Representation

Representation

Represent: To show or describe people, places and events.

Representation: The results of the above.

Media producers have the power to spin and shape the stories they tell. This can be done to mislead or manipulate others.

CAGED

Representations can be made through CAGED.

● Class
● Age
● Gender
● Ethnicity
● Disability

CAGED representations are useful starting points for analyzing media messages (they do not include sexuality, religion, regional identity or education).

Tokenistic representation: Including a poorly developed or stereotypical portrayal of a social group, usually to check off diversity in a media product.

Liverpool example 1: In the video clip there are people fighting one another over football, the people shown are typically lower class, white men, who are middle-aged, with no disabilities visible. They are all being violent, and displeasing towards the fans of the opposing team.

Liverpool example 2: In this video clip there are Liverpool fans being heartfelt towards football player Cristiano Ronaldo. Again, they are lower class, white men, who are middle-aged, with no disabilities visible. The people depicted have not changed in the second clip, but their attitudes have, showing both sides of Liverpool football fans; we have seen the best and worst sides of them.

You can represent through omission or inclusion.

Stereotypes

Stereotype: A characterization of an individual or group that has certain features. They work a symbolic codes or signs. Stereotypes can be positive or negative, but they are often generalized and inaccurate or harmful.

Barthes, the creator of semiotics, the study of signs, suggests that the values attributes to these stereotypes are not real, but myths, and are used to reinforce the dominant groups in society.

Middle-class, educated, white men will always be seen in a positive light in comparison to teenage boys, blonde women, housewives or Muslim asylum seekers, regardless of the truth.

Volkswagen Example: In the Volkswagen advert, there are stereotypes of women involved which can be seen as sexist and offensive. In the ad, the woman is displayed to be making a sandwich, and taking care of a child, a stereotypical action of a woman. However, the men in the advert are pictured to be adventurous, fixing a space ship and supposedly driving a car, things which have a lot more action that what the woman is doing. It suggests that women can't do those things, only men can. In the advert there are people of middle-class, who are middle-aged and white. There are both men and women in the ad, and there is also a disability featured in the form of a disabled athlete with a prosthetic leg.

Repetition of stereotypes in media can cause the idea of stereotypes to be engrained into peoples minds, something which is very negative.

Stuart Hall

Challenging stereotypes to fix the meaning in the opposite way is a clunky - sometimes necessary -  solution to the issue. Stuart Hall argues it is much better to deconstruct the stereotype rather than trying to fix another one.

Stuart Hall power theory: Stuart Hall researched a theory on power, and how high ranking officials can change the meaning of certain things in media to influence the opinions of the population. It is noted that apparently a lot of people who view media are not very intelligent. Hall challenged this by saying that viewers are not unintelligent, they simply have opinions and can choose to reject the messages media gives them. These people can also accept the messages if they so choose, or be stuck in-between (negotiated) whether they agree with the messages or not.

Stuart Hall representation theory: Producers encode preferred meanings into their media, but it is up to the audience to decide the real meaning. Media producers choose to make media present, absent or different to create meaning. Media producers have the power to change representations, whilst the consumers do not. Producers can fix meanings quickly through stereotypes.

(Striking Example of Stuart Hall's representation theory: The Daily Mails preferred meaning is to make the teachers who are striking look extremely negative, thoughtless and selfish, without actually displaying the reason why the teachers are striking, and the positive aspects they are wanting. They make the teachers look bad, not the Education board and government. The comments on the newspaper are there for people to have oppositional, negotiated or dominant reactions, either agreeing or disagreeing with the article. However, despite their reactions, they cannot change the preferred meaning of the story.)

Stuart Halls concept of the other: The idea that media representations define a 'norm' which they encourage the audience to identify with and portray those outside this norm as 'other' lesser an alien is a key concept.

Immigration

Tabloids and newspapers utilize certain words in their headlines to encode the preferred meaning to be negative to those that are being represented. Media producers can do this because they have power, and what they say is final, and is highly likely to create ideas of negativity in the consumers head. They want the dominant reaction to be that those being represented are terrible, horrible and are doing heinous things.

Quite often in newspapers, those represented are migrants and immigrants, and they get shown as negative by the viewers of the newspapers and tabloids, typically people who belong and live in the host country they are talking about. They are not aimed at migrants and immigrants, they are aimed at natives to get them to see migrants and immigrants as bad. The media producers push the preferred meanings with stereotypes, which will already be known to the natives, to get their ideas and meaning across better, so that the audience will have a dominant reaction, not a negotiated one. If the reaction is in fact oppositional, the tabloid and newspapers are still gaining traction, and are getting more popular. As a result, they gain money from this no matter what the audience thinks, showing that they have power, not the audience, and that they cannot change anything regardless.

Hyper-reality

Hyper-reality: An inability of consciousness to distinguish reality from a simulation of reality (especially in technologically advanced postmodern societies).

If your reality is permeated with hyperreal images, your reality becomes distorted. You live in an unobtainable hyperreality in which the unreal world is more real than the real world.

If a representation in a newspaper is repeated, the consumer will begin to see that certain representation differently to how the normally would, distorting their reality.

Amani Code advert

This image encodes stereotypical messages about gender, with the male character being shown as handsome, strong and rather attractive. The man is dressed very formally, and appears to be presented as the 'perfect man' by the producer. He is presented this way to make the consumer and audience believe that if you wear the perfume they are advertising, you will be as perfect as he is; in reality, this is not true whatsoever.