Given Clark’s model, this article contends that Native Americans and Asian Americans tend to fall into the non-recognition stage (Harris, 2013 ). It follows that few empirical studies have investigated these groups because empirical content analyses have difficulty scientifically assessing phenomena that lack presence (Krippendorff, 2004 ).

Bearing in mind Clark’s stages, Latinos appear to vacillate between non-recognition and ridicule. Meanwhile, blacks move between the ridicule and regulation stages, while whites remain permanently fixed in the respect stage. In other words, in this article, our lack of deep consideration of Native Americans and Asian Americans is rooted in a lack of representation which generates few empirical studies and thus leaves us little to review. The article offers a quick overview of their portrayal and then moves on to describe the social groups that receive more media and empirical attention.

Native American and Asian American Depictions

Although severely underrepresented, there are a few consistent stereotypical portrayals that regularly emerge for these groups. In some ways, both Native American and Asian Americans are often relegated to “historical” and/or fetishized portrayals (Lipsitz, 1998 ). Native American “savage” imagery was commonly depicted in Westerns and has been updated with images of alcoholism, along with depictions of shady Native American casino owners (Strong, 2004 ). Many news images of Native Americans tend to focus on Native festivals, relegating this group to a presentation as “mysterious” spiritual people (Heider, 2000 ). Meanwhile, various school and professional team mascots embody the savage Native American Warrior trope (Strong, 2004 ).

Asian Americans overall have often been associated with being the model minority (Harris, 2009 ; Josey, Hurley, Hefner, & Dixon, 2009 ). They typically represent “successful” non-whites. Specifically, media depictions associate Asian American men with technology and Asian American women with sexual submissiveness (Harris & Barlett, 2009 ; Schug, Alt, Lu, Gosin, & Fay, 2017 ).

Overall, scholars know very little about how either of these groups are regularly portrayed based on empirical research, although novelists and critical scholars have offered useful critiques (Wilson, Gutiérrez, & Chao, 2003 ). Hopefully, future quantitative content analyses will further delineate the nature of Native American and Asian American portrayals. Consider the discussion about entertainment, news, and digital imagery of blacks, Latinos, and whites presented in the next section.

Entertainment Constructions of Race, Culture, and Ethnicity

Entertainment media receives a great deal of consideration, given that Americans spend much of their time using media for entertainment purposes (Harris, 2013 ; Sparks, 2016 ). This section begins with an analysis of black portrayals, then moves on to Latino portrayals to understand the prevalence of stereotyping . When appropriate, black and Latino representations are compared to white ones. Two measures describe a group’s representation: (a) the numerical presence of a particular racial/ethnic group, and (b) the distribution of roles or stereotypes regarding each group. When researchers have often engaged in examinations of race they typically begin by comparing African American portrayals to white portrayals (Entman & Rojecki, 2000 ). As a result, there is a substantial amount of research on black portrayals.

Black Entertainment Television Imagery

Overall, a number of studies have found that blacks receive representation in prime-time television at parity to their actual proportion in the US population with their proportion ranging from 10% to 17% of prime-time characters (Mastro & Greenberg, 2000 ; Signorielli, 2009 ; Tukachinsky, Mastro, & Yarchi, 2015 ). African Americans currently compose approximately 13% of the US population (US Census Bureau, 2018 ). When considering the type of characters (e.g., major or minor) portrayed by this group, the majority of black (61%) cast members land roles as major characters (Monk-Turner, Heiserman, Johnson, Cotton, & Jackson, 2010 ). Black women also fare well in these representations, accounting for 73% of black appearances on prime-time television (Monk-Turner et al., 2010 ).

However, recent content analyses reveal an instability in black prime-time television representation over the last few decades. Tukachinsky et al. ( 2015 ) found that the prevalence of black characters dropped in 1993 and remain diminished compared to previous decades. Similarly, Signorielli ( 2009 ) found a significant linear decrease in the proportion of black representation from 2001 (17%) to 2008 (12%). Signorielli ( 2009 ) attributes this decrease in black representation to the decrease in situation comedy programming. Indeed, African Americans appear most frequently in situation comedies. Sixty percent of black women featured in prime-time television are cast in situation comedies, and 25% of black male prime-time portrayals occur in situation comedies (Signorielli, 2009 ). However, between 2001 and 2008 , situational comedies decreased, while action and crime programs increased.

The previously discussed analyses describe the frequency of black representation. However, frequent depictions do not equate to favorable representation. Considering role quality (i.e., respectability) and references made to stereotypes, entertainment media offers a mixed bag. On the one hand, some recent analyses found that the majority of blacks are depicted as likable, and as “good characters,” as opposed to “bad character”-like villains (Tukachinsky, Mastro, & Yarchi, 2015 ). In addition, the majority of black characters are depicted as intelligent (Tukachinsky et al., 2015 ). On the other hand, the rate of blacks shown as immoral and despicable (9%) is higher than that of whites (2% and 3%, respectively) (Monk-Turner et al., 2010 ). In addition, black depictions exhibiting high social status and professionalism trended downward. Between 2003 and 2005 , higher status depictions reached their peak at 74.3% but sharply fell in subsequent years to 31.5%, with black women faring worse than black men (Tukachinsky et al., 2015 ). Classic studies of entertainment representations found that blacks tend to be the most negatively represented of any race or ethnic group, often being depicted as lazy and disheveled (Mastro & Greenberg, 2000 ). Overall, black characters tend to be portrayed in less respectful ways compared to whites in content intended for general audiences, although they sometime fare better when the targeted audience is African American (Messineo, 2008 ). For example, crime drama television frequently depicts white women as at risk for murder, but FBI statistics demonstrate that murder victims are more often likely to be black males (Parrott & Parrott, 2015 ).

Black Representations in Magazines and Advertising

African Americans remain well represented in magazines, though they are not as prominent in this medium as in television (Schug et al., 2017 ). Moreover, the trend in the representation of African Americans, particularly women, appears to be improving (Covert & Dixon, 2008 ). Images of black women represent 6% of advertisements in women’s magazines and 4% of advertisements in men’s magazines (Baker, 2005 ). However, both black-oriented and white-oriented magazines appear to advance portrayals of black women with Eurocentric rather than Afrocentric features, referencing whiteness as a beauty standard. Overall, compared to black-oriented magazines, white-oriented magazines feature more black women with fair skin and thin figures. Black-oriented magazines feature more black women with straight hair. Moreover, straight hair textures outnumber other natural styles (i.e., wavy, curly, or braided) in both white- and black-oriented magazines.

Conversely, black men typically assume unemployed, athletic, or entertainment roles in these ads (Bailey, 2006 ). Moreover, mainstream magazines are most likely to depict black men as unemployed. Meanwhile, black-oriented magazines tend to portray African Americans in more managerial roles.

Black Representations in Sports Entertainment

Besides prime-time television, black stereotypes in sports coverage and music receive substantial attention in the literature. The unintelligent or “dumb” yet naturally talented black athlete remains a programming staple (Angelini, Billings, MacArthur, Bissell, & Smith, 2014 ; Rada & Wulfemeyer, 2005 ). For example, Angelini et al. ( 2014 ) found that black athletes receive less success-based comments related to intelligence than white athletes (Angelini et al., 2014 ). The findings echo previous research arguing that black athletes receive fewer positive comments regarding their intelligence than do white athletes (Rada & Wulfemeyer, 2005 ). Fairly similar depictions exist in broadcast commentary (Primm, DuBois, & Regoli, 2007 ). For example, Mercurio and Filak ( 2010 ) content-analyzed descriptions of NFL quarterback prospects featured on the Sports Illustrated website from 1998 to 2007 . The descriptions portray black athletes as possessing physical abilities while lacking intelligence . Conversely, Sports Illustrated described white prospects as intelligent but lacking in athleticism.

Black Representations in Music Videos

Music videos tend to sexualize black women, reinforcing the black jezebe l stereotype (i.e., a sassy African American woman who is sexually promiscuous) (Givens & Monahan, 2005 ). Also, black men appear aggressive and violent in music videos (e.g., like a criminal, thug, or brute ) (Ford, 1997 ). According to rap research, blacks appear in provocative clothes at a higher rate than whites, and black women are the most provocatively dressed in music videos (Turner, 2011 ). Even black female artists are twice as likely to wear provocative clothing than are white female artists (Frisby & Aubrey, 2012 ). Furthermore, Zhang, Dixon, and Conrad ( 2010 ) and Conrad, Zhang, and Dixon ( 2009 ) found that black women appeared in rap videos as sexualized, thin, and light-skinned while black men appeared dark-skinned and threatening .

Latino Entertainment Television Representation

Unlike African Americans, Latinos remain significantly underrepresented in English-language television outlets. For instance, Tukachinsky et al. ( 2015 ) found that of all characters, the number of Latino characters was less than 1% in the 1980s and increased to over 3% in the 2000s. However, these numbers fall significantly below the proportion of people who are Latino within the United States (about 18%) (U.S. Census Bureau, 2018 ). Similarly, Signorelli ( 2009 ) also found that the percentage of Latinos in the United States Latino population and the percentage of Latino characters in prime-time programming differed by approximately 10%.

Latinos continue to be underrepresented in a variety of genres and outlets. For instance, Latinos remain consistently underrepresented in gay male blogs. For example, Grimm and Schwarz ( 2017 ) found that white gay models (80.2%) were most prevalent, followed by black gay models (4.5%). However, Latino models were the least prevalent (1.5%). In addition, Hetsroni ( 2009 ) found that the Latino population makes up 14% of patients in real hospitals, yet they only comprise 4% of the patients in hospital dramas. Conversely, whites make up 72% of real patients but comprise 80% of hospital drama patients.

Latino Underrepresentation in Advertising

Latino underrepresentation extends to the advertising realm. For example, Seelig ( 2007 ) determined that there was a significant difference between the Latino proportion of the US population and the Latino proportion of models found in mainstream magazines (1%). Another study that investigated Superbowl commercials conducted by Brooks, Bichard, and Craig ( 2016 ) found that only 1.22% of the characters were Latino.

Prominent Stereotypes of Latinos in Entertainment Media

Although underrepresented, Latinos are also stereotypically represented in entertainment media. For example, Tukachinsky et al. ( 2015 ) discovered that over 24% of Latino characters were hypersexualized in prime-time television. Furthermore, Latinos tended to occupy low-professional-status roles. This trend also occurred more often with Latina females than Latino males.

Spanish-language television also reinforced stereotypes. For instance, Mastro and Ortiz ( 2008 ) studied the portrayals of characters in prime-time Spanish-language television broadcasts by Azteca America, Telefutura, Telemundo, and Univision. They found rich Latina women reinforced the harlot stereotype . They were sexualized , were provocatively dressed, and had slim body types (Mastro & Behm-Morawitz, 2005 ). Similar to the findings for African Americans and rap music, colorism was also part of these depictions, with idealized Latinos having more European features. Men with a dark complexion were depicted as aggressive (e.g., the criminal stereotype) , while men with a fair complexion were portrayed as intelligent and articulate.

Entertainment Imagery Summary

Blacks appear to be well represented in entertainment imagery, often in favorable major roles as professionals. However, their positive portrayals appear to be on the decline as situation comedies become displaced by other genres where blacks are less prominent. Although well represented, black depictions continue to embody many stereotypes. African American males are portrayed as unintelligent or “dumb” athletes whose only assets are their inbred athletic abilities. Black men tend to appear as aggressive criminals or brutes in music videos while black women appear as sexualized jezebels with European features.

Latinos, on the other hand, face substantial obstacles related to their lack of representation. They tend to be grossly underrepresented across a number of entertainment outlets including television, magazines, and advertising. When they are seen, they tend to occupy two primary stereotypes, the harlot stereotype and the criminal stereotype. This appears to be a constant across both Spanish-language and English-language outlets.

News Constructions of Culture, Race, and Ethnicity

News remains an important area to consider when it comes to media stereotypes for two reasons. First, news can be considered a powerful purveyor of social truth (Romer, Jamieson, & Aday, 2003 ; Tewksbury & Rittenberg, 2012 ). While entertainment can be considered by lay audiences to have a weak relationship with social reality given its fictional nature, news is rooted in actual events, and therefore seems more real. Stereotypes found in news content may seem believable, increasing these stereotype’s influence on audiences’ perceptions of reality. Second, citizens rely on news to form opinions about policies and politicians (Iyengar, 1987 ; Price & Tewksbury, 1997 ). News reports contain the reservoir of information that citizens utilize to make decisions within our representative democracy (Iyengar, 1991 ). If the news falsely points to racial groups as the cause of social problems, these citizens may advocate for ineffective and misguided policies. The next section explores how the news purveys racial and ethnic stereotypes.

Blacks in the News

A number of early studies suggested that the news often stereotyped blacks as violent criminals , consistently overrepresenting them in these roles by large margins (Dixon, Azocar, & Casas, 2003 ; Dixon & Linz, 2000a , 2000b ; Entman, 1992 , 1994 ). At the same time, many of these studies showed blacks underrepresented in more sympathetic roles, such as victims of crime (Dixon & Linz, 2000a , 2000b ).

However, recent research suggests that the criminal stereotype has not remained consistently part of the news landscape. For example, Dixon ( 2017b ) found that current depictions of blacks in local news reflect actual percentages of blacks in these various roles, including as criminals. Similarly, Dixon and Williams ( 2015 ) found African Americans underrepresented as both criminals and victims. On the other hand, another recent content analysis that investigated black family depictions in the news, conducted by Dixon ( 2017a ), found that black family members were overrepresented as criminal suspects compared to crime reports.

Furthermore, Mastro, Blecha, and Atwell Seate ( 2011 ) content-analyzed articles pertaining to athletes’ criminal activity published in newspapers and found that mentions of black athletes’ criminal activity outnumber white and Latino athletes. Furthermore, mentions of criminal activity among black athletes outnumber their real-world proportion in professional sports (Mastro et al., 2011 ). In addition, crime articles discussing black athletes provide more explicit details of the crime and mention more negative consequences (e.g., jail or fines) than articles regarding white athletes. News narratives also present less sympathetic coverage for black athletes, more support for the victim, a less respectful tone, and fewer thematic frames (i.e., situating the crime in a larger context) for black athletes compared to white athletes.

Besides criminality , news tends to also depict blacks as part of the underserving poor . For example, van Doorn ( 2015 ) content-analyzed images depicting poverty in news magazines (i.e., Time, Newsweek , and USNWR ). News magazines picture blacks as the majority of persons in poverty (52%), while blacks only account for around 25% of Americans in poverty (van Doorn, 2015 ). Blacks experience similar misrepresentations as welfare recipients . Based on magazine depictions, black people comprise 55% of all welfare recipients. However, in reality, blacks only account for 38% of welfare recipients. Furthermore, the black elderly are depicted as only accounting for 1% of poor elderly persons pictured, while the true percentage is 6%. In addition, during times of economic stability, African American association with poverty increases, but during times of economic upheaval (e.g., the Great Recession) white association with poverty goes up.

Latinos in the News

If there is an overarching issue to consider regarding Latino depictions in news, it would again be their perpetual underrepresentation. Overall, Latinos remain severely underrepresented on television news, especially in sympathetic roles. For example, early studies by Dixon and Linz ( 2000a , 2000b ) found Latinos were underrepresented as perpetrators, victims, and police officers in the news. In one of these studies, Latinos were 54% of the homicide victims in Los Angeles County but were depicted as homicide victims only about 19% of the time on television news. A recent update to this study found that Latinos were accurately represented as perpetrators, but continued to be underrepresented as victims and police officers (Dixon, 2017b ). This invisibility extends to newspapers and magazines (Sorenson, Manz, & Berk, 1998 ). For example, Latinos are underrepresented in Time and Newsweek as part of the obese population, 5% in these magazines versus 18% according to medical statistics (Gollust, Eboh, & Barry, 2012 ).

When we considered the pervasive stereotype that is present with Latinos, it revolved around the issue of immigration and Latino immigrants as criminal or cultural threats . For instance, a meta-analysis (i.e., a type of method that unearths patterns of academic research) by Rendon and Johnson ( 2015 ) on studies that analyzed media coverage of Mexican affairs in the United States revealed a Threat Phase, from 2010 to 2014 . During this phase, reporters investigated the notion that immigrant Mexicans imperil the United States. Furthermore, Chavez, Whiteford, and Hoewe ( 2010 ) found that more than half of analyzed stories concerning Mexican immigration from the New York Times , Washington Post , Wall Street Journal , and USA Today focused on illegal immigration. Furthermore, within these immigration stories, crime was addressed most often (50.6%), followed by economics (e.g., job competition) (30.6%), and legislative deliberations (28.1%). Similarly, Branton and Dunaway ( 2008 ) found that English-language newspapers were almost twice as likely as Spanish-language news to depict immigration in a negative light.

Kim, Carvahlo, Davis, and Mullins ( 2011 ) found that illegal immigration stories produced by the media focus on the negative consequences of crime and job competition. A more recent study conducted by Dixon and Williams ( 2015 ) appears to confirm the media link between immigration, Latinos, and criminal behavior. They found that criminal suspects identified as immigrants in news stories were greatly overrepresented as Latino. In addition, almost all of the illegal or undocumented immigrants appearing in the news were depicted as Latino, which is a great overrepresentation based on official government reports. Dunaway, Goidel, Krizinger, and Wilkinson ( 2011 ) confirm that news coverage encourages an immigration threat narrative, meaning that the majority of immigration stories exhibit a negative tone.

Whites as the “Good Guys”

While black representations as criminal suspects does appear to vary in intensity and Latinos tend to be depicted as either invisible or threatening immigrants, white portrayals remain consistently positive in this domain. Classic studies of both news and reality-based programming show whites overrepresented as officers and victims (Dixon et al., 2003 ; Dixon & Linz, 2000a , 2000b ; Oliver, 1994 ). This includes network and local news programs. More recent studies show that this continues to occur regularly and remains a news programming staple (Dixon, 2017b ). When contrasted with black and Latino representations, this reinforces the notion that whites resolve social problems and people of color create social problems.

Summary of News Constructions of Culture, Race, and Media

Based on this literature review, three significant findings that summarize news’ construction of race and ethnicity emerge. First, African Americans tend to be overly associated with criminality and poverty . However, the intensity of these portrayals depends on context (e.g., a focus on families, athletes, or general economic conditions). Second, Latinos tend to be largely underrepresented, but when they are seen, they tend to be overly associated with problematic illegal immigration , especially immigrants who may pose a threat or be prone to criminality. Third, news depicts whites most favorably, overrepresenting them as victims (e.g., innocent portrayals) and officers (e.g., heroic portrayals).

Digital Media Constructions of Culture, Race, and Media

The vast majority of research detailing the portrayal of people of color in the media relied on the analysis of traditional media sources including television and magazines. However, increasingly, people turn to digital media for both entertainment and news. This section provides an overview of this growing industry that will eventually dominate our media landscape. The discussion first entails video games and Internet news websites. Speculation about the role social media will play with regard to these depictions follows.

Black Depictions in Video Games

An abundance of research focuses on racial representation within video games (Burgess, Dill, Stermer, Burgess, & Brown, 2011 ; Williams, Martins, Consalvo, & Ivory, 2009 ). Similar to traditional entertainment media, African Americans comprise approximately 11% of popular video game characters for major game systems (e.g., Xbox 360, PlayStation 2, Nintendo GameCube) (Williams et al., 2009 ). Conversely, blacks are underrepresented in massive multiplayer online games (MMO) in which players customize their own avatars’ features, including gender and skin tone (Waddell, Ivory, Conde, Long, & McDonnell, 2014 ). In this environment only 3.84% of all unique characters within MMOs are black.

When considering gender differences in portrayals, more problematic depictions exist. For instance, black women are underrepresented in gaming magazines and almost completely absent from video game covers (Burgess et al., 2011 ). Meanwhile, black men are typically portrayed as either athletic and/or violent . Black aggression does not occur in socially sanctioned settings (e.g., war). Instead, many black males appear as outlaws (e.g., street fighters).

Black Depictions in Digital News Sources

There is limited research on news depictions and race within digital media contexts, but this will most likely become the focus of future scholarship over the next few years. This focus will be fueled by the rise of political figures, such as Donald Trump, who utilize media stereotypes to advance their political agendas (Dixon, 2017a ). Much of what we do know stems from research on websites and digital news sources. One earlier study of this phenomena found that African Americans were underrepresented as part of images and headlines used in these web news stories (Josey et al., 2009 ). They were also more strongly associated with poverty than what the actual poverty rates suggest. A more recent analysis of a wide variety of online news sources similarly found that black families were overrepresented as poor and welfare dependent (Dixon, 2017a ). In addition, black fathers were misrepresented as excessively absent from the lives of their children. Finally, African American family members were overrepresented as criminal suspects. These findings complement the traditional news conclusions reached by previous scholars.

Latino Depictions in Video Games

Waddell, Ivory, Conde, Long, and McDonnell ( 2014 ) found that the trend of Latino underrepresentation in media extends to the video game industry. Latino avatars were not observed in the highest grossing MMO games in 2010 (0%). Williams, Martins, Consalvo, and Ivory ( 2009 ) also assessed the racial characteristics of video game characters across 150 games and found that white characters were observed more often (59.32%) than Latino (1.63%) characters. Furthermore, Latino characters were never observed assuming primary roles.

Latino Depictions in Digital News Sources

In terms of digital news sources, the research presents extremely similar findings between Latinos and African Americans. Latinos continue to be largely underrepresented across a variety of roles in web news (Josey et al., 2009 ). They are underrepresented in both headlines and images. They are also likely to be overassociated with poverty (Dixon, 2017a ; Josey et al., 2009 ).

Summary of Digital Constructions of Culture, Race, and Ethnicity

In summary, underrepresentation remains the norm for both African Americans and Latinos in digital media. At the same time, digital news overly associates these groups with poverty . Clearly, as traditional media and its audience migrate to new digital platforms, this area will continue to be researchers’ focus well into the future. One digital platform not mentioned is social media. Many users receive, consume, and share entertainment and news content via social media. This includes music and music fandom content (Epps & Dixon, 2017 ). Social media’s specific and unique characteristics may contribute to media stereotype cultivation and prevent positive intergroup contact (Dixon, 2017c ). Much work needs to be undertaken in the future to explore these possibilities.

Conclusions

This article began with a discussion of the possible impact of mediated stereotypes to contextualize our discussion. Social categorization theory, social identity theory, and priming/cognitive accessibility suggest that the prominent black stereotypes of black laziness , criminality , innate athleticism , jezebel, and poverty would be embraced by heavy media consumers. Similarly, even though Latinos remain underrepresented, the reinforcement of Latino stereotypes like poverty , harlot , criminal , and illegal immigrant would result from regular media consumption. While underrepresented, Latinos receive enough mainstream media attention for scholars to conduct quantitative social research. Asian and Native Americans’ underrepresentation in mainstream media, however, indicates these groups’ general absence.

When educators teach these topics in class, they are often asked: Why? Why does media perpetuate these stereotypes? Consider these two prominent answers. First, media creators suffer from mostly unconscious, and sometimes conscious bias, that scholars believe facilitates an ethnic blame discourse (Dixon & Linz, 2000a ; Romer, Jamieson, & de Coteau, 1998 ; Van Dijk, 1993 ).

This discourse tends to occur within groups (e.g., whites conversing with one another) and leads them to blame social problems on ethnic others (e.g., Latinos and blacks). Given that media producers remain overwhelmingly white, this explanation appears plausible. As white people engage in these discussions, their way of thinking manifests in their content. The second explanation revolves around the structural limitations and economic interests of news agencies (Dixon & Linz, 2000a ). This explanation suggests that media agencies air material most appealing to audiences in the simplest form possible to increase ratings. This process heavily relies on stereotypes because stereotypes make processing and attending to media messages easier for audience members. In turn, profits increase. This points to problems related to the relationship between media content creation and the media industry’s profit motives. Skeptics may question these explanations’ plausibility, but overall, mediated stereotypes remain a persistent part of the media environment. Digital media exacerbate the negative effects of mediated stereotype consumption.

Media uses representations to engage us, and students can benefit from learning how

By Jo Flack

A young, diverse teenager is on her bed, lying on her front, and smiling as she looks at her phone.

X (formerly Twitter)

Representations in media engage audiences in order to communicate ideas, information, knowledge or emotions.

Some media goals are simple: sell products and services, such as a movie ticket, a burger or insurance. Other goals are more complex, such as constructing meaning and suggesting points of view around complex issues like global warming, race or gender.

The media industry is built on the assumption that representations that appeal to media consumers will attract bigger audiences.

Representations in media products influence both beliefs and behaviours, which in turn results in greater income for content creators and those who employ them.

Representations have become more sophisticated

The idea of representation is not new. The first cave paintings were representations as are the latest images in an Instagram feed.

A heart has long been a representation of love, but today we’re less likely to send a Valentine’s Day card than click on a ❤ emoji or share a #love TikTok.

This is, in part, due to the way we think of love these days and partly due to the ease of expressing this emotion online.

Once a largely private and romantic experience, today social media allows us to construct a representation of love to share with a range of audiences.

We might ❤ a football team, a cup of coffee or an image of a friend’s cat. We understand both the emotion and the ways it can be represented as we read media messages in context.

Over time, representations have become increasingly sophisticated, building on each other and what has come before, morphing and developing as audiences evolve and technologies allow greater user participation.

A close-up of a hand pressing the heart icon on a social media app on a smartphone.

Everyone makes media

Today we all create media content, representing ideas for personal audiences such our friends and family. As a result the nature of audience engagement has also changed as we move between media forms and platforms. Sometimes we are part of a mass audience, at other times we are an audience of individuals.

Regardless of the size and type of audience, representations still suggest ideas and sell products as they inform and entertain.

Media success can be measured by both corporations and individuals as they measure the number of views, likes, retweets or comments.

But the line between audience and creator has shifted. With the shift to interactivity, we are all still audiences, but at different times we are also users, members, subscribers, consumers, viewers, listeners, buyers, players, gamers, contributors, commentators, lurkers, influencers and creators.

The proliferation of this terminology reveals much about the changing relationship between the media, its audiences and creators —and about changes in society.

Audiences are primed to prioritise engagement over analysis

Media creators produce works that are designed to influence us in a particular way. This is termed their “preferred reading”.

As audiences, we respond to media representations based on both our understanding of them and the context in which we consume them. Media experts call this process “making a reading”.

We almost never think about the differences between a media creator’s preferred reading and our own. Our readings are mostly instantaneous and subconscious. We accept or reject media representations in the moment based on our understanding of them, which is in turn based on our culture, experience and the emotions they generate.

The media is good at its job and so are its audiences. As experienced and expert instantaneous decoders we laugh, cry, yell, hide our faces or click as we read and respond to media messages.

We’re usually not so interested in thinking about how and why representations are constructed, and we almost never interrogate our reactions and emotions.

But with a bit of practice, it’s possible to engage and analyse simultaneously. Believe it or not this makes the media even more entertaining.

Who is making and promoting this media product? How is it constructed and distributed? Why has it been constructed in this way, and what is its impact?

When thinking about the media’s impact on audiences, begin with yourself and then think of others.

Analysing our own readings can help us think more clearly about how others may react. This method helps us become more analytical and less judgy.

Big picture and fine detail

Get in the habit of asking both the big questions about the role of representations in the media and the small ones about how individual representations have been constructed.

Big picture questions might include:

Who is the market for this content?
Why was this media product created?
Who stands to gain from the production and consumption of this media product?
What is the preferred reading of representations in this product?
What do these media representations say about the society in which they were created or distributed?
How would this content be received and read in different societies?

Fine-detail questions will vary and be specific to individual representations but might include:

How did the creator structure the message?
Why is that font so dominant?
Why is the character costumed in that way?
What does the use of colour reveal?
What is the impact of that camera angle and movement?
What does the use of sound such as dialogue, music and effects contribute?
How does a particular editing technique make me feel?

New business models and ethical challenges

Audiences have embraced social media — it fits our busy lives, creating connections that are not possible through mainstream media. But like anything new, social media has also created issues and dilemmas that couldn’t have been foreseen.

Every click is harvested, analysed and sold to creators and advertisers who use your tastes, preferences and media-usage patterns to direct your attention to content that is formulated to appeal to you.

It’s no longer possible for parents and teachers to monitor the media use of the young people in their care as was once the case, and while the world is now in our pockets, social media content and industry practices are not always safe or ethical.

The greatest challenge is to balance the positives and negatives by keeping the lines of communication open and educating all stakeholders — parents, teachers, young people and legislators — about its possibilities and problems while celebrating all that social media has to offer.

One thing is certain: it is our future.

Jo Flack is a teacher of over 40 years, specialising in the relationship between media and society. She is an author, a curriculum developer and an assessor, passionate about the possibilities new media offers individuals, communities and the world while being realistic and analytical about the challenges it creates.

Visit ABC Education for more media literacy resources, including classroom activities that explore representations in social media.

It’s all about the socials: classroom activities that explore representations in social media

Four young high school students stand in a circle and stare down at their phones.

A guide to statistical literacy in the classroom

Activity: Could we live in a world without news?

Use The News: In media arts or across the curriculum

The News Diet Challenge toolkit

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Representation of Diversity in Media – Overview

Media representation issues

What we see – and don’t see – in media affects how we view reality. Media works can be imagined either as mirrors that reflect an audience’s own experience, windows that give them access to experiences they otherwise wouldn’t have known, or in some cases both. Rosemary Truglio, Senior Vice President of Sesame Workshop, described the diverse cast of Sesame Street as giving children “a mirror for them to see themselves, and (…) a window for them to learn about others." [1]

Sesame Street was a milestone in representation of race and disability in children’s media.

Media portrayals may provide different audiences with mirrors but not windows, or vice-versa, and a lack of either can have a negative impact. For members of historically under-represented groups, “when you have never seen yourself in books or movies or music, the first time you do is stunning.” [2] Similarly, “for children from dominant groups, window moments in stories come when the children realize they hold a powerful place in society and that there is something unjust about this.” [3] Unfortunately, fewer than half of Canadians feel that “Canadian media is a mirror in which all Canadians can see themselves.” [4]

In mass media, these issues typically play out in three ways:

Under-representation : Many groups have historically been under-represented in media. Even today, we are less likely to encounter many forms of diversity in mass media than we are in real life – and diverse communities are typically even less well-represented behind the scenes than onscreen. Under-representation can also make other representation issues worse because less representation means fewer opportunities for authentic representations of diversity within a group.

Besides being simply under-represented, groups may also be de-centred. That means making them or their culture a backdrop for more “mainstream” (e.g. White, abled, cisgender, etc.) protagonists. In some cases this may take the form of having a White character that excels in skills associated with a non-White culture, such as martial arts; stories where characters from under-represented groups need a White or other majority-culture character to “save” them; [5] and cases where aspects of an under-represented culture literally act as a prop. [6]

Stereotyping : This means portraying members of a particular group in just one or a small number of roles. This is particularly worrying when the stereotype is a negative one, but stereotyping can also do harm by only portraying a group in a narrow way. Even so-called “positive stereotypes” can have a negative effect because they limit how we see members of that group, as well as how we see ourselves. For example, if you belong to a group that is stereotyped as being good at sports, but are not particularly athletic, you may feel inadequate for being bad at something you’re “supposed” to be good at.

Another form of stereotyping is exoticizing , emphasizing the ways in which a character or culture are different from the (presumed) audience’s: for instance by overemphasizing aspects of a culture that mainstream audiences are most likely to find strange or disturbing, or by relying on things like accents or stereotyped characteristics for humour. Its most extreme form is othering , in which groups are shown as being fundamentally different from the audience and, in some cases, even as not being fully human.

Stereotyping can also happen when diverse identities always play the same role in the story. Author Corinne Duyvis identifies three ways that a character’s identity may be part of a work: “issue” stories where the identity and the challenges that come with it are what the story is about; “incidental” stories where a character’s identity is apparent but not relevant to the story, such as the main character’s sexual orientation in the Disney film Strange World, which provides a romantic subplot but is never specifically commented on; and “middle ground” stories where the identity is not the focus of the story but is recognized as always being relevant . As Duyvis puts it, “ableism, homophobia, and racism influence countless aspects of people’s everyday lives.” None of these is necessarily better than the other: what is most important is that audiences see all three kinds of stories, so that while marginalized communities’ specific issues and challenges are reflected in media they are also allowed to simply be . [7]

Whitewashing : While it has become rare for White actors to play Black or Asian characters, it remains common for disabled people, 2SLGBTQ+ people and other groups to be played by actors from outside those communities. Similarly, when works are adapted from one medium to another – such as when a book or comic is made into a movie or TV show – it is still fairly common for diverse characters to be changed into White ones, or for characters’ sexual orientation or disabilities to be downplayed or altered.

It’s important to point out that whitewashing only occurs when a character from a historically under-represented group is changed or recast so they are no longer part of that group, leading to reduced representation for that group and less diversity overall. For instance, the casting of a White actor to play an Asian character in the film Doctor Strange would count as whitewashing, while the casting of a Black actor to play a White character in the same film would not. [8]

These three issues are related, of course. Whitewashing contributes to both under-representation and stereotyping, as there are both fewer representations of historically under-represented groups in general and, in particular, fewer authentic representations. Similarly, under-representation contributes to and increases the impact of stereotypes because having fewer characters representing a particular group means fewer opportunities to show members of that group playing different roles in stories and in society.

For more examples of how these apply to different communities, see the specific articles on how each group is represented.

Impacts of media representation

All of these representation issues can have significant effects, both on audiences who are members of historically under-represented groups and those who aren’t. Seeing one’s own group stereotyped can lead to stress, negative self-image [9] and impaired academic achievement, [10] while being exposed to stereotyped portrayals of others can contribute to implicit or explicit prejudice. [11] Even more than changing individual attitudes, media portrayals – because they are seen as representing how others view a group – can have an impact on broader social attitudes towards different groups. [12] At the same time, exposure to authentic portrayals of oneself can improve self-esteem and promote a more positive view of one’s identity [13] or even improve academic performance, [14] while seeing authentic portrayals of other groups – which do not have to be uniformly positive ones [15] – can actually reduce prejudice. [16]

“Works of art are the only silver bullet we have against racism and sexism and hatred […] Art engenders empathy in a way that politics doesn’t, and in a way that nothing else really does. Art creates change in people’s hearts. But it happens slowly.” [17] Lin-Manuel Miranda

There can be significant impacts if different groups are not represented behind the scenes, as well. In mass media, under-representation behind the scenes generally results in under-representation on the screen, but it can also contribute to stereotyping as the portrayals are less likely to be authentic. [18] In digital media, not having historically under-represented groups involved at the design and management levels can lead to their experiences and concerns being ignored or treated as afterthoughts.

For more examples of how these affect different communities, see the specific articles on how each group is represented.

Intersectionality

While the other articles in this section address media portrayals of different groups separately, it’s important to point out that for many people they are not experienced that way. Many people identify with more than one historically marginalized or under-represented group, particularly when gender is added to the equation. Legal scholar Kimberlé Williams Crenshaw coined the term “intersectionality” to conceptualize “the way that different identity markers, such as race, gender, sexuality, and class, interact and affect each other.” [19]

Intersectionality does not mean that the impacts of different identities (including stereotyping) simply add on to one another, but that they transform and sometimes conflict with one another. East Asian women are frequently hypersexualized in media, [20] for example, while for East Asian men the stereotype is often the reverse. [21] However, audiences tend to consider just one aspect of intersectional identities. [22] When the stereotypes associated with two identities conflict with one another, people who identify with both may face confusion [23] or even hostility [24] from others.

It’s important to consider intersectionality both when making media and when critiquing it. For media makers, “shows and movies that attempt to lift up marginalized communities without thinking about intersectionality are only perpetuating different systems of prejudice and oppression.” [25] As well, some intersections may be an easier “sell” than others, both to audiences and the media industry. While the title character of House M.D. (2004-2012) both had a physical disability and was an outspoken atheist, he was also White; conversely, the showrunner of the currently running (2022) series Abbott Elementary said of one character’s canonical but unseen agnosticism “I honestly don’t know if we would be able to present that on ABC. It may not seem a big deal, but for a Black girl in Philadelphia — there are very few agnostic people.” [26]

When critiquing media, we should consider not just whether individual characters are stereotyped but whether a broad range of diversity, including intersecting identities, is represented. [27] As well, we should make a point of recognizing authentic portrayals of intersectionality in media, such as Reservation Dogs and Hawkeye. Finally, taking an intersectional approach to media education means considering other digital media issues – from cyberbullying to advertising to digital access and privacy – through an intersectional lens: not assuming, for example, that only White youth suffer from body image issues, and giving all young people a chance to confront the distinct ways that those issues affect them. [28]

Alaqua Cox as Maya Lopez, a.k.a. Echo, in the Disney series Hawkeye.

Maya Lopez from the Disney Plus series Hawkeye is Deaf and Indigenous, as is the actor who plays her, Alaqua Cox.

The importance of media education

Young people’s attitudes towards media representation changes over time. Children under nine don’t generally question whether what they see in media reflects their reality unless they are prompted to by parents or teachers. Tween and teens typically begin to become aware of media representation issues, especially if they are members of under-represented or stereotyped groups. By their later teens many actively seek out works with better representation. [29]

Media education can help young people put current images and messages into perspective by helping them understand how the media work, why stereotyping exists, how decisions are made and why it matters who is involved in making media works. Digital media literacy, especially if it explicitly addresses stereotyping and other media representation issues, can correct misperceptions of and prejudices towards other groups. [30] For young people who see stereotyped depictions of themselves in media works, media literacy can also mitigate negative effects on their self-esteem. [31]

Media education has also been shown to be an effective way of approaching issues like racism, providing a way of discussing difficult topics that feels safer while still challenging students’ assumptions and preconceptions [32] and can also help students affected by stereotyping deal with its effects. [33] Talking about media portrayals of diversity, especially positive ones, can also be a way of affirming students’ identities and encouraging them to create works that reflect those identities.

Positive portrayals don’t just avoid stereotyping, under-representation and the other issues identified above. They also:

take the extra step of authentically portraying the challenges that members of under-represented communities face, such as racism or accessibility issues;
tell stories of characters’ accommodations, resilience and agency in the face of those challenges; and
show characters in the context of, and connected to, their communities. [34]

Media education is not about learning the right answers; it’s about consuming media images with an active, critical mind and asking the right questions.

Here are a few examples of the types of questions that could lead to a better understanding of how different groups are represented depicted in media:

Who selected or created these images and stories? Why does it matter who made these selections?

The first principle in media education is that nothing is objective—each and every media production is created with a viewpoint and for a purpose. The “reality” depicted in film or television productions is the result of many choices and each of these choices is based on the experience, knowledge and bias of the producers involved. More important than any conscious choices are the questions media makers don’t ask – the things they believe they already know. When members of historically marginalized groups are not involved in making shows, movies, news coverage or other media featuring them, it shows.

It’s also important to understand that media can have very different meanings depending on who made them, and that marginalized groups may “reclaim” stereotyped portrayals for their own purposes.

Whose voices are being heard? Whose voices are absent? Why?

Who is interviewed on a current affairs program? Which “experts” are chosen for sound bites on an issue? Whose perspectives are ignored completely? If characters or cultures representing a historically marginalized group are represented in a media text, have the creators of that text made significant efforts to consult with those communities, as Disney did when making Frozen II and Moana ? [35]

The question of whose voices are heard isn’t just important in mass media. While digital technology has made it easier than ever for people to make and share their own media, the online platforms where they share their work – whose ownership and workforce remain overwhelmingly White [36] – do not provide sufficient moderation and tools to push back against hate speech, they may fall silent in the face of online harassment. [37]

Why are certain stories selected or privileged and others not? Are some groups only represented in a small number of frames or contexts? Are characters representing diverse communities shown as real human beings in media, or are they defined exclusively by their identity? Do depictions respect differences and diversity within these communities?

Media producers, especially those in Hollywood, have used members of historically marginalized groups to tell mainstream cultures’ stories for generations. Rarely are diverse characters given complex personalities or autonomous roles. Rarely do they rely on their own values and judgements, or act upon their own motivations. Although efforts have been made to undo this tradition, old stereotypes die hard. [38]

This question highlights why it’s important not to look just as specific media works, but at the bigger picture. Each individual game, movie, or TV show with a White, non-disabled, cisgender, heterosexual, non-denominational Christian protagonist does not necessarily matter by itself, but when all of these are seen as the default identity for a main character it sends a powerful message about who can be the “main character” and who cannot.

How do commercial considerations, including the “conventional wisdom” in the industry, lead to issues around stereotyping and representation?

Commercial considerations are often given as a reason for excluding members of historically under-represented communities, whether explicitly (such as the assumption that White audiences won’t see movies with non-White leads) [39] or implicitly (by saying, for instance, that a movie needs a “big-name” lead to be successful – without saying out loud that most of those big names are White, non-disabled, heterosexual and cisgender). [40] While this industry conventional wisdom has been proven to be false, it’s still widely held. [41]

Characteristics of different media industries, in different countries, can also have an impact on whether diversity is represented. The Canadian television industry is often described as highly risk-averse, with licensing American shows seen as a safer bet than developing Canadian ones. As a result, when diversity does appear on private Canadian channels such as Global and CTV, it more often reflects the population of the United States than Canada’s. When private broadcasters do make original programming, they tend to play it safe – which usually means making shows aimed at White audiences. [42] As the report Deciding on Diversity puts it, “Risk narratives about equity-seeking stories and storytellers persist to preserve the status quo.” [43] Nathalie Younglai, founder of BIPOC TV and Film, paraphrases TV executives’ attitudes more bluntly: “How is this Canadian? How does someone in Saskatchewan relate to this?” [44]

Similarly, digital technology companies claim to be motivated by market pressures in deciding things like which languages digital assistants should be able to speak; this, too, often fails to hold true in the light of accurate data – Apple’s Siri, for instance, is offered in Finnish (which has about five million native speakers) but not Swahili (which has nearly a hundred million). [45]

How can different audiences “read against” or negotiate the meaning of a work with representation issues?

Some audiences, especially those from groups that have traditionally been marginalized in media industries, may engage in “resistant reading,” interpreting works in ways that are directly contrary to the generally received meaning. Nevertheless, it is true that, as bell hooks put it, “While audiences are clearly not passive and are able to pick and choose, it is simultaneously true that there are certain ‘received’ messages that are rarely mediated by the will of the audience.” [46]

In other words, while we don’t automatically accept the surface meaning of media works, most of us will take away a meaning that is fairly close to it. Only a small number of people, mostly those whose identity or experience lead them to a resistant reading, will have a significantly different interpretation. Until members of these groups have more meaningful participation in the media industries, however, neither the portrayals nor the mainstream audience’s interpretation of them are likely to change.

Resistant reading is also easier in some media than others: in most video games, for instance, ‘resistant play’ – choosing actions other than the ones the designers assume you will take – will prevent you from progressing very far in the game. [47]

How may the codes and conventions of the medium and genre perpetuate stereotyping and representation issues?

Both different media (such as TV, film or video games) and different genres (science fiction, advertising, animation, et cetera) have their own codes and conventions that may lead media makers to fall into stereotyping or under-representation, often unconsciously. For example, both advertising and news (especially headlines) have to grab the audience’s attention right away and communicate information in a small amount of time. As a result they often use stereotypes as a kind of “shorthand” that allows the audience to fill in what they already know (or think they know). Similarly, animation and comics – and works in other media that are based on comic or cartoon characters – often have characters whose racist origins are still apparent, or for whom traits like facial scarring, prosthetic limbs or stereotypically Jewish features serve as visual markers of villainy.

Even when media works try to confront racism, homophobia and other issues, there may be fundamental features of certain media, like the episodic nature of news and the focus in fictional media on individual characters, that lead them to portray these primarily as something perpetrated by individuals and downplay their systemic qualities. [48]

How can digital tools and platforms give voice to historically marginalized communities? How may they contribute to marginalization?

Unlike traditional media, there are no one-way connections in digital media. You can share content with other people as easily as a producer or distributor shares it with you. As a result, the barriers to participation are much lower than in traditional media and anyone can publish content and find an audience. But while power in networks is not hierarchical, neither is it evenly distributed: it rests in the nodes with the most links. This means that those who had gatekeeping power in the old media environment have had their influence reduced, but not eliminated.

For instance, while online publishing has made it possible for historically under-represented groups to “restory themselves” by making versions of popular culture works that include and even centre their own experiences, [49] online platforms also have tremendous power to either promote or suppress the same voices through the algorithms that determine what is shown or recommended to users. [50] As the historian of science Melvin Kranzberg put it, different technologies are neither inherently good nor inherently bad, but neither are they neutral: [51] like mass media, they reflect the beliefs, unconscious biases and unquestioned assumptions of their creators.

As a result, the impacts that networked technology have had on historically under-represented groups are complex. Online spaces can provide diverse communities, especially those that are geographically far-flung, with an ‘ecosystem’ that would not be possible with traditional media; [52] at the same time, content moderation systems can apply censorship that is more absolute than was ever found in film and television, limiting the ability of marginalized youth to access relevant health information, [53] to monetize content that reflects their community [54] and even to speak the name of their identity. [55]

Technical tools have an impact on how we use them not just through their affordances (what can be done with them) but also their defaults (what we are expected to do with them). For example, one study of video games found that while 23 percent had affordances that allowed players to choose their character’s race, 60 percent of those defaulted to a White character unless the player actively changed it. [56] Whether or not members of diverse communities were involved in the design of those affordances and defaults may determine whether they work successfully when used in or by those communities: a review of facial algorithms found that they were at least ten times as likely to mis-identify a Black or East Asian face as a White one, [57] for example, and many digital assistants such as Siri and Alexa routinely misunderstand Black users. [58]

Networked media can also make it possible, or easier, for marginalized groups to experience harms that were not possible or less likely with traditional media. One of these is amplification: [59] for example, the frictionless quality of networked media allows hate groups to broadcast their messages more widely and to tailor them to potential audiences at different levels of the “radicalization pyramid.” Amplification does not only apply to intentional acts, though. It can also reflect a harm that already exists and make it more widespread by embedding it in the operation of a networked tool – for example, for many years Google searches for terms such as “Asian girls” and “Black girls” returned primarily pornographic results, reflecting how they were most often used in the wider internet, while “White girls” did not. [60] Questions as simple as who appears in an image search for “doctor” or “happy family” can have a huge impact on how different groups are perceived. [61]

Google search results for "happy family", showing only white families

A Google image search for “happy family” conducted in March 2022.

As with the other search terms mentioned above, Google has taken some positive steps in this regard as a result of consumer pressure. [62] This demonstrates why a key part of media education is empowering young people to make their voices heard through making and publishing their own media, as well as to push back against stereotypes and other misrepresentations in media and to use digital tools to make a difference in their online and offline communities.

MediaSmarts lessons that teach students to make their voices heard through media making include Representing Ourselves Online , Avatars and Body Image , Bias in News Sources , First Person and Art Exchange .
MediaSmarts’ guide Talk Back! How to Take Action on Media Issues explains the rules and codes that apply to different media industries on issues such as stereotyping and representation and includes some advice on how to use social networks to speak out on a media issue.
Speak Up! Your Guide to Changing the World, Online and Off explains how to use digital tools like social networks to share your views and organize others in making change.

How can educators limit resistance and backlash when addressing diversity in media?

Two of the most common risks of addressing diversity representation in media are resistance – in which students challenge the validity of media education as practice, such as by dismissing the work under study as “just an ad” or suggesting that the teacher is reading meaning into a work that isn’t there – and backlash , in which students feel the teacher is pushing their own views or interpretations, rather than encouraging students to articulate and argue their own.

One way of minimizing these is having young people explore questions, such as the ones listed above, rather than leading them towards a pre-ordained conclusion. While it is important to make them aware of the facts of representation in media, conclusions about the implications of those facts – and appropriate responses – should emerge from critical thinking and discussion.

Another important approach is to help students understand the key concept that all media have social and political implications – and that when they appear not to, it’s because they reinforce how you already see the world. Similarly, while we may be tempted to dismiss the importance of entertainment media relative to things like news, we are actually more likely to be persuaded by works that “transport” us and bypass our critical minds. [63]

As well, highlight to students that it is possible for a media work to be problematic in some aspects of its portrayal of diversity but successful in others. The 2016 film Doctor Strange , for instance, had many problematic elements in its portrayal of cultural diversity but also a fairly nuanced representation of the main character’s disability and his efforts to accommodate it. [64]

Perhaps most importantly, it’s important to teach students from early on that critiquing a part of something doesn’t mean you don’t like it, nor does critiquing a work mean that you’re criticizing anyone who likes it. Criticizing our children’s media choices can easily make them feel we’re criticizing them. There is a difference between a media work that was motivated by racism or sexism and one where it’s the result of the media-maker not questioning their assumptions or the “conventional wisdom” of their industry. Most of the time, the messages in the things they make aren’t on purpose but because of things they assumed or questions they didn’t think to ask. (It’s important to understand that the people who make media aren’t necessarily media literate in the critical sense.)

As Turner Classic Movies host Jacqueline Stewart points out, this is a distinction that people in historically under-represented groups often learn early. Describing a childhood viewing of Gone With the Wind, Stewart notes that “Black audiences have always juggled the pleasures and problems of mainstream media. I was learning that you can enjoy a film even as you are critiquing it." [65] Of course, we also have to make a habit of studying accurate representations as well as critiquing negative ones – and recognize that a work may be positive in some aspects but problematic in others.

There may also be backlash from students relating specifically to the topic of diversity representation. This can be a result of a belief in the value of colour-blindness; though generally well-meaning, this attitude has been shown to contribute to prejudice, rather than reducing it, because it denies the identities and experiences of historically under-represented groups and prevents us from addressing the challenges and injustices they face. [66] Instead, stereotypes need to be acknowledged and faced head-on. As Jeffrey Adam Smith, author of Are We Born Racist? , puts it, “When we encounter a ‘slant-eyed, Oriental mastermind’ (to quote one old comic of mine), I stop, close the book, and tell [my son] that image is a product of prejudice, and that I think prejudice is wrong. I try to answer any questions he has. Then I re-open the book… and keep reading.” [67]

Young people may also want to distance themselves from a sense that they are accused of being prejudiced, or that they benefit from a prejudiced system. To explore different ways of addressing this, see our article on Privilege in the Media and our guide to Complicated Conversations in the Classroom .

For more tips on how to approach digital media literacy, see our article on Digital Media Literacy Fundamentals .

[1] Fried, A. (2019) “50 years of ‘Sesame Street’ diversity.” Axios. Retrieved from https://www.axios.com/sesame-street-50-years-diversity-fbf12f39-3e48-4c07-9eb3-d43d9ed3ec43.html

[2] Laughlin, A. (2017) “Why it’s so powerful to see yourself represented in pop culture.” The Washington Post.

[3] Cunningham, K. (2013) “‘What does this book have to do with me?’ Why mirror and window books are important for all readers.” The Open Book Blog. Retrieved from https://blog.leeandlow.com/2013/02/04/what-does-this-book-have-to-do-with-me-why-mirror-and-window-books-are-important-for-all-readers/

[4] (2017) “Cultural Diversity in Canadian Media.” Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission. Retrieved from https://epe.lac-bac.gc.ca/100/200/301/pwgsc-tpsgc/por-ef/crtc/2017/063-16-e/report.html

[5] Hughey, M. (2015) The Whiteness of Oscar Night. Contexts . Retrieved from https://contexts.org/blog/the-whiteness-of-oscar-night/

[6] Szeto, W. (2022) Cultural faux pas in Netflix show draws ire from Japanese people in Canada and beyond. CBC News. Retrieved from https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/british-columbia/netflix-cobra-kai-japanese-culture-misrepresentation-1.6362229

[7] Duyvis, C. (2014) Diverse characters: Corinne Duyvis on the decline of “issue” books. The Guardian . Retrieved from https://www.theguardian.com/childrens-books-site/2014/oct/17/decline-of-issue-books-incidental-diversity

[8] Yee, L. (2016) “Asian American Media Group Blasts Tilda Swinton Casting in ‘Doctor Strange.’” Variety . Retrieved from https://variety.com/2016/film/news/doctor-strange-whitewashing-ancient-one-tilda-swinton-manaa-1201908555/

[9] Appel, M., & Weber, S. (2021). Do mass mediated stereotypes harm members of negatively stereotyped groups? A meta-analytical review on media-generated stereotype threat and stereotype lift. Communication Research , 48 (2), 151-179.

[10] Appel, M., & Weber, S. (2021). Do mass mediated stereotypes harm members of negatively stereotyped groups? A meta-analytical review on media-generated stereotype threat and stereotype lift. Communication Research , 48 (2), 151-179.

[11] Mastro, D., & Stamps, D. (2018). An examination of racial/ethnic inclusion in the media and the implications of exposure on audiences. Mediated communication , 341-358.

[12] Charlesworth, T. E., & Banaji, M. R. (2019). Patterns of implicit and explicit attitudes II. Long-term change and stability, regardless of group membership. American Psychologist .

[13] Mastro, D., & Stamps, D. (2018). An examination of racial/ethnic inclusion in the media and the implications of exposure on audiences. Mediated communication , 341-358.

[14] Riley, E. (2018). Role models in movies: the impact of Queen of Katwe on students' educational attainment. The Review of Economics and Statistics , 1-48.

[15] Schiappa, E., Gregg, P. B., & Hewes, D. E. (2005). The parasocial contact hypothesis. Communication monographs , 72 (1), 92-115.

[16] Alrababah, A., Marble, W., Mousa, S., & Siegel, A. (2019). Can exposure to celebrities reduce prejudice? The effect of Mohamed Salah on Islamophobic behaviors and attitudes.

[17] DiGiacomo, F. (2015) “‘Hamilton’’s Lin-Manuel Miranda on Finding Originality, Racial Politics (and Why Trump Should See His Show.)” The Hollywood Reporter . Retrieved from https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/movies/movie-features/hamiltons-lin-manuel-miranda-finding-814657/

[18] World Economic Forum. (2021) Reflecting Society: The State of Diverse Representation in Media and Entertainment. Retrieved from http://www3.weforum.org/docs/WEF_The_State_of_Diverse_Representation_in_Media_and_Entertainment_2021.pdf

[19] Baten, J. (2021) “More Than an Afterthought: Authentically Representing Intersectionality in Media.” Center for Scholars and Storytellers. Retrieved from https://www.scholarsandstorytellers.com/blog-main/diversity-in-hollywood-the-importance-of-representing-intersectional-identities

[20] Ramirez, R. (2021) “The history of fetishizing Asian women.” Vox. Retrieved from https://www.vox.com/22338807/asian-fetish-racism-atlanta-shooting

[21] Kung, A. (2020) “The desexualization of the Asian American male.” CNN. Retrieved from https://www.cnn.com/style/article/andrew-kung-asian-american-men/index.html

[22] Petsko, C. D., Rosette, A. S., & Bodenhausen, G. V. Through the Looking Glass: A Lens-Based Account of Intersectional Stereotyping.

[23] Roese, K., et al. (2021) How to Diversity Autism Representation in the Media and Why Intersectionality Matters. Center for Scholars and Storytellers. Retrieved from https://www.scholarsandstorytellers.com/blog-main/how-to-diversify-autism-representation-in-the-media-and-why-intersectionality-matters

[24] Burkett, C. (2020) “’Autistic while black’: How autism amplifies stereotypes.” Spectrum News. Retrieved from https://www.spectrumnews.org/opinion/viewpoint/autistic-while-black-how-autism-amplifies-stereotypes/

[25] Baten, J. (2021) “More Than an Afterthought: Authentically Representing Intersectionality in Media.” Center for Scholars and Storytellers. Retrieved from https://www.scholarsandstorytellers.com/blog-main/diversity-in-hollywood-the-importance-of-representing-intersectional-identities

[26] Marchese, D. (2022) “Quinta Brunson Knows Why America Was Ready for Abbott Elementary. ” The New York Times .

[27] Pemberton, L. (2020) “Inclusion – ‘Wakanda forever!’ NurseryWorld. Retrieved from https://www.nurseryworld.co.uk/features/article/inclusion-wakanda-forever

[28] Tate, A. (2021) “‘Eating disorders are for white girls.’” Culture Study. Retrieved from https://annehelen.substack.com/p/eating-disorders-are-for-white-girls

[29] Dickson, J. (2022) Kids talk representation and authenticity in Being Seen report. Kidscreen.

[30] Erba, J., Chen, Y., & Kang, H. (2019). Using media literacy to counter stereotypical images of blacks and Latinos at a predominantly White University. Howard Journal of Communications , 30 (1), 1-22.

[31] Stamps, D. (2021). Media literacy as liberator: Black audiences’ adoption of media literacy, news media consumption, and perceptions of self and group members. Journal of International and Intercultural Communication , 14 (3), 240-257.

[32] Cho, H., & Johnson, P. (2020). Racism and Sexism in Superhero Movies: Critical Race Media Literacy in the Korean High School Classroom. International Journal of Multicultural Education , 22 (2), 66–86. https://doi.org/10.18251/ijme.v22i2.2427

[33] Volpe, V. V., Willis, H. A., Joseph, P., & Tynes, B. M. (2021). Liberatory media literacy as protective against posttraumatic stress for emerging adults of color. Journal of traumatic stress , 34 (5), 1045-1055.

[34] Pineau, M.G., & Handt J. (2022) Reckoning with Race in Adolescent Stories. Center for Scholars & Storytellers. Retrieved from https://www.scholarsandstorytellers.com/blog-main/reframing-adolescence-race-in-teen-stories-in-film-and-tv

[35] Simonpillai, R. (2019) “Disney signed a contract with Indigenous people before making Frozen II.” Now Toronto. Retrieved from https://nowtoronto.com/movies/news-features/disney-frozen-2-indigenous-culture-sami

[36] Dirksen, A. (2020) “Decolonizing Digital Spaces.” Published in Citizenship in a Connected Canada: A Research and Policy Agenda , Dubois and Martin-Barieteau, eds. Retrieved from https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3620179

[37] Kassam, A. (2017, July 27). First Nations leader urges Canada to prosecute “out of hand” hate speech. The Guardian. Retrieved from https://www. theguardian.com/world/2017/jul/27/canada-first-nations-hate-speech- bobby-cameron

[38] Burke, S. E. (2015). A comparative content analysis of African American and Caucasian role portrayals in broadcast television entertainment programming . Wayne State University.

[39] Jagernauth, K. (2014) “Ridley Scott Says ‘Exodus’ Would Never Get Financed Starring ‘Mohammad So-and-So From Such-And-Such’.” IndieWire . Retrieved from https://www.indiewire.com/2014/11/ridley-scott-says-exodus-would-never-get-financed-starring-mohammad-so-and-so-from-such-and-such-269706/

[40] Han, Angie. (2017) “The 8 main excuses Hollywood uses for racially insensitive casting – and why they're BS.” Mashable. Retrieved from https://mashable.com/article/movie-whitewashing-excuses

[41] Higginbotham, G.D., et al. (2020) Beyond Checking a Box: A Lack of Authentically Inclusive Representation Has Costs at the Box Office. Center for Scholars & Storytellers. Retrieved rom https://www.scholarsandstorytellers.com/s/CSS-AIR-Final-Research-Report-9bch.pdf

[42] Roberts, S. (2022) “The Superficial Diversity of Canadian TV.” The Walrus . Retrieved from https://thewalrus.ca/canadian-television/

[43] Coales, A., & Verhoeven D. (2021) Deciding on Diversity: COVID-19, Risk and Intersectional Inequality in the Canadian Film and Television Industry. Retrieved from https://wiftcanadacoalition.ca/wp-content/uploads/2021/10/DOD-Report_English_September30-2021-1.pdf

[44] Roberts, S. (2022) “The Superficial Diversity of Canadian TV.” The Walrus . Retrieved from https://thewalrus.ca/canadian-television/

[45] Rangarajan, S. (2021) “Hey, Siri: Why Don’t You Understand More People Like Me?” Mother Jones .

[46] hooks, b. (1996). Reel to reel: Race, sex, and class at the movies. New York: Routledge

[47] Barr, P., Khaled, R., Noble, J., & Biddle, R. (2006, May). Feeling strangely fine: the well-being economy in popular games. In International Conference on Persuasive Technology (pp. 60-71). Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg.

[48] Behnken, B. D., & Smithers, G. D. (2015). Racism in American Popular Media: From Aunt Jemima to the Frito Bandito. ABC-CLIO.

[49] Thomas, E. E., & Stornaiuolo, A. (2016). Restorying the self: Bending toward textual justice. Harvard Educational Review , 86 (3), 313-338.

[50] Botella, E. (2019) “TikTok Admits It Suppressed Videos by Disabled, Queer, and Fat Creators.” Slate. Retrieved from https://slate.com/technology/2019/12/tiktok-disabled-users-videos-suppressed.html

[51] Kranzberg, M. (1986). “Technology and History: Kranzberg's Laws". Technology and culture, 27(3), 544-560.

[52] Robards, B., et al. (2017) “Is there something queer about Tumblr?” Scrolling Beyond Binaries. Retrieved from https://scrollingbeyondbinaries.com/2017/01/23/is-there-something-queer-about-tumblr/

[53] Feathers, T. (2021) “Schools Use Software That Blocks LGBTQ+ Content, But Not White Supremacists.” Vice. Retrieved from https://www.vice.com/en/article/v7em39/schools-use-software-that-blocks-lgbtq-content-but-not-white-supremacists

[54] Yin, L., & Sankin A. “Google Blocks Advertisers from Targeting Black Lives Matter YouTube Videos.” The Markup. Retrieved from https://themarkup.org/google-the-giant/2021/04/09/google-blocks-advertisers-from-targeting-black-lives-matter-youtube-videos

[55] Orland, K. “Blizzard, trans clans, and the evolution of online harassment policy.” Ars Technica. Retrieved from https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2014/04/blizzard-trans-clans-and-the-evolution-of-online-harassment-policy/

[56] (n.d.) “Ethnicity in Games.” Diversity in Gaming. Retrieved from https://techtalk.currys.co.uk/tv-gaming/gaming/diversity-in-gaming/ethnicity-in-games.html

[57] Bushwick, S. (2019) “How NIST Tested Facial Recognition Algorithms for Racial Bias.” Scientific American. Retrieved from https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/how-nist-tested-facial-recognition-algorithms-for-racial-bias/

[58] Metz, C. (2020) “There Is a Racial Divide in Speech-Recognition Systems, Researchers Say.” The New York Times . Retrieved from https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/23/technology/speech-recognition-bias-apple-amazon-google.html

[59] Ko., A.J., et al. (2021) Critically Conscious Computing: Methods for Secondary Education. Retrieved from https://criticallyconsciouscomputing.org/

[60] Yin, L., & Sankin A. “Google Ad Portal Equated Black Girls with Porn.” The Markup. Retrieved from https://themarkup.org/google-the-giant/2020/07/23/google-advertising-keywords-black-girls

[61] Grant, N. (2021) “Google quietly tweaks image search for racially diverse results.” Bloomberg. Retrieved from https://www.bnnbloomberg.ca/google-quietly-tweaks-image-search-for-racially-diverse-results-1.1668661

[62] Grant, N. (2021) “Google quietly tweaks image search for racially diverse results.” Bloomberg. Retrieved from https://www.bnnbloomberg.ca/google-quietly-tweaks-image-search-for-racially-diverse-results-1.1668661

[63] Green, M. C., & Clark, J. L. (2013). Transportation into narrative worlds: implications for entertainment media influences on tobacco use. Addiction , 108 (3), 477-484.

[64] Radillo, R. (2021) Orientalism (And Disability) In Scott Derrickson’s ‘Doctor Strange’ (2016). The Daily Fandom. Retrieved from https://thedailyfandom.org/orientalism-and-disability-doctor-strange/

[65] Keegan, R. (2021) “Racist, Sexist … Classic? How Hollywood Is Dealing With Its Problematic Content.” The Hollywood Reporter . Retrieved from https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/movies/movie-news/racist-sexist-classic-how-hollywood-is-dealing-with-its-problematic-content-4141665/

[66] Blais, D. (2010) “The Perils of Colorblindness.” Greater Good Magazine . Retrieved from https://greatergood.berkeley.edu/article/item/the_perils_of_colorblindness

[67] Smith, J.A. (2012) “How to Really Read Racist Books to Your Kids.” Greater Good Magazine. Retrieved from https://greatergood.berkeley.edu/article/item/how_to_really_read_racist_books_to_your_kids

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Media representation refers to how the media portrays particular groups, communities, and experiences.

Re-Search Browser extension makes image searching gender-balanced
The Representation Project Founded by filmmaker Jennifer Siebel Newsom, who has directed two films on media representation of gender.
Sociological Images on Pinterest Collections of images around specific themes, such as Women vs People and Racial Objectification
Race in the Writers Room From Color of Change, Nov. 2017
Where We Are on TV Report 2020-2021 From GLAAD
Film Dialogue from 2,000 Screenplays, Broken Down by Gender and Age From The Pudding, April 2016
Annual Hollywood Diversity Report From UCLA

Some films below are available via Kanopy .

The Codes of Gender , 2009.

The Mask You Live In , 2015.

Miss Representation , 2011.

The Try Guys Get Photoshopped Like Women From Buzzfeed video, July 2016
Media Representation of Race & Ethnicity Overviews and lesson plan from the Critical Media Project
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representation

Quick reference.

[Latin repraesentare ‘to make present or manifest’]

1. Depicting or ‘making present’ something which is absent (e.g. people, places, events, or abstractions) in a different form: as in paintings, photographs, films, or language, rather than as a replica . See also description; compare absent presence.

2. The function of a sign or symbol of ‘standing for’ that to which it refers (its referent).

3. The various processes of production involved in generating representational texts in any medium, including the mass media (e.g. the filming, editing, and broadcasting of a television documentary). Such framings of the concept privilege authorial intention. See also auteur theory; authorial determinism; sender-oriented communication.

4. A text (in any medium) which is the product of such processes, usually regarded as amenable to textual analysis (‘a representation’).

5. What is explicitly or literally described, depicted, or denoted in a sign, text, or discourse in any medium as distinct from its symbolic meaning, metaphoric meaning, or connotations: its manifest referential content, as in ‘a representation of…’ See also mimesis; naturalism; referentiality.

6. How (in what ways) something is depicted. However ‘realistic’ texts may seem to be, they involve some form of transformation. Representations are unavoidably selective (none can ever ‘show the whole picture’), and within a limited frame, some things are foregrounded and others backgrounded: see also framing; generic representation; selective representation; stylization. In factual genres in the mass media, critics understandably focus on issues such as truth, accuracy, bias, and distortion ( see also reflectionism), or on whose realities are being represented and whose are being denied. See also dominant ideology; manipulative model; stereotyping; symbolic erasure.

7. The relation of a sign or text in any medium to its referent. In reflectionist framings, the transparent re- presentation, reflection, recording, transcription, or reproduction of a pre-existing reality ( see also imaginary signifier; mimesis; realism). In constructionist framings, the transformation of particular social realities, subjectivities, or identities in processes which are ostensibly merely re- presentations ( see also constitutive models; interpellation; reality construction). Some postmodern theorists avoid the term representation completely because the epistemological assumptions of realism seem to be embedded within it.

8. A cycle of processes of textual and meaning production and reception situated in a particular sociohistorical context ( see also circuit of communication; circuit of culture). This includes the active processes in which audiences engage in the interpretation of texts ( see also active audience theory; beholder's share; picture perception). Semiotics highlights representational codes which need to be decoded ( see also encoding/decoding model; photographic codes; pictorial codes; realism), and related to a relevant context ( see also Jakobson's model).

9. (narratology) Showing as distinct from telling (narration).

10. (mental representation) The process and product of encoding perceptual experience in the mind: see dual coding theory; gestalt laws; mental representation; perceptual codes; selective perception; selective retention.

11. A relationship in which one person (a representative) acting on behalf of another (as in law), or a political principle in which one person acts, in some sense, on behalf of a group of people, normally having been chosen by them to do so (as in representative democracies).

From: representation in A Dictionary of Media and Communication »

Subjects: Media studies

Why Representation Matters and Why It’s Still Not Enough

Reflections on growing up brown, queer, and asian american..

Posted December 27, 2021 | Reviewed by Ekua Hagan

Positive media representation can be helpful in increasing self-esteem for people of marginalized groups (especially youth).
Interpersonal contact and exposure through media representation can assist in reducing stereotypes of underrepresented groups.
Representation in educational curricula and social media can provide validation and support, especially for youth of marginalized groups.

Growing up as a Brown Asian American child of immigrants, I never really saw anyone who looked like me in the media. The TV shows and movies I watched mostly concentrated on blonde-haired, white, or light-skinned protagonists. They also normalized western and heterosexist ideals and behaviors, while hardly ever depicting things that reflected my everyday life. For example, it was equally odd and fascinating that people on TV didn’t eat rice at every meal; that their parents didn’t speak with accents; or that no one seemed to navigate a world of daily microaggressions . Despite these observations, I continued to absorb this mass media—internalizing messages of what my life should be like or what I should aspire to be like.

Because there were so few media images of people who looked like me, I distinctly remember the joy and validation that emerged when I did see those representations. Filipino American actors like Ernie Reyes, Nia Peeples, Dante Basco, and Tia Carrere looked like they could be my cousins. Each time they sporadically appeared in films and television series throughout my youth, their mere presence brought a sense of pride. However, because they never played Filipino characters (e.g., Carrere was Chinese American in Wayne's World ) or their racial identities remained unaddressed (e.g., Basco as Rufio in Hook ), I did not know for certain that they were Filipino American like me. And because the internet was not readily accessible (nor fully informational) until my late adolescence , I could not easily find out.

Through my Ethnic Studies classes as an undergraduate student (and my later research on Asian American and Filipino American experiences with microaggressions), I discovered that my perspectives were not that unique. Many Asian Americans and other people of color often struggle with their racial and ethnic identity development —with many citing how a lack of media representation negatively impacts their self-esteem and overall views of their racial or cultural groups. Scholars and community leaders have declared mottos like how it's "hard to be what you can’t see," asserting that people from marginalized groups do not pursue career or academic opportunities when they are not exposed to such possibilities. For example, when women (and women of color specifically) don’t see themselves represented in STEM fields , they may internalize that such careers are not made for them. When people of color don’t see themselves in the arts or in government positions, they likely learn similar messages too.

Complicating these messages are my intersectional identities as a queer person of color. In my teens, it was heartbreakingly lonely to witness everyday homophobia (especially unnecessary homophobic language) in almost all television programming. The few visual examples I saw of anyone LGBTQ involved mostly white, gay, cisgender people. While there was some comfort in seeing them navigate their coming out processes or overcome heterosexism on screen, their storylines often appeared unrealistic—at least in comparison to the nuanced homophobia I observed in my religious, immigrant family. In some ways, not seeing LGBTQ people of color in the media kept me in the closet for years.

How representation can help

Representation can serve as opportunities for minoritized people to find community support and validation. For example, recent studies have found that social media has given LGBTQ young people the outlets to connect with others—especially when the COVID-19 pandemic has limited in-person opportunities. Given the increased suicidal ideation, depression , and other mental health issues among LGBTQ youth amidst this global pandemic, visibility via social media can possibly save lives. Relatedly, taking Ethnic Studies courses can be valuable in helping students to develop a critical consciousness that is culturally relevant to their lives. In this way, representation can allow students of color to personally connect to school, potentially making their educational pursuits more meaningful.

Further, representation can be helpful in reducing negative stereotypes about other groups. Initially discussed by psychologist Dr. Gordon Allport as Intergroup Contact Theory, researchers believed that the more exposure or contact that people had to groups who were different from them, the less likely they would maintain prejudice . Literature has supported how positive LGBTQ media representation helped transform public opinions about LGBTQ people and their rights. In 2019, the Pew Research Center reported that the general US population significantly changed their views of same-sex marriage in just 15 years—with 60% of the population being opposed in 2004 to 61% in favor in 2019. While there are many other factors that likely influenced these perspective shifts, studies suggest that positive LGBTQ media depictions played a significant role.

For Asian Americans and other groups who have been historically underrepresented in the media, any visibility can feel like a win. For example, Gold House recently featured an article in Vanity Fair , highlighting the power of Asian American visibility in the media—citing blockbuster films like Crazy Rich Asians and Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings . Asian American producers like Mindy Kaling of Never Have I Ever and The Sex Lives of College Girls demonstrate how influential creators of color can initiate their own projects and write their own storylines, in order to directly increase representation (and indirectly increase mental health and positive esteem for its audiences of color).

When representation is not enough

However, representation simply is not enough—especially when it is one-dimensional, superficial, or not actually representative. Some scholars describe how Asian American media depictions still tend to reinforce stereotypes, which may negatively impact identity development for Asian American youth. Asian American Studies is still needed to teach about oppression and to combat hate violence. Further, representation might also fail to reflect the true diversity of communities; historically, Brown Asian Americans have been underrepresented in Asian American media, resulting in marginalization within marginalized groups. For example, Filipino Americans—despite being the first Asian American group to settle in the US and one of the largest immigrant groups—remain underrepresented across many sectors, including academia, arts, and government.

Representation should never be the final goal; instead, it should merely be one step toward equity. Having a diverse cast on a television show is meaningless if those storylines promote harmful stereotypes or fail to address societal inequities. Being the “first” at anything is pointless if there aren’t efforts to address the systemic obstacles that prevent people from certain groups from succeeding in the first place.

Instead, representation should be intentional. People in power should aim for their content to reflect their audiences—especially if they know that doing so could assist in increasing people's self-esteem and wellness. People who have the opportunity to represent their identity groups in any sector may make conscious efforts to use their influence to teach (or remind) others that their communities exist. Finally, parents and teachers can be more intentional in ensuring that their children and students always feel seen and validated. By providing youth with visual representations of people they can relate to, they can potentially save future generations from a lifetime of feeling underrepresented or misunderstood.

Kevin Leo Yabut Nadal, Ph.D., is a Distinguished Professor of Psychology at the City University of New York and the author of books including Microaggressions and Traumatic Stress .

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Stuart Hall – Representation Theory

Stuart Hall – representation theory

What is the theory?

Stuart Hall’s REPRESENTATION theory (please do not confuse with RECEPTION ) is that there is not a true representation of people or events in a text, but there are lots of ways these can be represented. So, producers try to ‘fix’ a meaning (or way of understanding) people or events in their texts.

What is the more advanced version?

Representation is not about whether the media reflects or distorts reality, as this implies that there can be one ‘true’ meaning, but the many meanings a representation can generate. Meaning is constituted by representation, by what is present, what is absent, and what is different. Thus, meaning can be contested.

A representation implicates the audience in creating its meaning. Power – through ideology or by stereotyping – tries to fix the meaning of a representation in a ‘preferred meaning’. To create deliberate anti-stereotypes is still to attempt to fix the meaning (albeit in a different way). A more effective strategy is to go inside the stereotype and open it up from within, to deconstruct the work of representation.

Where can I use it?

Any time a producer of a text tries to ‘fix’ a meaning of a person or event – this will usually reveal viewpoints and bias (political or otherwise) – usually newspapers attempt to demonise groups of people. However, anti-stereotypical representations also try to fix meanings too – so these groups of people who were demonised in some papers might be presented as heroic in others.

Look at the representations of a previous British Prime Minister below:

How have the papers attempted to fix different meanings and how does this reveal their bias (political, gender)?

Stuart Hall and Representation

What is representation.

Stuart Hall believed representation was the “process by which members of a culture use language… to produce meaning”. It is the organisation of signs, which we use to understand and describe the world, into a wider set of values of ideologies. These meanings are not fixed or “real”; they are produced and defined by society.

Systems of Representation

Hall (1997) identified two “systems of representation” – conceptual maps and language.

Conceptual Maps

The first system consists of the mental representations we carry around in our minds. You should have no trouble picturing your friends and family, or the places you have visited recently. Experiences and events remain vivid long after they have concluded. We have the ability to imagine abstract concepts and theories. Even fictional worlds and mythical creatures can be fully realised in our thoughts.

These ideas are all representations of what we might consider to be the real world.

Conceptual Map:

If you have seen a donut, you can visualise it in your mind.

Importantly, we can distinguish once concept from another because we are fully aware of their similarities and differences. We know doors are not the same as windows, up is the opposite of down, and there is a strong contrast between black ink on a white page.

We also recognise the complex relationships between concepts and group them into clusters and categories: colours, types of buildings, emotions, subjects in school, our neighbourhood, faith, the moon and the stars, and so on. By creating systems of concepts, or conceptual maps , we can give meaning to our world.

Although we are individuals with our own perspectives and histories, we actually experience most things with other people and form similar interpretations of the world. This makes it easier for us to exchange our conceptual maps by translating them into signs – gestures, written and spoken language, images and other methods of communication.

The language we use to communicate with each other is the second system of representation.

A Simple Exercise

Hall used a very simple exercise with his students to demonstrate how this representation process worked. First, he would ask them to take a good look around the room and focus on different objects. This would make them conceptualise each object in their minds.

He then asked them what they saw. Of course, his students would use words to refer to the objects which he was able to decode because he understood what they meant.

In this way, representation is the process that links our conceptual map of the world and the meanings we construct through language.

Approaches to Representation

Stuart Hall (1997) summarised three approaches to understanding the representation process: reflective, intentional and constructionist views.

The Reflective View

This approach to understanding representation suggests the signs we use communicate with each other reflect their true meaning because language acts like a mirror to the world.

Visual signs often have some sort of relationship to the physical form of the objects they represent so, in terms of semiotics, Charles Peirce might categorise these signs as icons. However, as Stuart Hall pointed out, a picture of a rose “should not be confused with the real plant with thorns and blooms growing in the garden”.

Ferdinand de Saussure debated if onomatopoeic words and interjections were evidence of the reflective quality of language, but he believed these signs were not organic and there was “no fixed bond between the signified and signifer”. In other words, signs are part of our culture rather than the natural world.

To what extent do news organisations reflect the real world in their reports? Join the debate in our guide to framing which outlines how their use codes and conventions can influence the audience’s interpretation of the story.

The Intentional View

By contrast, the intentional approach suggests we impose meaning on the world through the signs we use to describe it. When you are talking to a friend, the words you use to encode your message will mean exactly what you intended them to mean.

If you have read our guide to Hall’s encoding / decoding model of communication , you will already know he dismissed this approach to understanding the representation process. We may produce media texts, but their meanings are limited by the framework of knowledge of that particular period and culture. Hall also proposed the audience could have a negotiated or even an oppositional interpretation of the text. This leads us to the constructionist approach to understanding representations.

The Constructionist View

Things exist in the physical world. Our conceptual maps are based on reality, but representation is a symbolic practice and process. Remember, Saussure argued there is no natural relationship between the sign and its meaning or concept.

Put simply, we construct meanings by organising signs into a system.

Stuart Hall mentioned the language of electric plugs in the UK to illustrate this approach. Before 2006, red wires were used to carry the current from the power supply to the appliances. The system was changed to match the European standards so brown wires are now live. In this way, colours have no fixed meaning and their definitions can quickly change.

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Sociologists have researched the influence of media representations of social groups and events on audiences. They found that ethnic minority groups are often misrepresented, and certain genders, age groups and social classes are also represented in a stereotypical way in the media . The question is, why?

We will define media representations and look at different types of media representation.
Then we will consider how age, gender, sexuality, social class, ethnicity and disability are represented in the media.
We will discuss the media representation of crime.
Finally, we will look at different sociological perspectives on media representation theory.

The definition of media representation

Firstly, what do we mean by media representation?

Media representations are established, stereotypical representations of social groups through various media platforms.

Let's look at an example to illustrate the representation of an institution in the media.

An example of media representation is the representation of monarchy through the media's portrayal of the royal family in the UK. The media represents the King as the head of the country, and this strengthens the 'national identity' as the royals are part of national events, e.g. including sports and national events.

Types of media representation

Media plays a significant role in representing the key social markers of identity, including:

ethnicity, and

Let us now explore and understand the different types of media representations by addressing the key indicators.

Age representation in the media

The media represents children , youth and the elderly (categorisations based on age) differently, which influences society 's behaviour towards them.

Children in the media

The media's representation of childhood is often through images or videos of a child being playful, happy and carefree.

Youth and young people in the media

The media's representation of the youth is largely associated with fashion, music, fast food, the internet etc. The advertising industry aims at young people to increase demand for their products.

Although media representations of the youth are constructed around lifestyle and identity, they also portray them as a social problem .

Media coverage of the youth often portrays them as rebellious, disobedient, antisocial or immoral.

Media Representations, Young woman leaning against gate and smoking, StudySmarter

The media's portrayal of youth subcultures as a threat to the dominant norms and values of society tends to fuel deviant behaviour by young people. Representation of the youth in association with notions of deviance and criminality leads to an exaggerated outburst of public concern, which is called moral panic .

Tip: Refer to Stan Cohen's (1972) study on the relationship between the media and the Mods and Rockers for more on moral panics.

Wayne et al. (2008) conducted a study where they looked at over 2000 news pieces and discovered that young people were mostly represented as a threat to society. They described the media as showing a "one-dimensional representation of youths". 1

This is also the case when the media delivers a negative picture of the youth as being harmful, dangerous, or immature rather than drawing attention to the challenges they face as teenagers like unemployment and mental health problems.

The elderly in the media

The popular stereotypes associated with the media's representation of the elderly involve seeing them as a 'burden' on the younger generations. They are also known to be emotionally and physically weak.

Elderly characters in films and TV series are often shown as forgetful, stubborn, conservative or grumpy .

There are adverts that represent elderly people enjoying healthy, active lifestyles and ageing 'gracefully'. However, there is a significant gender difference in the media representations of elderly people.

While an advertisement shows an old woman playing with grandchildren or watching television at home, an old man is portrayed as a style icon with high social status - driving a sports car or playing polo.

Advertisements about anti-ageing and anti-wrinkle treatments and creams almost exclusively target older women, rather than men.

Gender representation in the media

The traditional mainstream media representation of women is often associated with social roles, whereas men are shown performing occupational roles .

Media representations of women and femininity

Gaye Tuchman's (1978) concept of symbolic annihilation refers to the under-representation of women. The idea indicates that women are associated with social roles linked to gender stereotypes.

Product adverts where women are linked particularly with roles related to housework and motherhood, such as washing powder adverts in which the mother and daughter are washing clothes together.

Tuchman further argues that women's looks and sex appeal are always prioritised over their achievements in media representations.

The media portrays working women as unattractive and unstable to carry household roles or sustain a family.

Marjorie Ferguson's (1983) content analysis of women's magazines (from 1949 to 1974 & 1979 to 1980) suggests that the representation of women was based on stereotypical traditional female roles, which she called the cult of femininity.

Naomi Wolf (2013) suggested that women were presented as 'sex objects' in the media.

Laura Mulvey (1973) used the term male gaze to define how the camera focuses on female body parts for the viewing pleasure of men. The male gaze exists mainly because heterosexual men controlled the camera. Simply put, women are represented as sex objects and not as a person.

According to liberal feminists, media representations fall behind the reality of social and economic conditions. They acknowledge that representations of women have improved in the last few years, but argue that the majority of media professionals - journalists, producers, directors, editors, etc. are men.

Media representations of men and masculinity

Antony Easthope (1986) argued that a range of media representations of men promote the notion that masculinity is determined biologically and that it is a natural goal for men to achieve. They associate masculinity with traditional stereotypes of being strong, aggressive, competitive and violent.

Representation of sexuality in the media

Traditionally, media representations of sexuality have been almost exclusively heterosexual, with LGBTQ+ people remaining invisible, marginalised, or negatively portrayed.

Media Representations, LGBTQ representation two women kissing with Russian flag taped over their mouths, StudySmarter

Batchelor et al. (2004) found that when there were representations of LGBTQ+ people in mainstream media, they were not included in realistic or respectful plot lines. Instead, the only reason a character was represented as non-heterosexual was often to kickstart a plot line.

In the television show ' Atypical ', one of the main characters is portrayed as gay. The writers of the show use the sexuality of the character to introduce a storyline of cheating. The fact that they are gay is not touched on accurately and is simply a tool for a dramatic story.

Steve Craig (1992) suggests that media representations of gay male characters in films or popular shows are often associated with exaggerated stereotypes, such as displaying particular "feminine" facial expressions, tones, and clothing, or possessing amusing or negative characteristics.

Craig points out three often overtly homophobic media indicators of 'gayness':

Camp : This is widely used for representing gay characters (in films or TV), lying somewhere between male and female, portraying them as flamboyant, fun-loving and 'non-threatening'.

Macho: This is a look that exaggerates aspects of traditional masculinity and is portrayed as a threat to heterosexual men.

Deviant : This depicts gay people as evil or negative, as sexual predators or as people who feel guilty about their sexuality. These representations reinforce the impression of homosexuality as 'morally wrong'.

David Gauntlett (2008), a sociologist and media theorist, argues that the LGBTQ+ community remains under-represented in much of the mainstream media, but the tolerance for sexual diversity is slowly improving.

According to him, the increased representation of diverse sexual identities with which audiences are unfamiliar would make the general masses more aware and comfortable with alternative sexual lifestyles.

Representation of social class in the media

Media representations of social classes vary significantly. It may be worth reminding ourselves what we mean by 'social class'.

In sociology , social class refers to the socioeconomic categories on which a society is divided. The people belonging to a particular category share economic and social status in terms of wealth, educational achievement and job type.

Media representations of the wealthy ( upper class ) are generally positive as something one should aspire to.

Tip: Go back to the example at the beginning, talking about the media representation of the monarchy.

Media represents the middle class through television dramas and adverts promoting products that suit the taste and interests of the middle class. Most media professionals (journalists, editors, directors, etc.) are privately educated, and the content they represent is more likely to represent the middle-class point of view.

David M. Newman (2006) argues that media representation of the working class is generally negative - labelling them as a social 'problem' - for example, as drug addicts and criminals.

Media representation s of unemployed and/or single parents hold them solely responsible for their family's poverty rather than focusing on the issues that created the situation, e.g. expensive childcare, little to no government financial support, and the social stigma around single (especially female) parents.

Media representation of ethnicity in sociology

Media sociologists believe that the media's representation of ethnic minority groups is often associated with negative, racist stereotypes.

Minority groups in general are often portrayed as a 'threat' to society. Consider the following examples.

Immigrants are seen as a threat in terms of their numbers, as their perceived motive is to take advantage of welfare services and partake in employment opportunities.

Refugees and asylum seekers are represent ed as a cause of social unrest that leads to moral panic.

Negative media representations portray Muslims (or any South Asians who 'appear' Muslim) as dangerous, oppressive and irrational, with stories focused on terrorism and religious domination.

Teun A. van Dijk (1991) analysed news channels for several decades and discovered that representations of ethnic groups were able to fit into several negatively labelled categories: ethnic minorities represented as a threat , as criminals, as unimportant in society or simply not represented at all.

Media representatives from ethnic minority groups have developed media institutions and agencies such as Eastern Eye, Snoop and The Voice, focusing on the interests and concerns of ethnic-minority audiences in response to these stereotypical portrayals.

Ethnicity, crime and the media

Media representation of crime, for example, often involves news explicitly pointing out the involvement of Black or Muslim people.

A crime committed by a Black person is often represented to be motivated by gang rivalries rather than socioeconomic reasons.

Another example would be media coverage of subjects like AIDS in Africa or Black children as underachievers in schools, rather than focusing on the culture and interests of the Black audience and their contribution to society.

Furthering from this, Wayne et al. (2007) found in their study of the news that nearly half of news stories concerning young Black people involved them committing crimes.

In addition, Stuart Hall (1978) conducted a study into levels of mugging in London in the 1970s. At the time, the media presented sensational headlines of an increase in muggings, particularly by Black youths. Despite this, Hall's research found that there were actually fewer muggings than in the previous decade. He determined this outcome was from a moral panic caused by the media.

Representation of disability in the media

Sociologists argue that media representations of disabled people are generally associated with a range of stereotypes. People with disabilities are often objects of pity, seen as unable to participate fully in social life and being in constant need of help or assistance.

Colin Barnes (1992) suggests the following recurring stereotypes in representations of people with disabilities:

Pitiable and pathetic - media representations focusing on disabled children and the possibilities of miracle cures in TV shows or documentaries.

Sinister and evil - think of the negative characters in James Bond movies. They are often shown to have some kind of physical impairment.

Atmospheric or curio us - media portraying disabled people engaging in drama to create an atmosphere of menace, unease or deprivation.

Super-cripples - portrayal of disabled people as having special powers.

Sexually 'abnormal' - the media portrays the disabled as having no sense of sexuality, no sex appeal or even as sexually challenged.

The media rarely represents disabled people to be productive working members of society - Barnes termed this stereotype as an omission.

Disabled representation in telethons

Media representation of disabled people through telethons merely confirms social prejudices and rather reinforces the idea that they should be 'dependent' on others. Instead of helping one to understand the everyday challenges of being physically disabled, telethons are primarily to entertain people and raise money.

Media representation theory: sociological perspectives on media representations

Let's look at sociological perspectives on media representations.

Marxists and feminists believe that the root cause of gender stereotypes is economic interests .

For Marxists , media representations are a by-product of the capitalist market.

For feminists, t he male-dominated media aims to attract large audiences with stereotypical images of women.

Consider an advertisement that utilises sexualised depictions of women's bodies to promote diet products or cosmetics. Such an advertisement not only promotes consumerism and helps companies make a profit, but also upholds (sexist and objectifying) beauty standards for women to aspire to.

Radical feminists believe that traditional hegemonic images of femininity are deliberately portrayed to keep women oppressed and limited to a narrow range of roles. This creates a form of false consciousness in women, discouraging them from taking up opportunities that would consequently challenge men's patriarchal power.

David Gauntlett (2008) , a postmodernist, stresses the relationship between the mass media and identity. According to him, today's mass media challenges traditional definitions of gender and is rather a force for social change.

An advertisement focusing on men's emotions and problems and portraying men as sensitive challenges the traditional stereotypes of masculinity, such as toughness.

Media representations - Key takeaways

Media representations are studied through the portrayals of different social groups, such as age, social class, ethnicity, gender, sexuality and disability.
The media represents children, youth, and the elderly differently and influences society's behaviour towards them.
Representations of women and men are often based on stereotypical traditional gender roles associated with the genders. Traditionally, media representations of sexuality have been almost exclusively heterosexual, with LGBTQ+ people remaining invisible, marginalised, or negatively portrayed.
The wealthy are presented as aspirational, the middle-class perspective is considered universal, and the working class is often considered a 'social problem' in the media. Media representations of ethnic minority groups is often associated with racist stereotypes and minorities are portrayed as threats.
In the media, people with disabilities are often portrayed as objects of pity, seen as unable to participate fully in social life and in constant need of help or assistance.
Wayne, M., Henderson, L., Murray, C., & Petley, J. (2008). Television news and the symbolic criminalisation of young people. Journalism studies, 9(1), 75-90.

Frequently Asked Questions about Media Representations

--> what is the definition of media representation.

Media representations are established, stereotypical representations of social groups through various media platforms. This can vary from representations of age to representations of disability.

--> What is gender representation in media?

Representations of women and men are often based on stereotypical traditional gender roles associated with the genders.

--> What is an example of media representation?

An example of media representation is the representation of monarchy through the media's portrayal of the royal family in the UK.

--> What is the importance of media representation?

Media plays a significant role in representing the key social markers of identity like age, gender, class, sexuality, etc. By analysing these representations, we can see how society perceives different social groups.

--> What is media representation in sociology?

Media representations in sociology are studied through the portrayals of different social groups, such as age, social class, ethnicity, gender, sexuality and disability.

Test your knowledge with multiple choice flashcards

Neo-Marxists claim that media representations of social classes focus on hierarchy and celebrate wealth. True or false?

Newman argues that media portrayals of the most destitute are often associated with positive stereotypes. True or false?

The media conceptualised the metrosexual man - a kind of masculinity that was based on appearance and fashion, and promoted empathy, generosity, and being supportive of women. True or false?

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What is the male gaze?

What did Easthope (1986) argue about in relation to male representation?

What are the 6 main types of media representation?

The types of media representations are based on social indicators such as:

Social class

Who conducted a study into levels of mugging in London in the 1970s? What was the outcome of the study?

Stuart Hall (1978) conducted a study into levels of mugging in London in the 1970s. At the time, the media presented sensational headlines of an increase in muggings, particularly by Black youths.

Despite this, Hall's research found that there were actually fewer muggings than in the previous decade. He determined this outcome was from a moral panic caused by the media.

Give an example of media representation of the elderly in films and TV series.

Elderly characters in films and TV series are often shown as forgetful, stubborn, conservative or grumpy.

What is symbolic annihilation?

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GCSE Media - Representation Revising key terms

Match up the key terms and definitions.

Countertype
Connotation
Deconstruction
The process of altering a media text for an audience.
A popular belief about individuals or groups of people based on generalizations and prior assumptions.
A universal type of character that has been repeatedly used in media texts. E.g. Damsel in distress.
A representation that highlights the positive features of a person or group.
The first level of meaning for the audience. Usually what they can see visually.
The deeper layer of analysis; relies on the knowledge and experiences of the audience.
The way that the audience finds meaning within a media text.

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1 Article 1 Set: What is Representation in Media?
The basic definition of representation in the media is simply how media, such as television, film and books, portray certain types of people or communities. There are a number of groups who are underrepresented in most Western media. They include women, people of color, LBGTQA+ people, people with a range of body shapes and types, people of non ...
Introduction
Introduction. Representation is how media texts deal with and present gender, age, ethnicity. , national and regional identity, social issues and events to an audience. Media texts have the power ...
Representation
Think about a news broadcast. The way people, places, ideas and events are presented to the audience can be shaped by which direction the cameras were pointing, how the footage is cut and spliced into a narrative, the words used to describe the situation, and the music that accompanies the piece. Signs are selected and combined to encode a message.
Media Representations: What Are They and Why Do They Matter?
Media representations are when people see themselves reflected in the things they watch, read, listen to and engage with every day. This is the experience I missed when I moved from Mexico to the United States. It's also something Keah Brown, a writer from New York, experienced as a child watching "Rodgers and Hammerstein's Cinderella" with ...
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Furthermore, a racial group's lack of representation can also reduce the group's visibility to the general public. Such is the case for Native Americans and Asian Americans.Given mass media's widespread distribution of black and Latino stereotypes, most research on mediated racial portrayals focuses on these two groups.
What is representation?
What is representation? When we study multimedia texts, representation is the way something or someone is portrayed. At the most basic level, we can usually understand whether an image we see is ...
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Representation. Media representations are the ways in which the media portrays particular groups, communities, experiences, ideas, or topics from a particular ideological or value perspective. Rather than examining media representations as simply reflecting or mirroring "reality," we examine how media representations serve to "re-present" or to ...
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Media representation issues. What we see - and don't see - in media affects how we view reality. Media works can be imagined either as mirrors that reflect an audience's own experience, windows that give them access to experiences they otherwise wouldn't have known, or in some cases both.Rosemary Truglio, Senior Vice President of Sesame Workshop, described the diverse cast of Sesame ...
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Definition. Media representation refers to how the media portrays particular groups, communities, and experiences. Tools and Collections. Annenberg Inclusion Initiative. A think tank at USC Annenberg studying diversity and inclusion in entertainment through original research and sponsored projects.
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What is explicitly or literally described, depicted, or denoted in a sign, text, or discourse in any medium as distinct from its symbolic meaning, metaphoric meaning, or connotations: its manifest referential content, as in 'a representation of…' See also mimesis; naturalism; referentiality.6. How (in what ways) something is depicted.
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Stuart Hall
Thus, meaning can be contested. A representation implicates the audience in creating its meaning. Power - through ideology or by stereotyping - tries to fix the meaning of a representation in a 'preferred meaning'. To create deliberate anti-stereotypes is still to attempt to fix the meaning (albeit in a different way).
Stuart Hall and Representation
Stuart Hall believed representation was the "process by which members of a culture use language… to produce meaning". It is the organisation of signs, which we use to understand and describe the world, into a wider set of values of ideologies. These meanings are not fixed or "real"; they are produced and defined by society.
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The basic definition of representation in media can be explained by the quantity, quality, and centrality of opportunities that are available to communities of color. In their writing if "Race ...
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In media studies, representation is the way aspects of society, such as gender, age or ethnicity, are presented to audiences. Part of Media Studies Representation.
Media Representations: Theory, Types & Sociology
Media representations - Key takeaways. Media representations are studied through the portrayals of different social groups, such as age, social class, ethnicity, gender, sexuality and disability. The media represents children, youth, and the elderly differently and influences society's behaviour towards them.
Revising key terms
A popular belief about individuals or groups of people based on generalizations and prior assumptions. A universal type of character that has been repeatedly used in media texts. E.g. Damsel in distress. A representation that highlights the positive features of a person or group. The first level of meaning for the audience.
Full article: Representations of motherhood in the media: a systematic
We searched 7 databases for all studies investigating the representation of motherhood in media texts, in any geographical location, published after 31 December 2016. ... And each media domain possesses its socially- and culturally-shaped resources for making meaning, which have been constructed through regularities of use and are influenced by ...

Media Representations: What Are They and Why Do They Matter?

Media & News Literacy

Tools and Collections

Teaching Resources

Media Representation in the News

Article contents

Theoretical Importance of Media Stereotypes

Priming and Cognitive Accessibility

Social Identity Theory and Media Judgments

Stage Model of Representation

Native American and Asian American Depictions

Entertainment Constructions of Race, Culture, and Ethnicity

Black Entertainment Television Imagery

Black Representations in Magazines and Advertising

Black Representations in Sports Entertainment

Black Representations in Music Videos

Latino Entertainment Television Representation

Latino Underrepresentation in Advertising

Prominent Stereotypes of Latinos in Entertainment Media

Entertainment Imagery Summary

News Constructions of Culture, Race, and Ethnicity

Blacks in the News

Latinos in the News

Whites as the “Good Guys”

Summary of News Constructions of Culture, Race, and Media

Digital Media Constructions of Culture, Race, and Media

Black Depictions in Video Games

Black Depictions in Digital News Sources

Latino Depictions in Video Games

Latino Depictions in Digital News Sources

Summary of Digital Constructions of Culture, Race, and Ethnicity

Conclusions

Further Reading

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Representation of Diversity in Media – Overview

Media Literacy

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