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Candidates will consider media representations, models of media effects, and how the media influences human behaviour. These ideas are linked to the key concepts Socialisation, culture and identity and Structure and human agency. Candidates will also consider studies that illustrate the impact of the media on human behaviour, which links to the key concepts Power, control and resistance, and Socialisation, culture and identity.
How different groups are represented in the media.
Ways that the media contributes to gender socialisation.
Moral panics around class, gender, ethnicity and age groups.
The relationship between the media and popular culture.
Representations refer to the ways in which the media portrays particular groups, communities, experiences, ideas, or topics from a particular ideological or value perspective.
Groups of people can be represented in the media in two fundamental ways:
This subtopic examines the extent to which groups categorised by class, gender, ethnicity, and age are accurately or inaccurately represented in contemporary media.
Stereotypes are one-sided, exaggerated, or prejudiced representations of a particular group of people. Media representations of social class take a range of forms, with different classes stereotypically represented in different ways.
The working class is routinely represented through a relatively narrow and limited range of identities:
Historical representations:
Contemporary representations:
Recurrent themes represent the working classes as dangerous, problematic, or dependent on the state and middle/upper classes.
The Glasgow Media Group argued that the working classes had:
Contemporary forms of invisibility exclude working-class life through a focus on business leaders and politicians, marginalizing working-class voices and experiences.
Ehrenreich argues that for the media, 'working class' means being:
Middle-class representation is generally broader, ranging across professional employment and cultural associations.
Conversely, problematic behavior in higher classes is represented as individual weakness rather than symbolic of the class as a whole.
Example: The 2008 global financial crisis is generally represented in terms of the actions of a few 'rogue bankers' (individual weakness) rather than indicating fundamental social problems caused by middle- and upper-class behavior.
Greg Philo (born 1947) is a Professor of Communications and Social Change and a member of the Glasgow Media Group. His research shows how television news reporting is biased in favor of powerful groups and how the views of the less powerful (strikers, refugees) are ignored to maximize audiences and profits.
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