Media Identity Essays Review

Kimberly Crenshaw - ‘Intersectionality’

Qualities like race, gender, ethnicity and other fault lines overlap. 

• Black women who were denied from getting a good job filed for gender based and race-based discrimination, but the court said that since they hired women (none which were black) and hired African Americans (nonw which were women), there was no discrimination.

• The surgeon riddle… nobody assumes at first that the surgeon is a woman.

Reel Bad Arabs

 Documentary showing how Arab people are stereotyped and depicted poorly in American media. 

• Usually put in villainous roles, seen as stupid, and many times are the stereotypical ‘full-throttle terrorist’ in many action movies.

Latinos Behind Reel

Documentary showing how Lantinos are stereotyped and depicted poorly in American media.

• Again, usually put in villainous roles and as drug dealers and gang members, violent, crazy, addicts. 

• Women are hypersexual, loudmouths, and feisty.

The Conversation - ‘Racism in Football’

Showcases differences in sports media coverage based on the subject's race. Focuses on soccer.

• A black person is shown as someone who is ‘cash-loose’ and extravagant, while the white player is portrayed as a local guy providing for his family. 

• Talk on attributes for black players was way higher on physical attributes and natural talents, while white players were credited for learned attributes and character traits. 

Pat Ferrucchi - ‘Sports Journalists Stereotype Athletes Based on Race’

Ted Talk with similar findings as the Conversation piece, but focusing on media coverage of NFL players.

Digital Bytes - Gender and Media

Quick depiction on the differences of media directed towards boys and towards girls,

• Boys are taught that they are tough, strong, and need to be ready to fight at any moment. Also taught that women are meant to be pretty for men, further leading to cycles of objectification.

• Girls are taught to be pretty, and that what they look like is their biggest mark of value.

The Checkout - ‘Gendered Marketing’

Reveals how companies use gendered marketing to sell more products, even if it deploys negative stereotypes.

• Woman based version of the same product is upcharged and/or downsized.

• Girl’s version of normal toys, such as the Lego friends collection, which is more centred to things such as shopping and gardening.

The Game is Ours

Dove Superbowl ad promoting body positivity, women’s joy, and female participation in sports.

• Challenges stereotypes by showing women participating in many different sports, celebrating the differences between them but also their love for a common activity.

• Promotes body positivity highlighting that 1 in 2 women who quit sports are critizied for their body type.

Unavailable

Squarespace Superbowl ad that promotes some common stereotypes of women.

• Showcases a woman getting extremely angry and emotional over not having an available domain name. Women being emotional are common negative stereotypes.

The Cleaner You Are The Dirtier You Get

Axe body wash advertisement advertising towards men, saying if they use the wash and get clean, the more women they will bed.

• Role of the women is an object of sexual acts, shown stripping scantily in lingerie. 

• The women in the ad is less of a person, more of a reward. Leads to objectivization of women by men, and self-objectivization by women themselves

NBCU Academy - How NBC News Reports of LGBTQ

A methodology to reporting on LGBTQ stories, giving that there are is a lot of hesitation with that specific reporting.

• Make the reporting be accessible for everyone in and out of the community.

• Familiralize with the language and terms with the community.

Objectification Theory

People (typically woman) have been acculturated to internalize an observer's perspective as a primary view of their physical selves.

• This perspective on self can lead to habitual body monitoring, leading to health risks both physical and mental. This can translate to other forms of objectification based on one’s physical attributes. The media can be one of the biggest proponents of this by how they portray women in movies, television, media, and more.

Social Comparison Theory

Individuals assess their own worth and abilities by comparing themselves to others

• Individuals look to more successful peers for motivation, or downward, where they compare themselves to those they perceive as less successful to feel better about their own situation. This can lead to body dissatisfaction and an increased risk of eating disorders, as young people grapple with unrealistic beauty ideals often portrayed in magazines and on social media

Theory of Invisibility

When a group is underrepresented in the media, members of that group are deprived of messages or strategies for how to be a person in society.

• The quantity of portrayals communicates a message about group’s vitality in society

• The limited representations conveys to group members that they do not belong and cannot be successful in many achievement-related fields.

Agenda Setting

• The news media, our windows to the vast world beyond direct experience, determine our cognitive maps of that world.

• The news media can have strong, direct effects in the short term by influencing not what people think, but what they think about.

• Agenda setting refers to the process by which the elements (e.g. issues, public figures, companies, or government institutions) that are deemed relevant by the news media as well as the attributes used to describe these elements often become relevant to public opinion, too.

Framing

We constantly and often radically change the way we define or typify situations, actions, and other people as we move through time and space. We are able to adjust the schemes to fit specific circumstances and other individuals.

• The term frame refers to a specific set of expectations used to make sense of a social situation at a given point in time.

• Media content as social cues: In frame analysis, information in the environment that signals a shift or change of action