media represnations: ETHXNITY

Symbolic annihilation

Certain groups are marginalised int he media through a lack of representation or through being mispresented, reinforcing their subordinate status

Example of symbolic annihilation ethnic: British film instutite

The British film instutite analysed in films 2006-2011 + found only 0.5% of roles were assigned to black actors

Ethnocentrism in media

The practice of viewing + judging other culutres based on the standards values + nroms of ones own culture often assuming ones own culture is superior

EG OF ethnocenticsm

Disney 1992 American cartoon Aladdin opening song Arabian nights - the lyrics mention this land “ is barbaric, but hey it’s home’ which suggest that in western society that other societies are exotic

Van Dijk 1991 negative stereotypes of BAME people in the media

Conducted content analysis of 10s of thousands of news items across the world over several decades and found that reps of people fromBAME groups could be caterogrised into the following steorypes

• BAME as criminals

• BAME as a threat

• BAME as unimportant

• BAME as dependent

BAME AS CRIMINALS

Wayne et al- found that nearly 50% of new stories concerning young black people dealt with them committing crime

Back- analysed news coverage inner city race disturbances and argued media tends to label them as riots which implies they are irrational and conjures up images of rampaging mobs, which in turn justifies a harsh clampdown by the police- e.g media coverage of 2011 London riots over death of mark duggan

BAME as a threat

Immigrants are seen as threat in terms of numbers and impact on jobs and welfare services

Refugeesand aslyum seeks- seen as a threat to briths social cohesion and national identity with such people often blamed for social unrest analysed from ICAR in 2005

Muslims who are often portrayed as an enemy within

Moor et al found that between 2000 and 2008 over 1/3 of stories on Muslims focused on terroism and 1/3 focused on difference between Muslim communities and British society while stories of Muslims as a victim of crime were fairly rare

BAME as unimportant

Van Dijik noted that some sections of the media imply that white lives are more important than non white lives he claimed for example that black victims of crime are not paid as much attention to as white victims of crime

There is some symbolic annihilation of people from BAME groups in the media e.g Malik found black people were unlikely to be interviewed on the news as experts in financal/ political debates and generally spread in relation to sports or entertainment

BAME as dependent

There has been growing critisim of comic reliefs decade long approach to fundraising which often saw the charity send a white British celeb to visit an African nations before filming their emotional reaction at the conditions that they encountered and then asking the public for money

Labour MP David Lammy Christie’s pictures of Stacey Dooley holding a young Ugandan boy on a comic relief trip saying the BBC presenter was perpetuating ‘tired and unhelpful steortypes’ of the white savior

Hall scapegoating of BAME groups

Neo Marxist researched the scapegoating of BAME groups in the moral panic that was creating in the media around mugging in the 1970s

Moral panic in the media in early 1970s around mugging despite no evidence the crime was increasing.

There was an economic crisis at the time and people were challenging the authority of the state. Hall argues creating fear around mugging allowed the police to use increased force to suppress groups critical to the government and by scapegoating immigants and blaming social problems on them this distracted the public from failures of gov. Hall argues encouraging anti immigrant feeling divided the wc so they were less leikly to challenge elites.

Halls argues young men of African or Afro Caribbean descent were unfairly targeted by police and then were arrested when defending themselves. The media portrayed a stereotype of the black mugger

Richardson Islamophobia

Islamophobia: Irrational fear and hatered of Muslims

Richardson argues in recent years the portrayal of Muslims in the media has been so negative it has lead to Islamophobia. he analysed British newspapers and found;

• briths Muslims communities are almost wholly absent from the news and when they do appear it is usually in a predominantly negative context- can be seen as symbolic annihilation of Muslims in the media

• British Muslims are very rarely called upon as providers of informative commentary on news events they are rarely called upon as experts unless the story is specifically about Islam

• Everyday issues and concerns for the Muslim communities are not being addressed

Downing representations of people from Eastern Europe

White people from Eastern European countries are also negatively stereotyped: Blamed for benefit scrounging, taking British jobs, groping women, driving down wages, drunk driving, selling babies, killing and eating swans, ducks and donkeys- this stories were often either untrue or massively exaggerated

EXAMPLE OF SCAPEGOATING

Representations of people from developing countries as dependent

Charities such as comic relief or celebs going to developing countries to help bring awareness and raise money e.g ED Sheeran or Stacey Dooley making promotions films in African countries

Why might BAME groups be presented in limited roles in the media

• Symbolic annihilation in the media

• Van Dijik- invisible black people they are largely absent from the media- they play minor roles in dramaS

• Van Dijik- Balck people as unimportant- institutional racism in media- BLM less then white ones

• Ethnic minorities seen as threat

Why might rep of BAME groups be changing

• Rep changing and there have been greater policy commitments in TV to recruit people from minority groups as presenters

However a study by women in journalism of major newspaper radio and TV news over a week in 2020 found that not one black reporter was featured on the front page of ant newspaper and that when BAME experts featured in news stories more than 50% of the time it was to comment on stories explicitly linked to race such as BLM protests

• There are more programmes websites radio programmes digital TV channels etc being targeted at black and Asian audiences e.g bbc 1extra which has a weekly audience of nearly 800,000 people

• The new media e.g social media sites such as YT enable young people from BAME groups to put across their own views, counter negative stereotypes and raise awareness about racism in society through citzen journalism