Since the beginning of electronic media with the introduction of radio broadcasting in the early 1900’s, media has been the most important and only way to spread and inform anyone and everyone, with access to a tv or radio, about breaking news, tragedies, crime rates, celebrity crisis, stocks and much more. In analysing race and ethnicity in media there is much difficulty in finding a focus, however, research done by several different sociologists and universities, including the University of Illinois in Chicago, show it isn’t necessarily what is shown in media but how it is shown? How are different racial and ethnic groups represented in entertainment, advertising, and news media?
USC Annenberg, School for Communication and Journalism, has race in media pegged under “thecriticalmediaproject.” ‘Critical’ is the key word here in that addressing race in media for being so incredibly influential in the lives of billions has been and is still a critically obvious from day to day. Historically the United States and some other Western ideologies, whites have been associated with superiority and higher power or privilege, whereas people of color have been associated with the word, “Other” or as inferiority in society. The 1995 sociologist at the University of Illinois, Joseph Healey, states that the “snap judgements” made from media are due to the complexity of the world in which we live so we are essentially quick to assume. We have been basically taught to learn and observe from what we encounter and it’s easy to place a person by easy identifying characteristics such as race and gender. This is the point where we as people, quite unintentionally, create this “dividing line” between groups.
From the same text, Laying a Foundation for Studying Race, Gender and the Media, three major foundational points are address; Audience, Content, Production. In the section these points are defined as follows. Production involves the creation and distribution of mediated messages: how they are assembled, by whom, in what circumstances and under what constraints. Content emphasizes the media messages themselves: what they present, and how; what is included, and by implication, what is excluded. Audience addresses the people who engage, consume, or interact with mediated messages: how they use the media, what sense they make of media content, and how they are affected by the media.
“Ever wonder why people of color are often cast in certain roles such as the maid, the gangster, the “model minority,” the supportive best friend, the terrorist…why certain products like cars or phones are marketed differently to specific racial or ethnic groups…why certain races and ethnicities are portrayed more often as lower class individuals in mainstream American media?” 
In advertising, targeting is hugely used to objectify a specific ethnicity or race similar to trying to attract the female sex to a co-ed yoga or tap dancing class only due to the fact that majority of the students are women. The link that follows shows and example of advertisements that targets a social construct. It’s also includes a discussion section that http://criticalmediaproject.org/cml/media/adidas-basketball-court/.
Another example that is a little more along the lines of medial abuse is illustrated in the next link. http://criticalmediaproject.org/cml/media/abercrombie-fitch-wong-brothers-t-shirt/
This is an excellent example of a section in The Critical Media Project that gives us a list of words that are used in media and everyday life to generalize, yet categorize specific news and groups.
Dominant: civilized, modern, center, stability, unmarked, self, white, superior, majority, citizen, insider.
Subordinate: primitive, chaos, margin, violence, marked, other, non-white, inferior, minority, illegal, outsider
An incredibly valid and believably unbiased opinion of the distinction of race and ethnicity in media is given straightforward by the USC stating that, “Despite the concrete physical and sometimes geographical roots tied to specific racial and ethnic identities, it is important to understand that race and ethnicity are also ideologies, or ways of seeing and understanding the world around us. Race and ethnicity, are therefore imbued with meaning. They not only get used as descriptors, but also as markers of broader concepts and relationships. Race and ethnicity can mark you as belonging to a group or as an outsider, as different. These markers not only designate one’s skin color or cultural background, but also function in a larger system and in relation to other racial and ethnic identities. In this system, certain groups have more power and privileges than others.”
This 100% relates to our discussions in class. The social construct of race and ethnicity is linked through primordialism, with whites assumably on top in media, as well as the hidden ethnicity theory described on page 88 in Stephen and Hartmann’s Ethnicity and Race: Making Identities in a Changing World. The types and methods used to portray disadvantages of “Others” in media, ultimately helps the dominant group. If the media presents us with these socially constructed ideologies towards race and ethnicity then it is believed that it can help towards changing it as well. Again this presents us with the same question posed in the beginning of this blog; How? Through time the social, historical, cultural and geological constructs created through media can hopefully be influenced towards a better media literacy and understanding of racial and ethnical differences posed in our morning news updates, afternoon soups or late night game highlights.
For more stories of race and ethnicity in media go to: http://www.criticalmediaproject.org/resources/bibliography/
CITATIONS:
Cornell, Stephen and Douglass Hartmann. 2006. Ethnicity and Race: Making
Identities in a Changing World, 2nd ed. Sage.
This conversation often comes up in my household because my mom will mention the lack of different races in adds and TV shows and then will bring up the greater representation in music. She always mentions how if my great-grandma were alive she would be taken aback by how many different races are on TV even when there aren't a lot. It is just funny how we expect more representation of other races and ethnic groups in the media because we think we have progressed so much when in reality we didn't progress much at all.
ReplyDeleteThis is something that is so frequently talked about and yet so little change seems to come about. We see it in news media, movies, television, music videos, and many other venues. I have often struggled myself with thinking about certain types of music I listen to or movies I watch that I enjoy, and yet if I sit back and think about what is being said, or what stereotypes are being perpetuated, and so forth, I can't help but ask myself why I am able to sit there and enjoy listening, or watching. There are of course also times when I see or hear things and am appalled and disgusted by what is being portrayed. It is sad to know that not only are racial minorities frequently portrayed in a bad light in media, but they are also not given the opportunity to excel in media the way that whites are, even if it may be a field that they are very well qualified to work in. This is made very clear in the chart that you included showing the TV episodic director diversity over three years.
ReplyDeleteIn the reading material for my Media and Society class "the sociology of news", the author also talked about the news preferences for the coloured people rather than white people. When they talked about gangsters or shootings, they are more likely to emphasise on the races of people. Also, when the same event happened on the both black and white people, the case involved with black people will attract more people's attention to the news.
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