Representation

Aims To know: What ‘representation’ means. To understand: What a stereotype is. To be able to: Explain why stereotypes are negative but are still used in the media.

Representation The ways that social groups and/or events are re-presented by the media. Social groups might include:

Stereotypes One common concern is the use of stereotypes. Media texts often represent social groups stereotypically. What is a stereotype? Why are stereotypes used in the media? Why are they problematic?

Messages and Values Critics believe that media texts can communicate the messages and values of the producers of the text. Certain messages and values are present in texts and can influence the audience to some degree. For example, in terms of what the audience think of a certain group of people in society.

Messages and Values This is based upon the encoding/decoding model - I.e. that the producers of a text encode certain messages/values/opinions within the text that are then decoded by the audience. This is slightly more complex than it seems because of the different ways that audiences ‘read’ (or interpret, or decode) media texts.

Stuart Hall Did research on the ways that audiences ‘read’ media texts and concluded that they read them in different ways: Preferred Reading - an understanding of a text in line with the intention of the producer of the text. Negotiated Reading - an individual chooses whether or not to accept the preferred reading as their own - possibly agreeing with some aspects but disagreeing with others - depending on the background of the individual.

Stuart Hall Oppositional Reading - An individual member of the audience might completely reject the preferred reading of a text. Aberrant Reading - When an individual takes an entirely different meaning from a text - they are unaware of the intended meaning.

Decoding Texts are ‘polysemic’ – they can be decoded (or read) in many different ways. What factors might affect the reading of a text?