RECOMMENDED BLOGS

I have found all the blogs of my classmates very interesting to read. They all had important and interesting information regarding media issues and all given constructive arguments. These are the five that I commented on.

First, I got interested in Peter Cizek's article about paparazzi laws. I also explained that I am interested in this issue as I read celebrity blogs and I come across paparazzi pictures everyday. His blog is about media decreasing privacy and paparazzi are definately a contributing factor to this when they invade someone's privacy and personal space.

The second blog I commented on was Baia Dzagnidze's. I wrote about my own experiance with sexting, explaining a Slovak web site similar to Facebook which also features hundreds of pictures of semi-naked or naked children.

Kamila Kinstova's and Myo Ryu' s blogs had similar content like my blog. Kamila is talking about minorities and their portrayal in the media,explaining the Latino issue in the US. Myo had the same topics as I had so I was curious to look at her blog and compare our ideas. I came to a conclusion that we share very similar thoughts about the gender role stereotyping.

The last blog which I commented on was Anton Zolotyh's, and that is primarly because it was about music and I love music, listen to it everyday and share some of his ideas.

ESSAY - IMPACT OF STEREOTYPING IN MEDIA ON CHILDREN AND TEENAGERS

Stereotypes unfortunately persist even in today's modern and progressive world and society. A stereotype occurs when a person prejudges an individual and assigns generalizations about them based on preconceived notions of a group (Goessl). Gender, ethnicity, religion or age are some of the most basic and most frequently used stereotypes. Stereotypes are often inaccurate and made fun of, therefore have negative effect on both the people being stereotyped and on the children that are highly influenced on media, mainly the television as it creates a false perception about these people.

Children develop and shape their values, beliefs, attitudes and self-esteem around the mid-teens or even earlier (Media Awareness Network). It should be the parents who take on this role, but nowadays, in this hectic and stressful world with busy, hard-working parents with no free time, it is up to the television to do this job. According to KidsHealth.org, kids under age 6 watch an average of about 2 hours of screen media a day, primarily TV and videos or DVDs and kids and teens 8 to 18 years spend nearly 4 hours a day in front of a TV screen and almost 2 additional hours on the computer and playing video games, which makes it a total of 42 hours per week. Because of this excessive amount of time they spend with the media, there is no wonder they get influenced by its values and beliefs, and these then become their own. Due to the stereotyping of gender roles in the media, children have very distinct and rigid perception of what women and men do, what is expected of them and what is not. Kids assume that only the man works in the family, provides food and shelter, on the other hand they think the woman is the one staying at home, cooking, taking care of the household. This was very true in the past, however, in today's society where women are highly emancipated and take on jobs they could not in the future, it is often both of the parents who have jobs and support family with an income. This is very important and kids should be aware that not only daddy makes money in the family, but mom is also an able financial provider.

Another negative message that the media is sending to teenagers is about the body-image. Teens are constantly exposed to perfect bodies in magazines, advertisements, movies and TV-shows. The media sends a message that this is the ideal, and everyone should look like this. Since teens believe this, they may feel depressed or less valuable because they do not look like that perfect ideal they see on their favourite TV show which is the stereotyped image of beauty. This has a huge negative impact, leading to girls with eating disorders such as anorexia and bulimia, and further mental problems. The media needs to show its young viewers that it is okay to be just the way they are, and its not a problem when they are not super skinny or super pretty.

Since the media, and television mostly, has taken on the educational role in today's hectic society, it should be responsible for the values and norms they send to its viewers, especially when the majority are adolescents. Engraving negative assumptions and creating stereotypes does have negative effects on shaping the teenagers perception of today's world.

RECOMMENDED WEB SITES

1. website : http://www.media-awareness.ca/english/issues/stereotyping/index.cfm

The " Media Awareness" website has all the good information about issues concerned with media. I was concentrating on stereotyping in the media and at first I found a general explanation of what media stereotyping means, what are the problems with this issue and the roots. Then, it gives more in depth explanations about different group stereotypes, ethnic minorities, aboriginal people, stereotypes of women and men, gays and lesbians, people with disabilities.

2. website : http://chiron.valdosta.edu/dbriihl/introwood12.htm

This site is specifically talking about gender roles stereotyping and explains many aspects in a detailed manner. For example concerning sex, it says men look for the availability of women whereas women look for sex in a long term romantic relationship. When it comes to learning, it says that women excel in languages while men in math,science and spatial (chiron.valdosta.edu).

3. website : http://serendip.brynmawr.edu/local/sports03/papers/mmcconnell.html

The third article discusses in depth the negative aspects of stereotypes in society. It concerns itself with the issue of idealism of the celebrity body and a phenomenon it created. Since these bodies are super skinny and perfect, they are portrayed in the media as the ideal and this creates huge misconceptions and negative feelings among people when they do not fit this ideal dictated by the media.

ARTICLE :RACIAL STEREOTYPES IN THE MEDIA

ARTICLE: http://www.associatedcontent.com/article/33262/racial_stereotypes_in_the_media_pg3.html?cat=9 -

This article talks about racial stereotypes in the media, directly of the African-Americans on TV shows or news. The article claims that a person watching a lot of television would assume that African-Americans are "lazy, dishonest, dumb and ignorant" (Journal of Broadcast and Electronic Media, 2002). These are the main characteristics which are associated with them in the media. 89% of black female movie characters are shown using vulgar language, while only 17% of White women are, according to Entman-Rojecki Index of Race and Media. Also, black women are shown as being violent in movies 56% of the time compared to the 11% of white women. The article mentions some popular "black sitcoms" from the 1970's such as In Living Color or Good Times which gave African-Americans more TV coverage and also portrayed them in many different roles. However it concludes that other "white sitcoms" such as Friends were more popular and had higher viewership. Consequently, it mentions more recent shows such as The Cosby Show or Fresh Prince of Bel Air which show black families in a more positive light and also suggests they are not all poor and uneducated, as it was portrayed in the show Good Times. The last part of the article concerns itself with the unfair portrayal of African-American in the news and especially with the coverage of Los Angeles riot in 1992. The news made it seem that mainly black people were responsible for this riot, however this was very inaccurate information, as only 36% of arrested were African-Americans and the rest were white of Hispanic (the people's media company). To conclude, this article is trying to show that African-Americans are overly stereotyped in the media by being shown as violent and aggressive.

ARTICLE : CHILDREN AND MEDIA - STEREOTYPES

THE ARTICLE - http://www.pbs.org/parents/childrenandmedia/article-stereotypes.html

This article explains stereotypes as "recognizable but inaccurate views of one group of people by others" (PBS parents). It gives examples of women and minorities stereotypes. This site is dedicated to the right education of children by their parents, because those are in fact responsible for the views of their children, their perception of the world, culture and society. But because children nowadays are so overly exposed to all media, TV, internet, commercials, billboards and advertisements it is hard to escape its manipulation and stereotyping. Parents should teach kids right from wrong, real from fake, ideal from normal. This article gives parents 7 advices of how to fight stereotypes created by the media affecting their children. It advices them to talk about cultural diversity as minorities are often stereotyped in the media, made fun of and shown mostly negatively. Parents should also discuss the differences between females and males, what they think these are and point out how this is differently shown in the media. Also, an important lesson to learn is age discrimination. While young are portrayed as capable and old wise, they are also mostly viewed as "feeble and easily duped" and children should be told that is not always the case. Another very good advice it gives is for the kids to recognize the illusion of beauty that media creates and not everyone should or could look like that, but that is completely alright.

stereotyping gender roles

Generally, men are portrayed in media as the bread-winner of the family, strong, smart and skillful in technical and practical stuff. On the other hand women are supposed to stay at home, take care of the family, cook, do the house chores. The truth is this hierarchy of the sexes has been this way in the past, but now in the 21st century, things couldn't be more different. Still, the portrayal of the gender roles by media remains the same. Again, this stereotyping has great impact on children and their perception of what is typical of men and women to do. For example, if a man would cry he would be called as soft and girly, consequently, if a girl was playing tough and not dressed in skirts and dresses she would be called a tomboy. These stereotypes are rooted in the past perceptions, but as the world modernizes, so do the gender roles and the boundaries between what a boy is supposed to be like and how a girl should act are less visible. In today's society women had become more emancipated, independent, self-reliable, active and tough. They occupy many positions that only men did in the past. Men, on the hand, had started to acquire some of the female roles, such as stay-at-home dads, who take care of the children and house chores while the woman is making money. Women nowadays are part of the political elite or successful entrepreneurs, because simply just the assigned caretaker role was not enough. Also, when a men is sensitive, not afraid to show his emotions or cry, it is not taken as a negative thing, but rather a positive one. Another thing that contradicts the gender role stereotype is that men nowadays cook more often, or take care of some chore that has to be done, for example cleaning. Another big misconception there is among gender roles, is that the more sexual partners a man has, the more masculine and popular he is, due to the stereotyped macho image,associated with men.On the other hand, the more promiscious the woman is the more she is viewed as a prostitute and slut. The truth is, however, that men and women have the same needs, and there should not be an unspoken rule about how many sexual partners each of them should or should not have. This again creates negative feelings and problems among teenagers when a boy could feel insecure if he had not slept with x number of girls, or a girl will feel ashamed and called a slut if she slept with x number of boys.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pWc1e3Nbc2g - this is a very nice video with little kids asked about gender roles, about their ideas of what men and women do and what they do not, it is prove that their perception is from the stereotyped images given by the media - otherwise it is really cute :))

stereotyping the body image

The media image of female body is unattainable for most women and girls. There are pictures of beautiful women with perfect, skinny bodies everywhere, from billboards, commercials to magazines, promoting and selling cars to food. But, as we all know, that is not how the majority of female population looks, therefore it is not giving us a real portrayal of our society, but rather an ideal and unattainable one. Women is today's media are portrayed as sex bombs, beautiful with incredible bodies. This idealized image has most impact on teenage girls. Sometimes, the outcomes of this are horrible. Young girls feeling the pressure from the media to be skinny and pretty no matter what. They feel they should look like the perfect girls from the magazine covers, otherwise no one will like them or think they are pretty. This strive for perfection ends with teenage girls suffering from bulimia or anorexia, starving themselves. As opposed to staying healthy and keeping active these girls end up miserable and sick. In a recent study conducted by Quibblo.com, 60 percent of respondents, which were teenage girls, said they felt overweight. Also more than half admitted they feel like their life would change and improve dramatically if they came closer to their body ideal (Pangea media).These girls also said that they get motivation to improve their physical appearance from celebrity pictures in magazines to which they compare their own photos and spot flaws. The number of girls with eating disorders has doubled within a decade and surely the body image of women promote in media is to blame. Some analysts say roots to this perfect women phenomenon lie in economic factors. Since they are presenting an ideal which is difficult to achieve, the cosmetic and diet industries are sure to stay profitable and grow (Media Awareness Network). On the other hand, girls and women trying to achieve this ideal are depressed and unhealthy.

INTRODUCTION

With the arrival of modern media, such as internet, commercials and global news the creation of stereotypes through these mediums is inevitable. I feel that is it crucial to understand the nature of these stereotypes in order to view them critically and not be fooled. Since the media nowadays is mass, they need as huge audience as possible to understand the message they are sending right away. That is why these stereotypes serve as codes that give this mass audience a quick, common understanding of a person or group of people usually relating to their class,ethnicity or race, gender, sexual orientation, social role or occupation (Media Awareness Network). The groups and minorities that are mostly stereotyped in media are men, women, gays and lesbians, ethnic minorities such as black, aboriginal people or asians and the disabled. This stereotyping in media leads to prejudices and creates bad impact mostly on the self-image of children.