Representation in media

In the media, individuals can be represented in ways that can effect them personally or physically. When newspapers write articles about individuals, they can either choose to represent them in a good way, or in a way which may portray them as a bad person. Some people feel as if this is a right that newspapers should not have, as it is almost an invasion of privacy. A good example of this would be the articles on the front page of The Times, which shows the French Prime Minister and a young Australian boy.



This front page shows the French Frime Minister in an article about the Euro, which is very hard news, however on the other side is an image of a young Australian boy who had been killed by floods in Perth. As you can see, the image of the boy is much bigger than the picture of the French PM. This shows that the paper is treating the boy and his relatives with respect, by giving this article more impartance in the paper than the French PM. This represents the boy as being a hero, and counteracting the importance of the article with the PM. The article abount the Euro shows the PM with his arms folded. This makes the reader feel as if the PM is fed up and asking England for help, meaning that he cant fend for himself. So the front page of the print has two different representations of two individuals.

Social groups are often portrayed in the papers as trouble makers. For example, with the event of the London riots and thousands of youths destroying shops and towns, as so many people have read the papers and watched the news, they now think that all youths are exactly the same. This stereotypical view has now reached most of the population, not putting all teenagers into this category. Clothing brands also got represented in a bad way during the riots as most of the youths were wearing Adidas branded clothing. This rubs off badly on the company as they have clearly lost business. Now anyone who wears Adidas hoodies etc are now classed as trouble makers.

The media often portrays violence as a sin, also relating to the London riots. They often focus on stereotypical views when writing about topics such as violence, racism and sexism. It is quite a big thing to be published in a mass newspaper, but to be represented in a bad way in that newspaper, is very traumatic. The issue of Andy Gray the football commentator, making a sexist remark about a female linesman.

After this incident, everyone now knows about it as it was piblished in many of the countries main newspapers. Andy was then sacked from the Sky Sports cast so the bad comments of the commentator does not rub off on the company. Keeping on the topic of football, places can also be represented in the media. For example Millwall football club.

Millwall Football Club being a place as well as a group of people, are often stereotyped as thugs. This stereotype was clearly portrayed in the film Football Factory, featuring Danny Dyer. The clip below shows a fight between Chelsea and Millwall football club. It does contain foul language and violence, but it is the perfect stereotypical view of football hooligans such as Millwalls.

As there are many different Social & Culture groups in the world, Television and Print need to be carefull on how they portray and resemble each of these groups. Due to the teenage culture becoming more expressive, soaps such as Eastenders have made a soap especially for teens. This is called E20; The soap includes issues that affect teenagers whilst still making it appealing. In this programme, Eastenders need to resemble the teen culture in a positive way, so teens will still watch it and not feel like they are being portrayed negatively.

Another example is Hollyoaks. The soap has moved their broadcasting time to after the watershed due to certain scenes and topics which make it un-broadcastable before the watershed. This will mean that the viewers of the show will have to stay up later, meaning the consumption of the programme may alter. But ias the show has been breoadcasted after the watershed, this would mean that there are scenes that contain more of a adult theme, bringing more viewers as people may be more intrigued. Teenagers also watch this programme, but as teens are in education, this will affect the amount of teens watching it, if it was broadcasted late. Another setback would be parental guidance. Some parents may disallow their children to watch due to adult themed scenes.

Role models in soaps which include teens are very important, as it may influence other teens into being like them. This may also change the way people stereotype teens, if they all follow the role model. The stereo-typical view is explained here by a user of Yahoo Answers, who clearly states his fustration on how teens are treated and portrayed.

"Personally, I think the media portrays a very negative view of teenagers in the media. Such as, gang violence, gun/knife crime, all these out of control "skins" party's you see in the newspapers, where hundreds of youths trash houses. You never read a story or see on the news that a group of teenagers are doing something usefull and helpfull for the comunities.

As a teenager myself, it frustrates me that the police will come up to me and friends and will check to see if we have any alcohol or weapons on our person. All the media dish out is negative negative negative...which frightens the older generation.

But this isn't the case. I think that MOST teenagers are lovely. Yeah, we like a drink and to party- but everybody does when you're a teenagers. It's just a few that misbehave and spoil it for the rest of us- gaining a bad reputation for all teenagers. Then the media like to 'blow it out of proportion'. Especially tabloid newspapers."

Random User - Yahoo Answers -
http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20101115113349AAKjd4V

Negative and Positive reactions very in the world of media, as different Audiences will have different opinions. This is brought forward by the Encoding and Decoding theory by Stuart Hall. This theory broken down, means that the way the Media encode certain scenes or information is in their point of view, whereas when an audience decodes this scene or info, they may decode it into their point of view, either agreeing with the statement, or dis-agreeing.