Finns Blog: media representation

Hello, for todays blog I have watched 3 videos that are related to the ethics of media of how many media sources portray races, sexualities, ethic groups, politicians and genders. To help me discuss this topic, I have watched 3 videos related to these topics in media. The first video I watched is called 'why representation matters', the second was 'Stuart Hall's Representation Theory Explained! Media Studies revision' and the third video I watched was 'Miss Representation Female Leadership'.

The first video 'why representation matters' by StoryBlock and it goes over cultural representation in the world of media. In the video the issue that there is not a lot of cultural or racial representation in the stock photos industry. The stock photo industry is huge supplying thousands of photos for people to use online for things like advertising.

I have noticed myself that there is barely any people of different ethnic groups and cultures in stock photos when you look at their content. Mostly it consists of white people in straight relationships. The goal of StoryBlock is to bring light to this subject by encouraging companies to employ people for stock images of a mix of different races, ethnic groups and sexualities in order to diversify the market.

This will also provide content to a far more diverse audience and consumers to media if the market becomes more diverse in its representation of other people.

The second video that I watched was 'Stuart Hall's Representation Theory Explained! Media Studies revision'. This video goes over the theory that Stuart Hall has on representation and about how different medias portray events. We live in an age where there are so many different media platforms we can consume information from. However these different medias can have varying opinions on certain people or political alignment which can alter what they create.

This creates a bias and disinformation in the media which can affect peoples opinions. A great example of this would be how people feel about Donald Trump during his presidency. Most people either strongly hate him or love him depending on which medias they follow Republican media agencies would praise Donald Trumps acts and decisions while Democratic aligned medias would criticise his actions.

This is something I have personally seen from American news channels like FOX News and CNN. Making sure we do our own research and fact checking what we see in media helps us get a full understanding on what is happening.

The way media portrays certain groups of people like ethnic minorities can be very damaging to these people, for example the stereotype that migrants are criminals that want to take peoples jobs has been very damaging on how people think they are like in the past and current migration crisis's from war torn countries coming to Europe. This further enforces that you should always investigate into the media you consume to see if there is any bias or misinformation.

The third video I watched called 'Miss Representation Female Leadership' was one that I found very concerning after I watched. The video is about how women are discriminated in the political world and showed American politics as its example.

Examples in this video showed the bias of some media platforms in how they portray women in politics. An example would be that when women object or disagree to something and are quoted by media the verbs used are often portraying women in an annoying way by saying things like she complained or cried, as oppose to men being given verbs like disputing or challenging which gives men politicians a more professional look .

Women are also given a large amount of abuse from media by sexualising them rather than actually taking them seriously. Some media also ridicule them with stereotypes saying that they should stay at home and be in the kitchen.

In my opinion I think its outrageous that they can be treated with this disrespect and the politicians that say these things dont face any consequences. The video is backed up with numerous examples of these sexist quotes and the politicians that have said them.