what is representation theory in media

Media Studies @ Guilsborough Academy

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Stuart Hall – Representation Theory

Stuart Hall – representation theory

What is the theory?

Stuart Hall’s REPRESENTATION theory (please do not confuse with RECEPTION ) is that there is not a true representation of people or events in a text, but there are lots of ways these can be represented. So, producers try to ‘fix’ a meaning (or way of understanding) people or events in their texts.

What is the more advanced version?

Representation is not about whether the media reflects or distorts reality, as this implies that there can be one ‘true’ meaning, but the many meanings a representation can generate. Meaning is constituted by representation, by what is present, what is absent, and what is different. Thus, meaning can be contested.

A representation implicates the audience in creating its meaning. Power – through ideology or by stereotyping – tries to fix the meaning of a representation in a ‘preferred meaning’. To create deliberate anti-stereotypes is still to attempt to fix the meaning (albeit in a different way). A more effective strategy is to go inside the stereotype and open it up from within, to deconstruct the work of representation.

Where can I use it?

Any time a producer of a text tries to ‘fix’ a meaning of a person or event – this will usually reveal viewpoints and bias (political or otherwise) – usually newspapers attempt to demonise groups of people. However, anti-stereotypical representations also try to fix meanings too – so these groups of people who were demonised in some papers might be presented as heroic in others.

Look at the representations of a previous British Prime Minister below:

How have the papers attempted to fix different meanings and how does this reveal their bias (political, gender)?

Stuart Hall | Pioneering Diversity & Inclusivity in Media

July 9, 2023 March 31, 2024

Have you ever wondered how media influences our thoughts and society? Well, lets introduce you to a brilliant scholar named Stuart Hall. He dedicated his life to studying media and culture. Thus, Hall’s ideas have greatly shaped the field of media and communications. Let’s further explore some of his key theories and concepts.

Stuart Hall (1932-2014) was a renowned British cultural theorist and sociologist. Hall made significant contributions to the field of media and cultural studies. Born in Jamaica, Hall then moved to the United Kingdom in the 1950s. It was here where he played a pivotal role in shaping the intellectual landscape. He co-founded the influential Centre for Contemporary Cultural Studies (CCCS) at the University of Birmingham. This then ended up becoming a hub for critical analysis of media, culture, and society.

Hall’s work focused on examining the interplay between media, power, identity, and representation. As a result, he emphasises the role of media in shaping our perceptions of the world. Hall further highlights the ways in which cultural identities are constructed and negotiated. Hall’s theories, such as encoding and decoding, have been instrumental in understanding how media messages are produced and interpreted.

Also throughout his career, Hall advocates for Multiculturalism and social justice, emphasising the importance of inclusivity and diversity in media representation. Furthermore, his insightful ideas and scholarship continue to inspire scholars, activists, and students worldwide. Thus, Hall leaves a lasting impact on the field of media and communications.

Stuart Hall on Media Representations

According to Hall, media plays a crucial role in shaping our understanding of the world. He believes that media representations are not neutral, but rather they are constructed based on social and cultural factors. For instance, television shows, movies, and advertisements often present certain groups of people in stereotypical ways. Thus, these representations can influence our perceptions and reinforce existing power structures.

Stuart Hall on Multiculturalism

Stuart Hall was also an advocate for multiculturalism, which recognises and celebrates the diversity of cultures within a society. He believes that media should reflect the multicultural nature of society and give voice to marginalised communities. Hall further argues that media representation should not perpetuate stereotypes or exclude certain cultural groups. Instead, it should promote inclusivity and provide a platform for different voices and perspectives.

Stuart Hall’s Encoding & Decoding

Hall introduced the concept of Encoding/Decoding in media messages, expanding the well known Reception Theory . He argued that when media producers create content, they encode their intended meaning into it. However, audiences don’t always interpret the messages in the same way. They also bring their own cultural and social backgrounds, which influence how they decode the messages. This means that the audience actively interprets media texts instead of passively accepting them.

Stuart Hall on Cultural Identity & Hybridity

Hall was interested in the concept of cultural identity, particularly in the context of diaspora and migration. He emphasised that cultural identity is not fixed but constantly negotiated and constructed. Hall also believes that individuals have multiple identities that are shaped by their cultural backgrounds, experiences, and interactions with others. He also explores the idea of Cultural Hybridity , where different cultures blend together, creating new and unique forms of identity.

Hegemony & Resistance

Another significant contribution by Hall is the theory of hegemony. He argues that those in power use the media to maintain their dominance over society. Therefore, media messages often promote the interests and values of the ruling class, creating a dominant ideology. However, Hall also believes in the potential for resistance. He further emphasises that audiences can actively challenge and reinterpret media messages, creating alternative meanings and resisting dominant ideologies.

Stuart Hall’s theories have revolutionised the field of media and communications. His ideas on media representations, encoding and decoding, cultural identity, and hegemony have provided valuable insights into how media shapes our understanding of the world. Therefore, understanding Hall’s work helps us become critical consumers of media and empowers us to challenge dominant narratives.

Hall , S. (1973). Encoding and Decoding in the Television Discourse . Discussion Paper. University of Birmingham, Birmingham.

Hall, S. (1980). Encoding/Decoding . In S. Hall, D. Hobson, A. Lowe, & P. Willis (Eds.), Culture, Media, Language: Working Papers in Cultural Studies, 1972-79 (pp. 128-138). Routledge.

Hall, S. (1982). The Rediscovery of “Ideology”: Return of the Repressed in Media Studies . In M. Gurevitch, T. Bennett, J. Curran, & J. Woollacott (Eds.), Culture, Society, and the Media (pp. 56-90). Routledge.

Hall, S. (1992). The West and the Rest: Discourse and Power . In S. Hall & B. Gieben (Eds.), Formations of Modernity (pp. 275-332). Polity Press.

Hall, S. (1990). Cultural Identity and Diaspora . In J. Rutherford (Ed.), Identity: Community, Culture, Difference (pp. 222-237). London: Lawrence & Wishart.

Hall, S. (1997). Representation: Cultural Representations and Signifying Practices . SAGE Publications.

Representation Theorists

Baudrillard – Hyper Reality: “Some texts are difficult to distinguish in terms of the representation of reality from a simulation of reality e.g. Big Brother. The boundaries are blurred as codes and conventions create a set of signifiers which we understand but in fact the representation is a copy of a copy”.

Judith Butler – Queer Theory: “Gender is what you do, not who you are with the theory contesting the categorization of gender and sexuality – identities are not fixed and they cannot be labelled e.g. potentially androgynous representations like Gok Wan.

Carol Clover – Last Girl Theory (Horror): “In many horror films, like Halloween typically the last girl that survives is pure, chaste and virginal while all of her friends with looser morals have been killed. Even the name of the last girl is often unisex e.g. Sidney, Teddy or Billie and has elements of androgyny and sometimes also a shared history with the killer”.

Richard Dyer – Stereotypes Legitimize Inequality: “A way to ensure unequal power relations are maintained is to continually stereotype – GTAV is a misogynist video game where players have the opportunity to kill prostitutes in their own violent way – the game is entirely male point of view and arguably serves to maintain dominant male culture”.

Stuart Hall – Dominant, Oppositional and Negotiated Readings of Representation: “Stuart Hall’s theory (see audiences) is also useful in understanding how some representations reflect the dominant culture e.g. patriarchy, women in The Sun and in Men’s Magazines like FHM. However, some representations can be negotiated or even misunderstood (oppositional) as in Four Lions which was accused of being a racist text due to its representation of British Pakistani Muslims”.

Angela McRobbie – Post Feminist Icon Theory: “Lara Croft, Lady Gaga and Madonna for example could be identified as post feminist icons as they exhibit the stereotypical characteristics of both the male and female – strength, courage, control and logic but also are willing to be sexualized for the male gaze. This control element of their own representation is crucial in understanding the theory”.

Andy Medhurst – Stereotyping is Shorthand for Identification: “One way that texts like Waterloo Road and Skins for example allow for audience identification is through stereotyping and giving characters an extreme representation”.

Laura Mulvey – Male Gaze/Female Gaze: “Women on the front cover of FHM are sexualized and objectified for the male audience while the same can be said for male models in perfume adverts, sexualized for a female demographic”.

Tessa Perkins – Stereotyping has Elements of Truth: “Although stereotyping can have negative effects often it is based of some degree of reality but distorted and manipulated for the purpose of entertainment values”.

Levi-Strauss – Binary Oppositions and Subordinate Groups: “Levi-Strauss’ theory (see narrative theorists), like Dyer is a way of understanding how representation are deliberately placed in binary opposition to ensure the dominant culture is maintained and the minority representations is seen as subordinate and marginalized. In Game of Thrones southern regional identity is often seen as the preferred culture through representation within the mise-en-scene – there is more money in the south, the southern King speaks with an elaborated language code, the buildings have cleaner lines, dress code is smarter and there is significant daytime shooting. In the North the scenes are often shot at night, characters are rougher, have long hair and beards and are often seen heavy drinking and shouting, talking in an aggressive way about battles and conflict”.

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Representation in Media

Introduction: What is Representation?

Asian american representation in the media, human/non-human relationships in media, queer representation in media.

Other Features
Indigenous Heritage & History Month
Defining Representation
Academic Books
Scholarly Articles

Welcome! This is our series on representations in media, highlighting how creators have portrayed various communities in the past and present, and where we hope to move in the future. On this page you will find features highlighting the portrayal of Asian American communities, Queer communities, and Animal/non-human species in film and television. These features contain resources for further research along with information on some of the common stereotypes/tropes associated with portrayals of these groups. We will continue to add new features periodically. This box serves as an introduction to the concept of representation in media featuring academic texts and scholarly articles on the topic.

In the broadest stokes, representation refers to the portrayal of people, groups, and communities in the media (including television, film, and books). Recently, audiences have asked for increased representation of underrepresented groups in media including of women, people of color, the queer community, transgender/nonbinary people, disabled people, and others. Audiences have also called for a greater diversity of religions, body types, nationality, and more to be portrayed on screen.

In trying to increase representation, however characters and plot lines can often fall into stereotypical depictions or tired tropes , especially when stories and characters are written or portrayed by members who are not part of a given group. According to Maja Hardikar, "the line between stereotype and representation is thin...it may be tempting to view the difference between “stereotype” and “representation” as the simple difference between good and bad; “representation” is when we see ourselves reflected up onscreen and feel empowered, “stereotype” is when the representation fails to represent us" (6). The features on this page discuss the histories of various stereotypes, which often originated from the first appearances members of a said group on screen (take, for example, The Dragon Lady or The Gay Best Friend).

Though representation might seem trivial, studies have shown that in some instances, the dissemination of diverse media is actually a transformative action . For example, a 2015 study found that when straight people are more exposed to gay characters on TV they become more accepting of gay equality, with a 2020 survey by GLAAD and P&G finding that queer representation increased queer acceptance by up to 45% (Bond and Compton; GLAAD).

Representation is only the beginning of a more equitable world for people whose identities do not afford them safety in the societies in which they live. Systemic, liberatory change requires deeper, more sustained movement, political activism, and community building. It is important to remember, however, that diverse representation can have dramatic, empowering , and beneficial effects on people's lives, especially when those representations depict complex characters in robust, nuanced stories.

Sources: Bond, B. J., & Compton, B. L. (2015). Gay On-Screen: The Relationship Between Exposure to Gay Characters on Television and Heterosexual Audiences’ Endorsement of Gay Equality. Journal of Broadcasting & Electronic Media , 59 (4), 717–732. https://doi.org/10.1080/08838151.2015.1093485; GLAAD. (2020, May 27). Procter & Gamble and GLAAD Study: Exposure to LGBTQ Representation in Media and Advertising Leads to Greater Acceptance of the LGBTQ Community . https://glaad.org/releases/procter-gamble-and-glaad-study-exposure-lgbtq-representation-media-and-advertising-leads/ ; Hardikar, M. (2023). A Real Gay Person: Representation and Stereotypes in Queer Romantic Comedies . Georgetown University.

Cross-cultural representation of ‘otherness’ in media discourse Caldas-Coulthard, C. R. (2003). Cross-cultural representation of ‘otherness’ in media discourse. In Critical discourse analysis: Theory and interdisciplinarity (pp. 272-296). London: Palgrave Macmillan UK.
Gender, race, and media representation Brooks, D. E., & Hébert, L. P. (2006). Gender, race, and media representation. Handbook of gender and communication , 16, 297-317.
Media and the representation of Others Fürsich, E. (2010). Media and the representation of Others. International social science journal , 61(199), 113-130.
Diaspora in the digital era: Minorities and media representation Georgiou, M. (2013). Diaspora in the digital era: Minorities and media representation. Jemie , 12, 80.
Media constructions of culture, race, and ethnicity Dixon, T. L., Weeks, K. R., & Smith, M. A. (2019). Media constructions of culture, race, and ethnicity. In Oxford research encyclopedia of communication .
Media beyond representation Angus, I. H. (2022). Media beyond representation. In Cultural politics in contemporary America (pp. 333-346). Routledge.
Introduction
Academic Texts

The Model Minority Myth

The "Dragon Lady"
Techno-Orientalism

Still from "Everything Everywhere All At Once" with three people standing together.

Images: Films (from left to right), Everything Everywhere All at Once (2022), Bitter Melon (2018), PEN15 (2019-), Minari (2020).

Welcome to the Asian American Representation in the Media LibGuide. This guide will discuss the history of Asian American representation in the media—primarily in Hollywood—and examine some common tropes/stereotypes applied to Asian characters in film and television. Here, you will find brief discussions of the Model Minority Myth, the Dragon Lady trope, techno-orientalism, and whitewashing/yellowface, along with a selections of books and films written/created by Asian Americans featuring nuanced characters and portrayals of Asian experiences, including the movies and films in the above images.

In a recent study, “ I Am Not a Fetish or Model Minority ” (2021) from the Geena Davis Institute on Gender in Media and the Coalition of Asian Pacifics in Entertainment, researchers found that Asian and Pacific Islanders (API) actors made up only 4.5% of leads or co-leads in the top 10 grossing domestic films from 2010-2019. In films featuring API characters in the main cast, about a third of API characters "embody at least one common API trope or stereotype (35.2%)" such as the “Martial Artist,” the “Model Minority,” or the “Exotic Woman.” There is a long and continuing history of the whitewashing and stereotyping of Asian characters in Hollywood films. In 1935, MGM refused to consider Anna May Wong for the leading role O-Lan in the The Good Earth— instead casting Luise Rainer to play O-Lan in yellowface. In the 2023 biography Tetris , Taron Egerton, a Welsh actor was been cast to play video game publisher Henk Rogers, who is Dutch-Indonesian.

The guide serves only as an introduction and highlights texts in our collection that focus on Asian American representation in the media. For more information, see our companion guides including our Feminist Media Studies guid e which features brief explanations of stereotypes inflicted on women in the media:

Asian American, Native Hawaiian, & Pacific Islander Heritage Month (Media Studies)
Asian American Representation in the Media (Media Studies)
Korea Remixed (Media Studies)
Spotlight on Queer & Trans* Asian Literature and Poetics (Gender Studies)
Asian American and Pacific Islander Philosophies (Philosophy)
Asian American Pacific Islander Heritage Month Media Resources (Media Services)
Asian American Artists, Architects, and Designers (Art, Art History, & Architecture)
AAPI Identity - Recommended Reads from the Children's Collection (Education Library)

Video: The History of Asian Representation in Film . VICE News (2021).

Citations: Almost Half of All Asian Roles Serve as a Punchline, Study Finds . Sakshi Venkatraman, NBC News, 5 Aug. 2021.

Video: Why Do We Call Asian Americans The Model Minority? AJ+ (2017).

The Model Minority Myth is a stereotype of certain minority groups, particularly Asian Americans, as successful, well-adjusted, and therefore requiring little or no social and economic assistance. The phrase "model minority" originated in a 1966 New York Times article by William Peterson who used the phrase to describe the economic prosperity of Japanese Americans after WWII. Since then, the term has been applied to many other groups including Chinese Americans, Indian Americans, and Korean Americans. The model minority stereotype is not only harmful to Asian Americans because it groups them into a monolith but also in that it perpetuates the idea that other minority groups should be able to achieve model minority status not through the removal of systemic barriers but through hard work alone. This stereotype can be found in media, journalism, academia, popular culture, and more. For example, in 1987 TIME published their magazine with a cover photo of " Those Asian-American Whiz Kids ."

Photocopy of a New York Times article, "Success Story, Japanese-American Style" with a black and white photograph.

Images: (Left) Success Story, Japanese-American Style: Success Story, Japanese-American Style. William Peterson, New York Times, (1966) . (Right) Those Asian-American Whiz Kids. TIME Magazine (1987).

The Term "Asian American"

Scholars and activists have long critiqued the terms AAPI and Asian American as "masking differences in histories and needs among communities, as well as supporting the myth that Asian Americans are a monolithic group" ( Connie Hanzhang Jin, 2021 ). This monolithic mindset contributes society often overlooking diversity in the Asian American community in terms of ethnic groups, experience, immigration status, and economic circumstances . In fact, contrary to the Model Minority Myth which states that Asian Americans are an economically prosperous demographic that does not require financial assistance or investment, Asian Americans are actually the most economically divided racial group in America :

Graph of income disparities among Asian American ethnic communities

Graph: Key disparities in income and education among Asian American groups . Connie Hanzhang Jin, NPR (2021).

The perception of Asian Americans being economically and academically successful hides the fact that many Asian American communities experience high rates of poverty and Asian American students often feel intense academic pressure which leads to heightened rates of anxiety and stress. While the release of films and shows such as "Crazy Rich Asians" (the first film by a major Hollywood studio to feature a majority cast of Chinese descent in a modern setting since The Joy Luck Club in 1993) and Netflix's "Bling Empire " have undoubtedly increased Asian American representation in Hollywood, it is important to note that these films do play into stereotypes about the prevalence of extremely rich and successful Asian Americans. Of course, if there were more representation of Asian Americans in Hollywood, this would not be a concern—all communities deserve to be represented in a multitude of nuanced ways—but it is important to consider which portrayals of Asian Americans receive studio/Hollywood funding, win prestigious awards, and draw large audiences.

Video: The Complicated Discussion Surrounding Crazy Rich Asians . Quality Culture (2022).

The model minority myth manifests in television and film characters who are portrayed as one-dimensional nerds, high-achievers, and stoic, diligent workers. To keep learning about this myth, explore some the resources listed below:

Video: Adam Ruins Everything—How America Created the “Model Minority” Myth (truTV)
Video: Asian Americans: Last Week Tonight with John Oliver (HBO)
Video: The Model Minority Trope, Explained (The Take)
Video: The Origins of the Model Minority Myth (Project Lotus)
Website: Deconstructing the Model Minority at UM (University of Michigan)
Confronting Asian-American Stereotypes (Adeel Hassan, The New York Times)

Peterson, W. " Success Story, Japanese-American Style: Success Story, Japanese-American Style. " New York Times (1923-) , Jan 09, 1966, pp. 180 . ProQuest.

“ TIME Magazine Cover: Asian-American Whiz Kids - Aug. 31, 1987.” TIME.Com . Accessed 10 May 2023.

The Dragon Lady is a stereotype of Asian women, particularly East Asian women, as strong, deceitful, domineering, mysterious, and sexually alluring. The Dragon Lady might be seen wearing 'traditional' dress when no one else around her is, speaking in cryptic/flowery metaphors, or utilizing Asian fighting styles. The term comes from the U.S. comic strip "Terry and the Pirates," which featured a character called Dragon Lady, also known as Madam Deal .

Cover art of the comic "Terry and the Pirates enter the Dragon Lady" featuring a person in a black dress.

Image: Terry and the Pirates: Enter the Dragon Lady . Milton Caniff (1975). Featuring the Dragon Lady, a character based on Lai Choi San , a 1900s Chinese pirate.

Inspired by the characters played by actress Anna May Wong , the term is often applied in opposition to the "Lotus Blossom" stereotype of an overly submissive and hyper-sexualized Asian woman. The Dragon Lady has often been used to refer to powerful Asian women—such as Soong Mei-ling (Madame Chiang Kai-shek) and Devika Rani —in a derogatory fashion. The term dragon lady is applied to Asian women and not to their non-Asian counterparts as Lucy Liu highlights in her discussion of Kill Bill: Volume I:

"Kill Bill' features three other female professional killers in addition to Ishii. Why not call Uma Thurman, Vivica A. Fox or Daryl Hannah a dragon lady? I can only conclude that it's because they are not Asian, I could have been wearing a tuxedo and a blond wig, but I still would have been labeled a dragon lady because of my ethnicity.

"Kill Bill," includes many female assassins but shows Liu's character committing her assassinations in traditional Japanese costume.

Poster for the film "Daughter of the Dragon."

Images: Poster for Daughter of the Dragon (1931) and Anna May Wong as Princess Ling Moy.

The Dragon Lady trope has its roots in the Page Act of 1875 , a United States law which prohibited the immigration of “Oriental” laborers brought against their will or for “lewd and immoral purposes.” In practice, this law banned all East Asian women from entering the US. On the perception of Asian women during this time, Nancy Wang Yuen states: “They were characterized as potentially carrying sexual diseases. They were also characterized as being temptations for white men” ( qtd. in Pham 2021 ). The Dragon Lady is a result of centuries of Anti-Asian bias, yellow peril, and racist assumptions about Asian women. It is important to note that until recently, these were some of the only roles that Asian women in Hollywood were allowed to play—actors needed to take these positions lest they not be cast at all. The problem with the Dragon Lady stereotype is not that it depicts Asian women as strong, attractive, and mysterious, but that media would often refuse to show Asian women as anything else ( Pham, 2021 ). For more on the nuanced reality of this stereotype see Sarah Kuhn's article "Enter the Dragon Lady" and explore the resources listed below:

Hollywood Played a Role in Hypersexualizing Asian Women (India Roby, Teen Vogue)
Here's how pop culture has perpetuated harmful stereotypes of Asian women (Elise Pham, Today.com)
Twitter thread (CAPE—Coalition of Asian Pacifics in Entertainment)

Video: Virtually Asian (English subtitles) . Astria Suparak, Berkeley Art Center (2021).

In 2020, Astria Suparak launched the " Asian futures, without Asians " series, a "a visual analysis of over half a century of American science fiction cinema. A multipart research project, it draws from the histories of art, architecture, design, fashion, film, food, and weaponry." In this series, Suparak analyzes how science fiction utilizes stereotypical Asian signifiers that serve as the backdrop for an almost exclusively white cast.

“The piece is part of a larger project examining 40 years of sci-fi films and how white filmmakers envision a future that is inflected by Asian culture but devoid of actual Asian people."

—Astria Suparak qtd, in " Asian-American Artists, Now Activists, Push Back Against Hate "

Learn more about Suparak's ongoing project and explore additional resources below:

How Sci-Fi Films Use Asian Characters to Telegraph the Future While Also Dehumanizing Them (Evan Nicole Brown, The Hollywood Reporter).
Orientalism, Cyberpunk 2077, and Yellow Peril in Science Fiction (George Yang, Wired). Cyberpunk as a genre, and Cyberpunk 2077 the game, are both rooted in a type of other-ization that can’t be ignored—but it can be examined.
After Yang (Anna Maitland)
Video: Techno-Orientalism with Dr. Terry K. Park (IU East)

Video: Yellowface is a bad look, Hollywood. Vox (2016).

Whitewashing is a casting practice in the film industry in which white actors are cast in non-white roles. Yellowface is a form of whitewashing where non-Asian actors are cast to play Asian characters. The practice of yellowface extends from the beginning of Hollywood to today. Famous early examples include Warner Oland playing Charlie Chan in "Charlie Chan Carries On" (1931) and Dr. Fu Manchu in "The Mysterious Dr. Fu Manchu" (1929). In the 1960s, Mickey Rooney wore yellowface to portray I. Y. Yunioshi in "Breakfast at Tiffany's" (1961). More recently, you might recall Scarlett Johansson , Pilou Asbæk, and Michael Pitt playing Japanese animated characters in "Ghost in the Shell" (2017), Emma Stone as Allison Ng in "Aloha" (2015), and white actors playing Asian and Inuit characters in the film adaptation of Avatar: The Last Airbender.

Image of Scarlett Johansson in Ghost in the Shell.

Images: (Left to right) Scarlett Johansson in "Ghost in a Shell" , Emma Stone in "Aloha" , and the cast of "The Last Airbender"

Whitewashing is prominent in Hollywood for Asian characters as well as any non-white characters. For an extensive list, check out this Wikipedia page. Many directors and producers are pressured by Hollywood executives to cast non-Asian actors in Asian roles. For example. Lulu Wang, the director of The Farewell (a film about here Chinese American family), has stated that many American financiers wanted to include a " prominent white character into the narrative, and punch up the nuanced drama to turn it into a broad comedy ."

To learn more about the history of whitewashing and yellowface, explore the resources below:

Is a Disappointing Ghost in the Shell the Nail in the Coffin of Hollywood Whitewashing? (Joanna Robinson, Vanity Fair)
When white actors play other races (Tom Brook, BBC)
Yellowface, Whitewashing, and the History of White People Playing Asian Characters (Jenn Fang, TeenVogue)
Video: The History of Yellowface (Teen Vogue)

The following are films by and featuring Asian directors, writers, and actors. For additional lists, see below:

11 Films by Asian American and Pacific Islander Directors to Fill Your May Days (Sundance Institute)
Five AAPI Directors Who Are Refiguring American Cinema (Focus Features)
57 Asian Actors and Actresses in Hollywood You Should Know (Isis Briones, Tommy Taso, Kristi Kellogg, and Sara Li, Teen Vogue)

Content Warning: Gore

Video: Happy (Official Music Video) . Mitski (2016).

Asian Americans have been exploring media representation through their writing, music, cinema, and essays. Below is a small selection of books written by Asian Americans about the Asian American experience.

The Center for Asian American Media (CAAM)

is a nonprofit organization dedicated to presenting stories that convey the richness and diversity of Asian American experiences to the broadest audience possible. We do this by funding, producing, distributing and exhibiting works in film, television and digital media. For 40 years, CAAM has exposed audiences to new voices and communities, advancing our collective understanding of the American experience through programs specifically designed to engage the Asian American community and the public at large. CAAM has put together a collection titled "Memories to Light," a project to collect and digitize home movies and to share them–and the stories they tell—to a broad public.

Video: Memories to Light 2.0: The Bohulano Family . CAAMChannel (2014).

Asian Americans Advancing Justice (AAAJ)

"Asian Americans have been part of the American story since its earliest days, and are now the U.S.'s fastest-growing racial group with the potential and power to shape our nation and the policies that affect us. Our mission is to advance civil and human rights for Asian Americans and to build and promote a fair and equitable society for all." Explore their Media Diversity Page .

Asian Film Archive: The Asian Film Archive was founded in January 2005 as a non-profit organisation to preserve the rich film heritage of Singapore and Asian Cinema, to encourage scholarly research on film, and to promote a wider critical appreciation of this art form.

Introductory Texts
Animals in Literature
Animals in the Media
Music, Podcasts, Miscellany
Organizations & Movements

During April, we celebrate both Earth Month and Earth Day (April 26th). Earth Day has been celebrated since 1970 and marks the anniversary of the birth of the modern environmental movement . In celebration of this month and day, we have developed a guide focusing on human relationships with the non-human world. This feature will center on representation of animals in the media, literature, and culture. You will find poetry, nonfiction, and novels that allow you to witness how writers and creatives are thinking, and have been thinking, about human/non-human relations.

Totoro, a large fictional animal stands in the rain at a bus stop next to a person holding a red umbrella.

Image: Still from Hayao Miyazaki's My Neighbor Totoro (1988).

If you are looking to learn more about the history of a specific animal, look into The Animal Series from Reaktion Books which explores the natural history of animals alongside their historical and cultural impact on humankind. Each short book is a wonderful introduction to an animal with which you are probably familiar and maybe even encounter daily!

Image: The Animal Series from Reaktion Books. Moth , Hare , Nightingale , Lizard .

Check out our companion feature in the Philosophy guide for more information on the scholarly fields of Animal Studies and Critical Animal Studies, as well as other philosophies of the non-human.

If you'd like to explore more thematic content relevant to climate change, environmental justice, and nature, try the Environmental Justice & Earth Day feature , which includes music, novels, feature films, and documentaries on these topics, and the highlight on Environmental Ethics & Aesthetics at the Philosophy Research Guide .

From Winnie the Pooh to Moby Dick, animals can be found in a wide variety of novels, children's stories, folktales, and other writings from the medieval to contemporary eras. Literary animal studies explores the figurative significance of animals in literature, offering critical insight into the portrayal of animals in literature. Scholars discuss how writers represent animal experience in human language, whether it is truly possible to develop a non-anthropocentric mode of writing, and how representations of nonhuman subjects might affect our perception of certain species.

When exploring literary animal studies in IUCAT, try looking under the following subject headings: "Human animal relationships in literature" and "Animals in literature." See also: "Palgrave studies in animals and literature" series .

Images: (Left) The Cricket in Times Square . George Selden (1960). (Right): Author: Zakariya ibn Muhammad Qazwini (ca. 1203-1283), Scribe: Muhammad ibn Muhammad Shakir Ruzmah-'i Nathani. Illustration: A Wild Cat and an Animal Called Sirayis . 1121 AH/AD 1717 (Ottoman). Artstor.

Explore the following subject headings in IUCAT to learn more about animals and animal representation in the media:

"Animals in motion pictures"
"Animal films--History and criticism"
"Animals in mass media"
"Human animal relationships in mass media"

Bronze statue of a dog in a park in Tokyo.

Image: Hachicko Statue in Tokyo, Japan . Go Tokyo.

Images: Album covers, clockwise from left to right: Alex G God Save the Animals ; Ia Clua & Jordi Batiste Chichonera’s Cat ; The Birdsong Project For The Birds : Vol. 1; Fiona Apple Fetch the Boltcutters ; Nyokabi Kariũki peace places: kenyan memories ; Pink Floyd Animals .

About the Playlist

The nonhuman world, including animals, have long captured the cultural and musical imaginations of people. In this playlist, we have curated a selection of songs about, referring to, or in any way inspired by our fellow critters, whether literally or symbolically. To learn more about the music we've included, the history of nonhuman animal references in music, and animals' own relationships with music, consult some of the resources below:

"How Birds and Animals Have Inspired Classical Music" ( BBC Music )
"The Specialist's Guide to Animals in Music" ( Gramophone )
"Animals in Music" Playlist ( Naxos )
"Readers Recommend: Songs About Animals" ( The Guardian )
"Zoomusicology" ( Wikipedia )
"Are Humans the Only Music Species?" ( MIT Press Reader )
"Do Any Other Animals Play Music?" ( BBC Science Focus )
"7 Scientific Studies About How Animals React to Music" ( Mental Floss )

Note : To enjoy the playlist in full, click on the white Spotify icon in the upper-right corner of the playlist, and press the "like" (♡) button in the application to save.

This American Life

The Feather Heist A flute player breaks into a British museum and makes off with a million dollars worth of dead birds.
Spark Bird Stories about birds and the hearts they sway, the havoc they wreak, the lives they change.

In Dog We Trust Exactly how much are the animals that live in our homes caught up in our everyday family dynamics?

Ologies with Alie Ward

Chickenology (Hens & Roosters) Part 1 with Tove Danovich
Diplopodology (Millipedes & Centipedes) with Dr. Derek Hennen
Carnivore Ecology (Lions, Tigers, & Bears) with Dr. Rae Wynn-Grant

The Ezra Klein Show

Mark Bittman Cooked Everything. Now He Wants to Change Everything The acclaimed food writer offers a sweeping indictment of our modern food system.
The Hidden Costs of Cheap Meat The animal rights activist Leah Garcés discusses how modern meat production harms animals, people and the environment.
A Conversation With Ada Limón, in Six Poems The award-winning poet shares how she stays open to wonder and beauty in a difficult world.
For ‘Gender’, See ‘Turtles’: Experiments in Empathetic Biology (Callum Angus)
excerpts from "every dog i pet in 2016" (joseph parker okay)
Why I Write About Animals, or, My Body Is the Animal I Write About (Hannah Gamble)

Miscellany

Photograph of the book, "Modern Animal" on a neon yellow fuzzy background.

There are many ways to get involved with Animal Rights and Environmental movements right here in and around Bloomington. From incorporating animal studies into your scholarship to donating money and participating in direct action campaigns, see the following list for organizations supporting animals and the environment in the Bloomington area:

Bloomington Animal Shelter Run by Bloomington Animal Care and Control, whose mission is to address and respond to all animal needs in the community through education, enforcement and support in order to build a community where animals are valued and treated with kindness and respect. The Animal Shelter is accepting donations and foster applications.
Monroe County Humane Association (MCHA) "Dedicated to promoting the welfare of animals, strengthening the human-animal bond, and providing access to veterinary care & humane education across our community."
Sunrise Bloomington "We are a group of undergrads, grads, faculty, high schoolers and Bloomington community members who are dedicated to bringing about positive changes towards climate justice initiative through grassroots movement building!"
IU Student Animal Legal Defense Fund The Student Animal Legal Defense Fund was established at IU Maurer School of Law in 2010 to provide a forum for education, advocacy, and scholarship aimed at improving the lives of animals and advancing their interests through the legal system.
BloomingVeg "An all-ages social and advocacy group for vegetarians, vegans, and veggie-lovers alike in Bloomington, Indiana."
Indy VegFest A "nonprofit organization whose mission is to increase the public’s acceptance of the compassionate, environmental, and health facets of a vegan lifestyle through an annual event and year-round outreach and education opportunities."
Rainbow Bakery Vegan bakery in Bloomington, IN.
Vegan, Vegetarian & Gluten-Free Restaurants in Bloomington (Visit Bloomington)
Uplands PEAK Sanctuary Indiana's first farmed animal sanctuary, providing lifelong care to their residents, educational tours, and volunteer opportunities.

The following are national organizations fighting for animal rights, liberation, and environmental justice. For more information on the impact of a few of the organizations listed below, check out Animal Charity Evaluators , which researches animal welfare organizations.

Native American Humane Society "Shares our expertise to help tribal communities learn how to humanely manage and care for the animal populations in their own communities. NAHS connects tribal communities and animal welfare service providers, NGOs, foundations, and other agencies to assist tribal communities in resolving their challenges with animals through regular animal care, population management, and community activities."
The Humane League "We exist to end the abuse of animals raised for food by influencing the policies of the world’s biggest companies, demanding legislation, and empowering others to take action and leave animals off their plates."
Good Food Institute "A nonprofit think tank working to make the global food system better for the planet, people, and animals. Alongside scientists, businesses, and policymakers, GFI’s teams focus on making plant-based and cultivated meat delicious, affordable, and accessible."
The Green New Deal Network "A coalition of grassroots organizations, labor, and climate and environmental justice organizations growing a movement to pass local, state, and national policies that create millions of family-sustaining union jobs, ensure racial and gender equity, and take action on climate at the scale and scope the crisis demands."
Indigenous Environmental Network "IEN was formed by grassroots Indigenous peoples and individuals to address environmental and economic justice issues (EJ). IEN’s activities include building the capacity of Indigenous communities and tribal governments to develop mechanisms to protect our sacred sites, land, water, air, natural resources, health of both our people and all living things, and to build economically sustainable communities."
Queerbaiting
The Gay Best Friend
Bury Your Gays

Welcome! In this feature, we will explore the representation of queer people in media, particularly in film and television. We will explore some common tropes/stereotypes, consider the use of representation as a concept, and track where queer representation has been and where it is going. The representation of queer people falls into categories: negative representation (harmful stereotypes that vilify and misrepresent the lives and motivations of queer folks), no representation (complete exclusion of queer people), token representation (virtue signalling through the placement of a queer character), queerbaiting (the inclusion of scenes that suggest a character might be LGBTQ+, while maintaining a distinct lack of evidence in the story to confirm or deny it), retroactive representation (when creators explicitly (and retroactively) claim that certain characters are LGBTQ+), idealistic representation (a depiction set in a world where queerness isn’t stigmatized or discriminated against), and complex representation (a nuanced, compelling depiction of queer characters that addresses the intersectional nature many queer folk's lived experiences). This feature considers a few of these representations and provides a selection of academic texts that may be helpful to your research on this or related topics.

In this feature, will highlight common tropes like The Gay Best Friend, Bury Your Gays, and Queerbaiting. Alongside these tropes, however, we highlight media that depicts nuanced and complex queer characters and reflections on queerness in the media (you will find these under the non-fiction, film, and television tabs).

For a brief history of queer cinema, check out the " Queer Film Classics " series by Arsenal Pulp Press. See a selection here:

From left to right: Winter Kept Us Warm , Paris is Burning , Anders Als Die Andern , Fire , and Midnight Cowboy

Documentaries

For more shows, see the following lists:

The 28 Best LGBTQ+ TV Shows to Stream Right Now (Tyler Breitfeller, Vanity Fair)
The 25 Most Essential LGBTQ TV Shows of the 21st Century (Wilson Chapman, IndieWire)
39 binge-worthy LGBTQ TV shows to watch this Pride (Alison Foreman & Oliver Whitney, Mashable)

Queerbaiting is a (marketing) technique for fiction and entertainment in which creators hint at, but do not depict, queer romance or other LGBTQ+ representation. Queerbaiting attracts a queer/straight ally audience without isolation viewers who are opposed to seeing queer people in media. Some prominent characters that were used to queerbait fans include Dumbledore from Harry Potter, Finn and Poe from Star Wars, Holmes and Watson from Sherlock, numerous characters from the Marvel franchise , and Dean and Castiel from Supernatural. Subtext in general became popular in film in the 1930s when the Hays Code (guidelines for the self-censorship of content that was applied to most motion pictures released by major studios in the United States) limited what could be shown on screen. Today, queerbaiting is a way to keep media viewership up without actually representing queer people on screen, contribution to further marginalization of the LGBTQ+ community.

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Mass Media Representation, Identity-Building and Social Conflicts: Towards a Recognition-Theoretical Approach

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Rousiley C. M. Maia 2

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Since its inception, mass media has become a crucial site of struggle. By surveying television dramas, films, journalism, commercial and non-commercial advertisements, etc., a number of scholars have attempted to understand social conflict through approaches such as the “struggle around the image” (Hall, 1997b, p. 257), “struggle over representation” (Shohat & Stam, 1994, p. 178), “struggles for and over social and cultural life” (Gray, 1995, p. 55; see also, Larson, 2006, p. 14). The mass media is also seen as a “site of ideological-democratic struggle” (Carpentier, 2011) and an “arena” for civic debate (Butsch, 2007; Dahlgren & Sparks, 1993; Ferree, Gamson, Gerhards, & Rucht, 2002; Gomes & Maia, 2008; Maia, 2008, 2012a; Norris, 2000; Page, 1996; Peters, 2008; Wessler & Schultz, 2007; Wessler, Peters, Brüggemann, Königslöw & Sifft, 2008).

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Rousiley C. M. Maia ( Associate Professor )

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Maia, R.C.M. (2014). Mass Media Representation, Identity-Building and Social Conflicts: Towards a Recognition-Theoretical Approach. In: Recognition and the Media. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137310439_3

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Article contents

Media constructions of culture, race, and ethnicity.

Travis L. Dixon , Travis L. Dixon Department of Communication, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Kristopher R. Weeks Kristopher R. Weeks Department of Communication, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
, and Marisa A. Smith Marisa A. Smith Department of Communication, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
https://doi.org/10.1093/acrefore/9780190228613.013.502
Published online: 23 May 2019

Racial stereotypes flood today’s mass media. Researchers investigate these stereotypes’ prevalence, from news to entertainment. Black and Latino stereotypes draw particular concern, especially because they misrepresent these racial groups. From both psychological and sociological perspectives, these misrepresentations can influence how people view their racial group as well as other groups. Furthermore, a racial group’s lack of representation can also reduce the group’s visibility to the general public. Such is the case for Native Americans and Asian Americans.

Given mass media’s widespread distribution of black and Latino stereotypes, most research on mediated racial portrayals focuses on these two groups. For instance, while black actors and actresses appear often in prime-time televisions shows, black women appear more often in situational comedies than any other genre. Also, when compared to white actors and actresses, television casts blacks in villainous or despicable roles at a higher rate. In advertising, black women often display Eurocentric features, like straight hair. On the other hand, black men are cast as unemployed, athletic, or entertainers. In sports entertainment, journalists emphasize white athletes’ intelligence and black athletes’ athleticism. In music videos, black men appear threatening and sport dark skin tones. These music videos also sexualize black women and tend to emphasize those with light skin tones. News media overrepresent black criminality and exaggerate the notion that blacks belong to the undeserving poor class. Video games tend to portray black characters as either violent outlaws or athletic.

While mass media misrepresent the black population, it tends to both misrepresent and underrepresent the Latino population. When represented in entertainment media, Latinos assume hypersexualized roles and low-occupation jobs. Both news and entertainment media overrepresent Latino criminality. News outlets also overly associate Latino immigration with crime and relate Latino immigration to economic threat. Video games rarely portray Latino characters.

Creators may create stereotypic content or fail to fairly represent racial and ethnic groups for a few reasons. First, the ethnic blame discourse in the United States may influence creators’ conscious and unconscious decision-making processes. This discourse contends that the ethnic and racial minorities are responsible for their own problems. Second, since stereotypes appeal to and are easily processed by large general audiences, the misrepresentation of racial and ethnic groups facilitates revenue generation. This article largely discusses media representations of blacks and Latinos and explains the implications of such portrayals.

content analysis
African American portrayals
Latino portrayals
ethnic blame discourse
structural limitations and economic interests
social identity theory
Clark’s Stage Model of Representations

Theoretical Importance of Media Stereotypes

Media constructions of culture, race, and ethnicity remain important to study because of their potential impact on both sociological and psychological phenomena. Specifically, researchers have utilized two major theoretical constructs to understand the potential impact of stereotyping: (a) priming and cognitive accessibility (Dixon, 2006 ; Scheufele & Tewksbury, 2007 ; Shrum, 2009 ), and (b) social identity and social categorization theory (Mastro, 2004 ; Mastro, Behm-Morawitz, & Kopacz, 2008 ; Tajfel & Turner, 2004 ).

Priming and Cognitive Accessibility

Priming and cognitive accessibility suggests that media consumption encourages the creation of mental shortcuts used to make relevant judgments about various social issues. For example, if a news viewer encounters someone cognitively related to a given stereotype, he or she might make a judgment about that person based on repeated exposure to the mediated stereotype. As an illustration, repeated exposure to the Muslim terrorist stereotype may lead news viewers to conclude that all Muslims are terrorists. This individual may also support punitive policies related to this stereotype, such as a Muslim ban on entry to the United States. Therefore, this cognitive linkage influences race and crime judgments (e.g., increased support for criminalizing Muslims and deporting them).

Social Identity Theory and Media Judgments

Other scholars have noted that our own identities are often tied to how people perceive their groups’ relationships to other groups. Social categorization theory argues that the higher the salience of the category to the individual, the greater the in-group favoritism one will demonstrate. Media scholars demonstrated that exposure to a mediated out-group member can increase in-group favoritism (Mastro, 2004 ). For example, researchers found that negative stories about Latino immigrants can contribute to negative out-group emotions that lead to support for harsher immigration laws (Atwell Seate & Mastro, 2016 , 2017 ).

Both the priming/cognitive accessibility approach and the social identity approach demonstrate that cultural stereotypes have significant implications for our psychology, social interactions, and policymaking. It remains extremely important for us to understand the nature and frequency of mediated racial and ethnic stereotypes to further our understanding of how these stereotypes impact viewers. This article seeks to facilitate our understanding.

Stage Model of Representation

In order to provide the reader with an introduction to this topic, this article relies on the published content-analytic literature regarding race and media. Clark’s Stage Model of Representation articulates a key organizing principle for understanding how media may construct various depictions of social groups (Clark, 1973 ; Harris, 2013 ). This model purports that race/ethnic groups move through four stages of representation in the media. In the first stage, invisibility or non-recognition , a particular race or ethnic group rarely appears on the screen at all. In the second stage, ridicule , a racial group will appear more frequently, yet will be depicted in consistently stereotypical ways. In the third stage, regulation , an ethnic group might find themselves depicted primarily in roles upholding the social order, such as judges or police officers. Finally, a particular social group reaches the respect stage in which members of the group occupy diverse and nuanced roles. Given Clark’s model, this article contends that Native Americans and Asian Americans tend to fall into the non-recognition stage (Harris, 2013 ). It follows that few empirical studies have investigated these groups because empirical content analyses have difficulty scientifically assessing phenomena that lack presence (Krippendorff, 2004 ).

Bearing in mind Clark’s stages, Latinos appear to vacillate between non-recognition and ridicule. Meanwhile, blacks move between the ridicule and regulation stages, while whites remain permanently fixed in the respect stage. In other words, in this article, our lack of deep consideration of Native Americans and Asian Americans is rooted in a lack of representation which generates few empirical studies and thus leaves us little to review. The article offers a quick overview of their portrayal and then moves on to describe the social groups that receive more media and empirical attention.

Native American and Asian American Depictions

Although severely underrepresented, there are a few consistent stereotypical portrayals that regularly emerge for these groups. In some ways, both Native American and Asian Americans are often relegated to “historical” and/or fetishized portrayals (Lipsitz, 1998 ). Native American “savage” imagery was commonly depicted in Westerns and has been updated with images of alcoholism, along with depictions of shady Native American casino owners (Strong, 2004 ). Many news images of Native Americans tend to focus on Native festivals, relegating this group to a presentation as “mysterious” spiritual people (Heider, 2000 ). Meanwhile, various school and professional team mascots embody the savage Native American Warrior trope (Strong, 2004 ).

Asian Americans overall have often been associated with being the model minority (Harris, 2009 ; Josey, Hurley, Hefner, & Dixon, 2009 ). They typically represent “successful” non-whites. Specifically, media depictions associate Asian American men with technology and Asian American women with sexual submissiveness (Harris & Barlett, 2009 ; Schug, Alt, Lu, Gosin, & Fay, 2017 ).

Overall, scholars know very little about how either of these groups are regularly portrayed based on empirical research, although novelists and critical scholars have offered useful critiques (Wilson, Gutiérrez, & Chao, 2003 ). Hopefully, future quantitative content analyses will further delineate the nature of Native American and Asian American portrayals. Consider the discussion about entertainment, news, and digital imagery of blacks, Latinos, and whites presented in the next section.

Entertainment Constructions of Race, Culture, and Ethnicity

Entertainment media receives a great deal of consideration, given that Americans spend much of their time using media for entertainment purposes (Harris, 2013 ; Sparks, 2016 ). This section begins with an analysis of black portrayals, then moves on to Latino portrayals to understand the prevalence of stereotyping . When appropriate, black and Latino representations are compared to white ones. Two measures describe a group’s representation: (a) the numerical presence of a particular racial/ethnic group, and (b) the distribution of roles or stereotypes regarding each group. When researchers have often engaged in examinations of race they typically begin by comparing African American portrayals to white portrayals (Entman & Rojecki, 2000 ). As a result, there is a substantial amount of research on black portrayals.

Black Entertainment Television Imagery

Overall, a number of studies have found that blacks receive representation in prime-time television at parity to their actual proportion in the US population with their proportion ranging from 10% to 17% of prime-time characters (Mastro & Greenberg, 2000 ; Signorielli, 2009 ; Tukachinsky, Mastro, & Yarchi, 2015 ). African Americans currently compose approximately 13% of the US population (US Census Bureau, 2018 ). When considering the type of characters (e.g., major or minor) portrayed by this group, the majority of black (61%) cast members land roles as major characters (Monk-Turner, Heiserman, Johnson, Cotton, & Jackson, 2010 ). Black women also fare well in these representations, accounting for 73% of black appearances on prime-time television (Monk-Turner et al., 2010 ).

However, recent content analyses reveal an instability in black prime-time television representation over the last few decades. Tukachinsky et al. ( 2015 ) found that the prevalence of black characters dropped in 1993 and remain diminished compared to previous decades. Similarly, Signorielli ( 2009 ) found a significant linear decrease in the proportion of black representation from 2001 (17%) to 2008 (12%). Signorielli ( 2009 ) attributes this decrease in black representation to the decrease in situation comedy programming. Indeed, African Americans appear most frequently in situation comedies. Sixty percent of black women featured in prime-time television are cast in situation comedies, and 25% of black male prime-time portrayals occur in situation comedies (Signorielli, 2009 ). However, between 2001 and 2008 , situational comedies decreased, while action and crime programs increased.

The previously discussed analyses describe the frequency of black representation. However, frequent depictions do not equate to favorable representation. Considering role quality (i.e., respectability) and references made to stereotypes, entertainment media offers a mixed bag. On the one hand, some recent analyses found that the majority of blacks are depicted as likable, and as “good characters,” as opposed to “bad character”-like villains (Tukachinsky, Mastro, & Yarchi, 2015 ). In addition, the majority of black characters are depicted as intelligent (Tukachinsky et al., 2015 ). On the other hand, the rate of blacks shown as immoral and despicable (9%) is higher than that of whites (2% and 3%, respectively) (Monk-Turner et al., 2010 ). In addition, black depictions exhibiting high social status and professionalism trended downward. Between 2003 and 2005 , higher status depictions reached their peak at 74.3% but sharply fell in subsequent years to 31.5%, with black women faring worse than black men (Tukachinsky et al., 2015 ). Classic studies of entertainment representations found that blacks tend to be the most negatively represented of any race or ethnic group, often being depicted as lazy and disheveled (Mastro & Greenberg, 2000 ). Overall, black characters tend to be portrayed in less respectful ways compared to whites in content intended for general audiences, although they sometime fare better when the targeted audience is African American (Messineo, 2008 ). For example, crime drama television frequently depicts white women as at risk for murder, but FBI statistics demonstrate that murder victims are more often likely to be black males (Parrott & Parrott, 2015 ).

Black Representations in Magazines and Advertising

African Americans remain well represented in magazines, though they are not as prominent in this medium as in television (Schug et al., 2017 ). Moreover, the trend in the representation of African Americans, particularly women, appears to be improving (Covert & Dixon, 2008 ). Images of black women represent 6% of advertisements in women’s magazines and 4% of advertisements in men’s magazines (Baker, 2005 ). However, both black-oriented and white-oriented magazines appear to advance portrayals of black women with Eurocentric rather than Afrocentric features, referencing whiteness as a beauty standard. Overall, compared to black-oriented magazines, white-oriented magazines feature more black women with fair skin and thin figures. Black-oriented magazines feature more black women with straight hair. Moreover, straight hair textures outnumber other natural styles (i.e., wavy, curly, or braided) in both white- and black-oriented magazines.

Conversely, black men typically assume unemployed, athletic, or entertainment roles in these ads (Bailey, 2006 ). Moreover, mainstream magazines are most likely to depict black men as unemployed. Meanwhile, black-oriented magazines tend to portray African Americans in more managerial roles.

Black Representations in Sports Entertainment

Besides prime-time television, black stereotypes in sports coverage and music receive substantial attention in the literature. The unintelligent or “dumb” yet naturally talented black athlete remains a programming staple (Angelini, Billings, MacArthur, Bissell, & Smith, 2014 ; Rada & Wulfemeyer, 2005 ). For example, Angelini et al. ( 2014 ) found that black athletes receive less success-based comments related to intelligence than white athletes (Angelini et al., 2014 ). The findings echo previous research arguing that black athletes receive fewer positive comments regarding their intelligence than do white athletes (Rada & Wulfemeyer, 2005 ). Fairly similar depictions exist in broadcast commentary (Primm, DuBois, & Regoli, 2007 ). For example, Mercurio and Filak ( 2010 ) content-analyzed descriptions of NFL quarterback prospects featured on the Sports Illustrated website from 1998 to 2007 . The descriptions portray black athletes as possessing physical abilities while lacking intelligence . Conversely, Sports Illustrated described white prospects as intelligent but lacking in athleticism.

Black Representations in Music Videos

Music videos tend to sexualize black women, reinforcing the black jezebe l stereotype (i.e., a sassy African American woman who is sexually promiscuous) (Givens & Monahan, 2005 ). Also, black men appear aggressive and violent in music videos (e.g., like a criminal, thug, or brute ) (Ford, 1997 ). According to rap research, blacks appear in provocative clothes at a higher rate than whites, and black women are the most provocatively dressed in music videos (Turner, 2011 ). Even black female artists are twice as likely to wear provocative clothing than are white female artists (Frisby & Aubrey, 2012 ). Furthermore, Zhang, Dixon, and Conrad ( 2010 ) and Conrad, Zhang, and Dixon ( 2009 ) found that black women appeared in rap videos as sexualized, thin, and light-skinned while black men appeared dark-skinned and threatening .

Latino Entertainment Television Representation

Unlike African Americans, Latinos remain significantly underrepresented in English-language television outlets. For instance, Tukachinsky et al. ( 2015 ) found that of all characters, the number of Latino characters was less than 1% in the 1980s and increased to over 3% in the 2000s. However, these numbers fall significantly below the proportion of people who are Latino within the United States (about 18%) (U.S. Census Bureau, 2018 ). Similarly, Signorelli ( 2009 ) also found that the percentage of Latinos in the United States Latino population and the percentage of Latino characters in prime-time programming differed by approximately 10%.

Latinos continue to be underrepresented in a variety of genres and outlets. For instance, Latinos remain consistently underrepresented in gay male blogs. For example, Grimm and Schwarz ( 2017 ) found that white gay models (80.2%) were most prevalent, followed by black gay models (4.5%). However, Latino models were the least prevalent (1.5%). In addition, Hetsroni ( 2009 ) found that the Latino population makes up 14% of patients in real hospitals, yet they only comprise 4% of the patients in hospital dramas. Conversely, whites make up 72% of real patients but comprise 80% of hospital drama patients.

Latino Underrepresentation in Advertising

Latino underrepresentation extends to the advertising realm. For example, Seelig ( 2007 ) determined that there was a significant difference between the Latino proportion of the US population and the Latino proportion of models found in mainstream magazines (1%). Another study that investigated Superbowl commercials conducted by Brooks, Bichard, and Craig ( 2016 ) found that only 1.22% of the characters were Latino.

Prominent Stereotypes of Latinos in Entertainment Media

Although underrepresented, Latinos are also stereotypically represented in entertainment media. For example, Tukachinsky et al. ( 2015 ) discovered that over 24% of Latino characters were hypersexualized in prime-time television. Furthermore, Latinos tended to occupy low-professional-status roles. This trend also occurred more often with Latina females than Latino males.

Spanish-language television also reinforced stereotypes. For instance, Mastro and Ortiz ( 2008 ) studied the portrayals of characters in prime-time Spanish-language television broadcasts by Azteca America, Telefutura, Telemundo, and Univision. They found rich Latina women reinforced the harlot stereotype . They were sexualized , were provocatively dressed, and had slim body types (Mastro & Behm-Morawitz, 2005 ). Similar to the findings for African Americans and rap music, colorism was also part of these depictions, with idealized Latinos having more European features. Men with a dark complexion were depicted as aggressive (e.g., the criminal stereotype) , while men with a fair complexion were portrayed as intelligent and articulate.

Entertainment Imagery Summary

Blacks appear to be well represented in entertainment imagery, often in favorable major roles as professionals. However, their positive portrayals appear to be on the decline as situation comedies become displaced by other genres where blacks are less prominent. Although well represented, black depictions continue to embody many stereotypes. African American males are portrayed as unintelligent or “dumb” athletes whose only assets are their inbred athletic abilities. Black men tend to appear as aggressive criminals or brutes in music videos while black women appear as sexualized jezebels with European features.

Latinos, on the other hand, face substantial obstacles related to their lack of representation. They tend to be grossly underrepresented across a number of entertainment outlets including television, magazines, and advertising. When they are seen, they tend to occupy two primary stereotypes, the harlot stereotype and the criminal stereotype. This appears to be a constant across both Spanish-language and English-language outlets.

News Constructions of Culture, Race, and Ethnicity

News remains an important area to consider when it comes to media stereotypes for two reasons. First, news can be considered a powerful purveyor of social truth (Romer, Jamieson, & Aday, 2003 ; Tewksbury & Rittenberg, 2012 ). While entertainment can be considered by lay audiences to have a weak relationship with social reality given its fictional nature, news is rooted in actual events, and therefore seems more real. Stereotypes found in news content may seem believable, increasing these stereotype’s influence on audiences’ perceptions of reality. Second, citizens rely on news to form opinions about policies and politicians (Iyengar, 1987 ; Price & Tewksbury, 1997 ). News reports contain the reservoir of information that citizens utilize to make decisions within our representative democracy (Iyengar, 1991 ). If the news falsely points to racial groups as the cause of social problems, these citizens may advocate for ineffective and misguided policies. The next section explores how the news purveys racial and ethnic stereotypes.

Blacks in the News

A number of early studies suggested that the news often stereotyped blacks as violent criminals , consistently overrepresenting them in these roles by large margins (Dixon, Azocar, & Casas, 2003 ; Dixon & Linz, 2000a , 2000b ; Entman, 1992 , 1994 ). At the same time, many of these studies showed blacks underrepresented in more sympathetic roles, such as victims of crime (Dixon & Linz, 2000a , 2000b ).

However, recent research suggests that the criminal stereotype has not remained consistently part of the news landscape. For example, Dixon ( 2017b ) found that current depictions of blacks in local news reflect actual percentages of blacks in these various roles, including as criminals. Similarly, Dixon and Williams ( 2015 ) found African Americans underrepresented as both criminals and victims. On the other hand, another recent content analysis that investigated black family depictions in the news, conducted by Dixon ( 2017a ), found that black family members were overrepresented as criminal suspects compared to crime reports.

Furthermore, Mastro, Blecha, and Atwell Seate ( 2011 ) content-analyzed articles pertaining to athletes’ criminal activity published in newspapers and found that mentions of black athletes’ criminal activity outnumber white and Latino athletes. Furthermore, mentions of criminal activity among black athletes outnumber their real-world proportion in professional sports (Mastro et al., 2011 ). In addition, crime articles discussing black athletes provide more explicit details of the crime and mention more negative consequences (e.g., jail or fines) than articles regarding white athletes. News narratives also present less sympathetic coverage for black athletes, more support for the victim, a less respectful tone, and fewer thematic frames (i.e., situating the crime in a larger context) for black athletes compared to white athletes.

Besides criminality , news tends to also depict blacks as part of the underserving poor . For example, van Doorn ( 2015 ) content-analyzed images depicting poverty in news magazines (i.e., Time, Newsweek , and USNWR ). News magazines picture blacks as the majority of persons in poverty (52%), while blacks only account for around 25% of Americans in poverty (van Doorn, 2015 ). Blacks experience similar misrepresentations as welfare recipients . Based on magazine depictions, black people comprise 55% of all welfare recipients. However, in reality, blacks only account for 38% of welfare recipients. Furthermore, the black elderly are depicted as only accounting for 1% of poor elderly persons pictured, while the true percentage is 6%. In addition, during times of economic stability, African American association with poverty increases, but during times of economic upheaval (e.g., the Great Recession) white association with poverty goes up.

Latinos in the News

If there is an overarching issue to consider regarding Latino depictions in news, it would again be their perpetual underrepresentation. Overall, Latinos remain severely underrepresented on television news, especially in sympathetic roles. For example, early studies by Dixon and Linz ( 2000a , 2000b ) found Latinos were underrepresented as perpetrators, victims, and police officers in the news. In one of these studies, Latinos were 54% of the homicide victims in Los Angeles County but were depicted as homicide victims only about 19% of the time on television news. A recent update to this study found that Latinos were accurately represented as perpetrators, but continued to be underrepresented as victims and police officers (Dixon, 2017b ). This invisibility extends to newspapers and magazines (Sorenson, Manz, & Berk, 1998 ). For example, Latinos are underrepresented in Time and Newsweek as part of the obese population, 5% in these magazines versus 18% according to medical statistics (Gollust, Eboh, & Barry, 2012 ).

When we considered the pervasive stereotype that is present with Latinos, it revolved around the issue of immigration and Latino immigrants as criminal or cultural threats . For instance, a meta-analysis (i.e., a type of method that unearths patterns of academic research) by Rendon and Johnson ( 2015 ) on studies that analyzed media coverage of Mexican affairs in the United States revealed a Threat Phase, from 2010 to 2014 . During this phase, reporters investigated the notion that immigrant Mexicans imperil the United States. Furthermore, Chavez, Whiteford, and Hoewe ( 2010 ) found that more than half of analyzed stories concerning Mexican immigration from the New York Times , Washington Post , Wall Street Journal , and USA Today focused on illegal immigration. Furthermore, within these immigration stories, crime was addressed most often (50.6%), followed by economics (e.g., job competition) (30.6%), and legislative deliberations (28.1%). Similarly, Branton and Dunaway ( 2008 ) found that English-language newspapers were almost twice as likely as Spanish-language news to depict immigration in a negative light.

Kim, Carvahlo, Davis, and Mullins ( 2011 ) found that illegal immigration stories produced by the media focus on the negative consequences of crime and job competition. A more recent study conducted by Dixon and Williams ( 2015 ) appears to confirm the media link between immigration, Latinos, and criminal behavior. They found that criminal suspects identified as immigrants in news stories were greatly overrepresented as Latino. In addition, almost all of the illegal or undocumented immigrants appearing in the news were depicted as Latino, which is a great overrepresentation based on official government reports. Dunaway, Goidel, Krizinger, and Wilkinson ( 2011 ) confirm that news coverage encourages an immigration threat narrative, meaning that the majority of immigration stories exhibit a negative tone.

Whites as the “Good Guys”

While black representations as criminal suspects does appear to vary in intensity and Latinos tend to be depicted as either invisible or threatening immigrants, white portrayals remain consistently positive in this domain. Classic studies of both news and reality-based programming show whites overrepresented as officers and victims (Dixon et al., 2003 ; Dixon & Linz, 2000a , 2000b ; Oliver, 1994 ). This includes network and local news programs. More recent studies show that this continues to occur regularly and remains a news programming staple (Dixon, 2017b ). When contrasted with black and Latino representations, this reinforces the notion that whites resolve social problems and people of color create social problems.

Summary of News Constructions of Culture, Race, and Media

Based on this literature review, three significant findings that summarize news’ construction of race and ethnicity emerge. First, African Americans tend to be overly associated with criminality and poverty . However, the intensity of these portrayals depends on context (e.g., a focus on families, athletes, or general economic conditions). Second, Latinos tend to be largely underrepresented, but when they are seen, they tend to be overly associated with problematic illegal immigration , especially immigrants who may pose a threat or be prone to criminality. Third, news depicts whites most favorably, overrepresenting them as victims (e.g., innocent portrayals) and officers (e.g., heroic portrayals).

Digital Media Constructions of Culture, Race, and Media

The vast majority of research detailing the portrayal of people of color in the media relied on the analysis of traditional media sources including television and magazines. However, increasingly, people turn to digital media for both entertainment and news. This section provides an overview of this growing industry that will eventually dominate our media landscape. The discussion first entails video games and Internet news websites. Speculation about the role social media will play with regard to these depictions follows.

Black Depictions in Video Games

An abundance of research focuses on racial representation within video games (Burgess, Dill, Stermer, Burgess, & Brown, 2011 ; Williams, Martins, Consalvo, & Ivory, 2009 ). Similar to traditional entertainment media, African Americans comprise approximately 11% of popular video game characters for major game systems (e.g., Xbox 360, PlayStation 2, Nintendo GameCube) (Williams et al., 2009 ). Conversely, blacks are underrepresented in massive multiplayer online games (MMO) in which players customize their own avatars’ features, including gender and skin tone (Waddell, Ivory, Conde, Long, & McDonnell, 2014 ). In this environment only 3.84% of all unique characters within MMOs are black.

When considering gender differences in portrayals, more problematic depictions exist. For instance, black women are underrepresented in gaming magazines and almost completely absent from video game covers (Burgess et al., 2011 ). Meanwhile, black men are typically portrayed as either athletic and/or violent . Black aggression does not occur in socially sanctioned settings (e.g., war). Instead, many black males appear as outlaws (e.g., street fighters).

Black Depictions in Digital News Sources

There is limited research on news depictions and race within digital media contexts, but this will most likely become the focus of future scholarship over the next few years. This focus will be fueled by the rise of political figures, such as Donald Trump, who utilize media stereotypes to advance their political agendas (Dixon, 2017a ). Much of what we do know stems from research on websites and digital news sources. One earlier study of this phenomena found that African Americans were underrepresented as part of images and headlines used in these web news stories (Josey et al., 2009 ). They were also more strongly associated with poverty than what the actual poverty rates suggest. A more recent analysis of a wide variety of online news sources similarly found that black families were overrepresented as poor and welfare dependent (Dixon, 2017a ). In addition, black fathers were misrepresented as excessively absent from the lives of their children. Finally, African American family members were overrepresented as criminal suspects. These findings complement the traditional news conclusions reached by previous scholars.

Latino Depictions in Video Games

Waddell, Ivory, Conde, Long, and McDonnell ( 2014 ) found that the trend of Latino underrepresentation in media extends to the video game industry. Latino avatars were not observed in the highest grossing MMO games in 2010 (0%). Williams, Martins, Consalvo, and Ivory ( 2009 ) also assessed the racial characteristics of video game characters across 150 games and found that white characters were observed more often (59.32%) than Latino (1.63%) characters. Furthermore, Latino characters were never observed assuming primary roles.

Latino Depictions in Digital News Sources

In terms of digital news sources, the research presents extremely similar findings between Latinos and African Americans. Latinos continue to be largely underrepresented across a variety of roles in web news (Josey et al., 2009 ). They are underrepresented in both headlines and images. They are also likely to be overassociated with poverty (Dixon, 2017a ; Josey et al., 2009 ).

Summary of Digital Constructions of Culture, Race, and Ethnicity

In summary, underrepresentation remains the norm for both African Americans and Latinos in digital media. At the same time, digital news overly associates these groups with poverty . Clearly, as traditional media and its audience migrate to new digital platforms, this area will continue to be researchers’ focus well into the future. One digital platform not mentioned is social media. Many users receive, consume, and share entertainment and news content via social media. This includes music and music fandom content (Epps & Dixon, 2017 ). Social media’s specific and unique characteristics may contribute to media stereotype cultivation and prevent positive intergroup contact (Dixon, 2017c ). Much work needs to be undertaken in the future to explore these possibilities.

Conclusions

This article began with a discussion of the possible impact of mediated stereotypes to contextualize our discussion. Social categorization theory, social identity theory, and priming/cognitive accessibility suggest that the prominent black stereotypes of black laziness , criminality , innate athleticism , jezebel, and poverty would be embraced by heavy media consumers. Similarly, even though Latinos remain underrepresented, the reinforcement of Latino stereotypes like poverty , harlot , criminal , and illegal immigrant would result from regular media consumption. While underrepresented, Latinos receive enough mainstream media attention for scholars to conduct quantitative social research. Asian and Native Americans’ underrepresentation in mainstream media, however, indicates these groups’ general absence.

When educators teach these topics in class, they are often asked: Why? Why does media perpetuate these stereotypes? Consider these two prominent answers. First, media creators suffer from mostly unconscious, and sometimes conscious bias, that scholars believe facilitates an ethnic blame discourse (Dixon & Linz, 2000a ; Romer, Jamieson, & de Coteau, 1998 ; Van Dijk, 1993 ).

This discourse tends to occur within groups (e.g., whites conversing with one another) and leads them to blame social problems on ethnic others (e.g., Latinos and blacks). Given that media producers remain overwhelmingly white, this explanation appears plausible. As white people engage in these discussions, their way of thinking manifests in their content. The second explanation revolves around the structural limitations and economic interests of news agencies (Dixon & Linz, 2000a ). This explanation suggests that media agencies air material most appealing to audiences in the simplest form possible to increase ratings. This process heavily relies on stereotypes because stereotypes make processing and attending to media messages easier for audience members. In turn, profits increase. This points to problems related to the relationship between media content creation and the media industry’s profit motives. Skeptics may question these explanations’ plausibility, but overall, mediated stereotypes remain a persistent part of the media environment. Digital media exacerbate the negative effects of mediated stereotype consumption.

Media and the representation of Others

International Social Science Journal 61(199):113 - 130
61(199):113 - 130

University of Pittsburgh

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Simon Dawes: What is Media Theory?

What Is Media Theory ?

Simon dawes, université de versailles saint-quentin-en-yvelines (uvsq), france.

With the relative ease with which new journals can now be established, the launch of a new journal of media theory obliges us all the more to justify the need for such an endeavour (Cubitt, this issue), to argue that we do indeed need yet another journal theorising media (Shome, this issue), and to convince at least some readers that the journal deserves the name, Media Theory (Mitchell, this issue). For this launch issue of the journal, editorial and advisory board members were invited to set out their own views on the importance of (a new journal of) media theory. While the journal can hardly satisfy the occasionally conflicting and contradictory wishes of everyone on the boards, this special issue represents a pluralistic manifesto for the journal – manifestos for various possibilities and directions for Media Theory .

Media, Theory and Media Theory

Media Theory is not, therefore, a journal that privileges any particular theoretical approach, perspective or tradition to the study of media, but nor is it simply a matter of disinterestedly presenting their diversity or that of the range of theoretical concepts or tools proposed or applied in media research. Rather, in emphasising ‘media’, ‘theory’ and ‘media theory’, the journal aims to deprovincialise media theory by bringing into dialogue and debate the diversity of ways in which media are theorised. For despite the inherently interdisciplinary histories of the various disciplines in which media is studied internationally, there remains a tendency to restrict one’s reading to one’s own field or disciplinary, geographical or linguistic bubble, applying and developing theories without sufficient knowledge of how those theories have already been debated and developed elsewhere. And although media research has been institutionalised in media, communication and information studies disciplines, departments, research centres and journals around the world, much of the theoretical media research continues to be done outside of those fields. In many of the most well-established (and often commercially published) media journals, the theoretical element of individual articles is often restricted to the opening literature review section of peer-reviewed, empirical ‘research’ articles, while articles that are devoted to theoretical engagement and close reading of theoretical texts are demoted to un-peer-reviewed ‘commentary’ sections. Conversely, the more ‘theoretical’ media journals (normally more recently established, online and open access) tend to focus on particular schools or, if they are explicitly open-goaled and interdisciplinary, to either privilege dialogue between particular approaches or disciplines, or to feature multiple disciplinary approaches without much evidence of dialogue or rapprochement between them. This journal aims to offer the best of both these types of media journal, as well as those non-media-related journals that privilege theoretical exploration and debate, with a particular focus on transcending theoretical, disciplinary and geographical boundaries.

The aim is not to establish a particular theory of any particular media, or to present the various theories of the various media; it is rather to theorise media by unravelling and teasing apart, by undermining and critiquing, and by providing genealogical accounts of alternative attempts at theorising media. To do so necessitates the transcending and transgressing of disciplinary boundaries, and the bringing into dialogue of diverse theoretical approaches. The journal will endeavour to encourage the Marxists as well as the Foucauldians, the media historians as well as the media archaeologists, those who follow in the footsteps of Williams as well as those who stand on the shoulders of McLuhan, and those from within the British cultural and media studies tradition as well as those within German cultural techniques and media theory, to write as much for each other as for the already converted, resisting the temptation to settle for the journal becoming an echo chamber for any one approach. For Media Theory , to theorise is therefore to ‘make, adapt, stretch and compact distinctions between terms that are generally familiar’ (Baehr, 2000: xix), to ‘dismantle’ traditions (Baehr, 2000: xlv), to ‘flush out assumptions’ (Kendall and Wickham, 1999: 30), to reconstruct the genealogy of theorisations and to reveal the ‘dissension of things’ (Foucault, 1977: 142); it is the “never-finished task and vocation of undermining philosophy as such, of unravelling affirmative statements and propositions of all kinds” (Jameson, 2009: 59). Unlike (media) philosophy, (media) theory must always return to the stuff of media (Cubitt, this issue) and to its own mediation (Mitchell, this issue). On one level, this means continually asking the question, what is, or are, media? More than a particular technology or industry, anything can become a medium – from sex to seismographs, from chlorophyll to cash (Cubitt, this issue), from a grain of sand to the universe (Mitchell, this issue) – but not everything is always-already a medium. Infinite, indefinite (Mitchell, this issue) and ‘intrinsically plural as object’ (Cubitt, this issue), there is nevertheless always something outside media – the un mediated, the im mediate, the presentation as opposed to the re presentation (Mitchell, this issue). One task is thus to perpetually reconceptualise what concerns us as the shared object of our studies, refusing consensus on what is to be included or excluded.

Thus far, the contributions to the journal have been from mostly – if, thankfully, not yet dead – white men from the global north. If the journal is to be effective in its pursuit of deprovincialising media theory, then more effort needs to be made to include and engage with theories and theorists from normally neglected communities and locations. The effort to deprovincialise media theory goes beyond inclusion of and dialogue with multiple disciplines, locations, identities and perspectives, however; it means decolonising and geopoliticising theory (Shome, this issue) and generating a critique of media power.

Aware of its own mediation as an online and open access journal, Media Theory will aim to be a journal that is both recognisably an academic journal, by paying heed to scholarly conventions, as well as something new, by challenging those conventions and what we have come to expect an academic journal to be. Adhering for the most part to referencing conventions, the double-blind peer-review process, publishing ethics, indexing and archiving, and publishing articles with a creative commons licence that ensures the integrity and authorship of the article, we will nevertheless be open to experiments in radical open access publishing, including the possibility of open peer-review and remixing content.

At the heart of the project behind this journal, therefore, is a focus on deprovincialisation (media theory from the global south; queering media theory; etc.), radicalising open access publishing (remixing; rethinking peer-review; theorising ‘openness’ and ‘access’), and problematising the concepts of ‘media’, ‘theory’ and ‘media theory’, as well as a conscious and consistent endeavour to bring into contact and into dialogue diverse theoretical and methodological approaches, so as to develop a transnational and transdisciplinary forum of debate on media theory and academic publishing. Media Theory is thus both an academic journal on media theory, and an opportunity to self-reflexively critique and debate what media theory and academic journals are, have been and could possibly be.

Media, Metaphor and Representation

The first section opens with essays on media, metaphor and representation, beginning with W.J.T. Mitchell’s metaphorical reflection on what we talk about when we talk about media: ‘Counting Media: Some Rules of Thumb’. Distinguishing between five overlapping and contradictory rules of media (the rules of none, one, two, three and all), Mitchell insists on the need for media theory to engage with media ‘on its own field’, to question its own antitheses and to be self-reflexive about its own metalanguage. Setting out the three basic orders of media – images/sounds/words – and mapping them onto other familiar triads from the history of media theory, from icon/index/symbol to gramophone/film/typewriter, he also reminds us that media is itself one part of a triad: that between sender and receiver in the transmission/communication model. Ultimately, he argues, media can be both everything and nothing, while everything and nothing are, in turn, always potentially media. Beyond the unambitious and yet impossible task of simply defining, listing and counting all these different potential types of media, or asking when and how something becomes media, Mitchell argues that the task of media theory is to provide an ‘account of such counting’; of the ways in which we have theorised media, as much as a theory of media itself.

For Liam Cole Young, such attempts at triadic thinking highlight the importance of imagination, conceptual modelling, speculative thinking and experimental writing to media theory. In his article, ‘Imagination and Literary Media Theory’, Young laments the waning importance of literary studies (in favour of communication studies and anthropology) to media theory, reminding us that imagination – as object as well as method – has been an “engine” that has driven media theoretical debates over the past sixty years or so. In emphasising the imaginative thinking, close reading and experimentalism of the literary stream, Young shows how media theory has been able to ground abstract ideas in material, discursive and technical contexts that have otherwise been neglected by more historical or philosophical approaches. In light of the contemporary complexities of everyday life and new forms of computation, commerce and governance, he argues that a return to the literary roots of media theory could help provide the new metaphors we need to understand the relation between technological and social change.

For Scott McQuire, we must continue to question the general understanding of ‘media’, where ‘mediation’ is seen as the production of ‘signs’ related to or representing something – such as voice, experience or event – that is somewhere else. In ‘Media Theory 2017’, he looks back at Derrida’s theorising of ‘writing’ in Of Grammatology to argue for the contemporary importance of theorising presence, absence and temporality in media that have become digital, mobile and ubiquitous. Despite numerous media studies attempts at theorising the secondariness, supplementarity and representationality of media, McQuire argues that new terms and concepts are needed if we are to understand the ways in which profound changes in all that we have understood as media – “in terms of scale, integration with everyday life, transformation of the archive, and the growing convergence of media platforms with other domains such as transport, logistics, finance, health, and e-commerce” – constitute a new register of experience that requires a radical rethinking of assumed relations of presence and absence.

Locating Media, Theory and Society

Responding to transformations in, and the increasing imbrication of, media technologies and society is often presented as the study of ‘media and society’, where ‘society’ could mean ‘anything else’, and where any theoretical engagement is with a separate body of (non-media-centric) knowledge developed within other disciplines. There has in recent years, however, been a debate on whether or not media theory should be privileging media-centric approaches instead. In considering the merits of the two approaches in ‘The ‘Theory’ in Media Theory: The ‘Media-Centrism’ Debate’, Terry Flew situates them within wider and more historical debates about the relation between materiality and discourse in the work of Hall, Laclau & Mouffe and others, as well as in the debate between McLuhan and Williams on, respectively, the media’s influence on society or the social shaping of media. Turning to the mediasphere, medium theory, media ecologies, mediation and mediatization, Flew argues that the journal should be open to consideration of those perspectives on the media that come from within the study of media itself, and engage in more speculative accounts of where our media technologies may be leading us socially, culturally, politically and economically.

In retheorising ‘media’ and its boundaries, it becomes essential to reconsider the boundaries of ‘media theory’ too, and, in ‘Configuring Media Theory’, Marc Steinberg questions the provincialisation of media theory by asking ‘what counts as (media) theory?’. If we are delimiting media theory to critical theory, then we ignore those theorists, such as Alvin Toffler, that fall on the wrong side of the divide. Likewise, we may also be delimiting which regions of the world produce theory. For Steinberg, the need to locate media theory is a question of genre and industry, as well as of geography, as different systems of print capitalism in other countries would produce academic publications with different standards and forms, which would in turn produce different kinds of theory. Considering the diversity of types, media and milieux of theory conducted in Japan, by media figures, artists and entrepreneurs in popular paperbacks, manga and weekly magazines for general and professional readerships, as well as university lecturers writing in hardbacks produced for their students and colleagues by commercial academic publishers or university presses, he proposes that media theory is thus a ‘configuration’ more than a definable entity as such; one that requires us to reflect upon the institutional and geographical conditions of media theorisation.

In doing so, we can more ambitiously aim to geopoliticise and decolonise media studies, producing new epistemological frames within which to study media. This is what, in her article, ‘Going South and Engaging Non-Western Modernities’, Raka Shome argues the journal should be doing. Taking issue with the ‘comparing media systems’ and ‘media/communication and development’ approaches, as well as the more recent emphasis on ‘dewesternising media studies’, Shome argues that they tend to position Southern media (studies) in opposition to those in an invisible North/West. For Shome, therefore, theorising media – rethinking “what media means, what it can mean, its histories, its scope of operations, and even the objects that may count as media” – is a question of geopoliticising knowledge production and non-Western mediated modernities on their own terms. Such a task also entails rethinking what ‘theory’ might be in relation to media and media studies.

Machinic World

The urgent need to develop new theories and concepts to keep up with rapid technological and social change has always been an important rationale for media theory. Today, as abstract data is captured, stored and analysed by machine learning systems in increasingly complex ways, new conceptual models for thinking about machine learning and artificial intelligence are required if we are to understand and critique what is happening beneath the surface of these new computational forms. In his ‘Prolegomenon to a Media Theory of Machine Learning: Compute-Computing and Compute-Computed’, David M. Berry attempts to do just this by drawing on Spinoza’s distinction between Natura naturans (‘naturing Nature’) and Natura naturata (‘natured Nature’) to think through the difference between constitutive and operative types of machine learning. In suggesting these concepts, he draws out the significance of recent developments in this complex technological field not just for media theory and digital humanities, but for social theory and human attention too.

Despite acknowledging the significance of algorithms to our everyday lives, however, most of us have no idea how they actually work, nor of the extent to which our tastes and desires are shaped by machinic operations. While Berry interrogates the medium specificity of algorithms and software to understand the former, Ned Rossiter considers the algorithmic production of subjectivity and affect in order to propose a response to the latter. In ‘Paranoia is Real: Algorithmic Governance and the Shadow of Control’, Rossiter responds to recent debates on fake news and post-truth politics to argue that meaning and truth are tied less to representation these days (if we accept that we have moved from a logocentric to a machinic world) than to algorithmic calculations of anticipation and pre-emption. The task becomes, therefore, one of developing techniques and tactics to assist our political and subjective orientation in worlds of algorithmic governance and data economies.

But ‘What Are the Theoretical Lessons when Agnostic Hacker Politics Turn to the Right?’, asks Johan Söderberg. How do we stop these new techniques and tactics being hijacked by corporations or by the far right? Although originally allied with left-liberal causes, for example, Internet subcultures and discussion forums provided the breeding ground for the return to the mainstream of neo-fascists and white supremacists under the self-proclaimed banner of alt-right politics. Fake news and the alt-right may urgently demand new theoretical responses, but the they also pose questions for the efficacy of previous theorisations of media, and for the future of media theory itself.

Form and Matter

While some are convinced that theory has had its day and is no longer relevant, particularly in a context of big data, algorithmic automation and the computational turn, M. Beatrice Fazi makes the case, in her article, ‘The Ends of Media Theory’, for the continued need for theoretical enquiry and speculative endeavour. Situating the ‘end of theory’ discourse in the historical context of long-standing critiques of rationalism and logocentrism, and drawing on Jameson’s distinction between theory and philosophy, as well as Horkheimer’s distinction between traditional and critical theory, Fazi focuses on the importance of abstraction, conceptualisation and problematisation to both (media) theory and (media) philosophy. Arguing that new concepts are needed to perceive and think in a highly techno-mediated world, to “think computation precisely as a problem; as a problem in need of relevant concepts”, Fazi argues that media theory is only an abstraction in the Whiteheadian sense that experience is always-already abstract, and that to abstract is not, therefore, to move away from the real, but rather “to construct it in terms of its actuality”.

Attempts to grasp the character of “rapid and radical social change” and to construct reality in terms of its actuality have led many media theorists to relish the dissolution of the opposition between form and matter. For John W.P. Phillips, however, there remains a tension between those that privilege form and those that privilege matter, putting a strain on the very idea of ontology itself. In ‘The End of Ontology and the Future of Media Theory’, Phillips grapples with theoretical and philosophical attempts to “think things”, to “think the media” in terms of the physical existence of “the between”, and to think the way each media platform is “displaced by its own mediatic disruption”.

Responding to this dissolution between form and matter, Mickey Vallee’s article, ‘Contiguity and Interval: Opening Media Theory’, turns our attention to the borders of mediation. For Vallee, media are both here and there, and mediation, which both connects and disconnects, is only possible in terms of its own ruptures and intervals. Arguing that the contemporary boundaries of mediated environments are expanding and collapsing in continuous variations, affecting the very definitions of ‘media’ we have come to depend upon, he turns to topology as a creative way of exploring media as open and fluid. Understood topologically, there is no division between the contiguous and the interval, but rather these terms are nodes in a network of continuous variation that underlies evolving definitions of media, bodies, environment, time, place and space.

Turning to the simultaneity of processes of stratification and mediation in his article, ‘Media Theory: How Can We Live the Good Life in Strata?’, Rob Shields reminds us that media not only transmit and store, classify and relate; they also isolate, juxtapose and stratify. For Shields, media needs theory to understand the “layered, stratified and mediated world of many (local and global) scales, contending histories and futures that haunt our present as anxieties”. But the purpose of theory is not just to help us understand or critique the contemporary condition; we need media theory, he argues, if we are to learn how to live the good life in such mediated and stratified times.

In the Spirit of the Manifesto

Although all the authors who submitted articles to this inaugural issue were asked to provide manifestos on what they would want a journal on media theory to be and do, the following were written very much in the style or spirit of a manifesto. Taking the early 20 th Century Blast Manifesto of the British Vorticist movement as her starting point, for example, Jane Birkin shows how the manifesto can be considered as a material object that makes declarations in form as well as content. In her article, ‘Manifesto: Graphic, Sonic, Affective Object’, Birkin goes on to draw on a range of concrete poetic and graphic modernist manifestos to highlight the performativity of their ‘moving information’.

In his call for ‘Open Theory’, Sunil Manghani similarly draws upon a wide range of examples, from the Communist Manifesto to Bono and 1984 , to illustrate a wide range of issues – from reading and writing, through production and reproduction, to the relation between (online) journals and their ‘audiences’ – and to argue that media “gets us faster to what we already know” and that theory “only applies each time it is evoked”.

In Gary Hall’s ‘The Inhumanist Manifesto’, he adopts the manifesto mode of political writing to consider the links between his research interests in posthumanism, piracy, Marxism, open access and the commons, on the one hand, and, on the other, the various publishing ventures with which he’s been involved. Taken together, they demonstrate a manifesto by example, in which Hall presents his own privileging of collaborative, non-competitive and not-for-profit work, emphasises the performative generation of projects as hyper-political, media gifts – providing space for “thinking about politics and the political beyond the ways in which they have conventionally been conceived” – and argues ultimately for the displacement of the humanist categories that underpin our ideas of academia, publishing and critique.

In the penultimate article of the issue, ‘10 Propositions for Doing Media Theory (Again)’, Christoph Raetzsch discusses the significance of the journal’s open access format, its focus on theory, and its emphasis on the international and transdisciplinary scope of media theory, which “delimits a space of inquiry where positions can meet outside their own disciplinary [and geographical] contexts”. Representing the rich (historical, geographical, disciplinary) legacies of media theory in the journal is important, he argues, to promote the kind of detached theoretical perspective that is required to provide critical distance in the face of accelerated technological change.

Finally, the issue ends with the first article to have been submitted to the journal: in the author’s own words, an ‘unrefereeable rant’ on the kind of journal Media Theory needs to try to be. In ‘What Is a Journal for?’, Sean Cubitt argues that to survive, a journal needs, more than anything, a reason to exist. For him, this should be a transdisciplinary project to actively refuse disciplinary closures, and to critically interrogate the scope and limits of specialisms and disciplines, in contrast to those who would defend them for their own sakes. Because specialisms are not intrinsically valuable or collective enterprises, he insists, the journal’s transdisciplinary project should be to collectively enable (not determine) media theory, and to foster dialogue between specialist objects and schools of thought so as to “unleash the potential each of them has locked up inside its disciplinary firewalls”.

We’ll try our best. In the meantime, we hope you enjoy the ‘Manifestos’ issue.

Baehr, P. (2003) ‘Editor’s Introduction’ in P Baehr (ed.) The Portable Hannah Arendt , London: Penguin Books.

Foucault, M. (1977) ‘Nietzsche, Genealogy, History’, in DF Bouchard (ed) Language, Counter-Memory, Practice: Selected Essays and Interviews , Ithaca: Cornell University Press.

Jameson, F. (2009) Valences of the Dialectic . London: Verso.

Kendall, G. and Wickham, G. (1999) Using Foucault’s Methods , London: SAGE.

Simon Dawes is the founding editor of Media Theory . He is Maître de conférences (Lecturer) at Université de Versailles Saint-Quentin-en-Yvelines (UVSQ), France, and the author of British Broadcasting and the Public-Private Dichotomy: Neoliberalism, Citizenship and the Public Sphere (Palgrave Macmillan, 2017). Personal website: https://smdawes.wordpress.com/

Email: [email protected]

The version of record of this article is available here: http://journalcontent.mediatheoryjournal.org/index.php/mt/article/view/9

The ‘Manifestos’ issue is available here: http://journalcontent.mediatheoryjournal.org/index.php/mt/issue/view/1

What is Intersectionality?

There are many critical frameworks which attempt to explain prejudice and privilege in our society. Feminist discourse focuses on the oppression of women by the patriarchal system. Marxism criticises the ruling elite for perpetuating economic inequality. Racism is the discrimination of a person because of the colour of their skin, ethnic background, or religious beliefs.

However, the American author and activist, bell hooks, emphasised how the interplay of race, gender and class reinforced what she called the “white supremacist capitalist patriarchy”. If you want to have a better understanding of identity and the politics of difference, she argued, you have to analyse all these interlocking systems that control our lives.

Since our focus is on media studies and representation, this introduction to bell hooks draws heavily from her collection of essays and interviews in “Reel to Real: Race, class and sex at the movies” which was first published in 1996.

Film Criticism

bell hooks argued films were so accessible they offered a “common starting part” for “diverse audiences” to discuss issues of race, gender and class. She also believed films had the capacity to “transform culture right before our very eyes” because they shaped and informed our view of the world.

hooks was eager to “interrogate specific films” that supposedly offered a counterpoint to the white supremacist capitalist patriarchy. She wanted to see if they really did challenge the dominant ideology.

For example, in her first critical essay, hooks questioned the representation of women in Spike Lee’s “She’s Gotta Have it” (1986). Although the film was widely praised at the time for its depiction of an empowered and independent black woman, hooks believed the male director was unable to escape his patriarchal mode of thinking and simply mimicked some of the “mainstream patriarchal cinematic practices” that objectified white women for the male gaze.

If you watch the trailer, you will get an immediate sense of how the protagonist, Nola Darling, is defined in the narrative by her male partners. Nola’s story is not progressive or transformative because she remains the object of a “male-biased patriarchal tale”.

Representation

The representation of people and places on the big screen may look “familiar”, but films give the audience a “reimagined, reinvented version of the real”. That mixture of reality and fantasy makes the narratives wonderfully “compelling”. However, bell hooks criticised mainstream Hollywood for not conveying the “complexity of black female experience” and reducing black women to the stereotypes of “mammy or ho”.

She wanted to see a “broader, more complex vision of womanhood”, especially “black womanhood”, portrayed in the cinema.

For hooks, decolonised images were a “representation of blackness that challenge and oppose racist stereotypes” rather than the friendly colonialism that represented, for example, black men as successful but still subordinate to the white supremacist capitalist patriarchy. Consider Danny Glover’s character in the commercially successful Lethal Weapon series or Morgan Freeman in the critically acclaimed “The Shawshank Redemption”. Both men possess terrific “wisdom and moral integrity”, but their blackness is commodified, and old stereotypes are presented in a new “fashionable disguise”.

The Pelican Brief

Denzel Washington’s character arc in “The Pelican Brief” (1993) is another example of a black male in a subordinate role. hooks wrote that “ads are a primary vehicle for the dissemination and perpetuation of white-supremacist and patriarchal values”. The official film posters for “The Pelican Brief” seem to confirm her point of view.

The first poster is the original one-sheet which was used to promote the film. Notice how Julia Roberts is the dominant signifier and her equally famous co-star is reduced to a bit-part in the composition. hooks described how Washington’s “public-relations agents threatened to withdraw him from the film if the publicity images were not retaken to portray the two stars on equal footing”. Even the second poster still makes the imbalance of power quite clear.

For two more recent examples, look at the controversy surrounding the Italian posters for “Twelve Years a Slave” (2013) and the Chinese poster for “Star Wars: The Force Awakens” (2015) .

In terms of The Pelican Brief’s plot, Julia Roberts and Denzel Washington work together to uncover the truth about her lover’s death and expose the corrupt political leaders involved in the assassination of two Supreme Court Justices. Interestingly, the audience never see Washington’s character interact with a close friend or family member so “his very existence” in the narrative “depends on white affirmation”.

Capitalism and Motivated Representation

The marketing teams behind all these posters made conscious decisions regarding the representation of the actors. In the more contemporary examples, they decided to demote John Boyega and Chiwetel Ejiofor. There is no doubt Ejiofor is the star of the film, but the Italian agency used Brad Pitt and Michael Fassbender to grab the attention of the audience. Not only was Boyega repositioned to appear smaller in the Star Wars poster for the Chinese market, but he was also completely cut from a perfume advert which he developed and directed .

Investors will only finance a film if they believe it will be a commercial success and offer a solid return on their money. So Hollywood scripts are redrafted and reworked by a team of writers. Directors shoot each scene over and over again until they get the right take. Sequences are spliced together in the editing room and then screened to test audiences to make sure the narrative has the greatest impact. Put simply, everyone involved in the filmmaking process is motivated to represent people and places in ways that will appeal to the public’s imagination.

It is unsurprising, therefore, that mainstream cinema reinforces the ideology of the white supremacist capitalist patriarchy. For hooks, this motivated representation is epitomised by the deliberate casting of a dark-skinned male to play the thief in “Smoke” (1985):

The racial identity of the character was never mentioned in the original story so hooks believed the filmmakers were consciously perpetuating racist stereotypes and exploiting the audience’s fear of the “Other”.

There really is a conscious manipulation of representations and it’s not about magical thinking, it’s not about like pure imagination, creativity, it’s about people consciously knowing what kinds of images will produce a certain kind of impact. bell hooks

The vision of the artist will always be limited because media texts cost money to produce and they have to be sold to mainstream audiences. Perhaps, we will only get a greater diversity of voices on the silver screen when the means of production are more accessible. This focus on economic change is a key aspect of the socialist feminist agenda which you can read more about in our introduction to Liesbet van Zoonen’s summary of feminist discourse .

Oppositional gaze

Cinema has the amazing power to seduce and enchant audiences. However, it also has the ability to socially condition us to accept certain stereotypes. Think about how “glamour” and “beauty” were “encoded as white” in classical Hollywood narratives with icons such as Marilyn Monroe and Bridget Bardot who, it is important to note, both dyed their hair blonde to achieve their success. There is no doubt popular culture has continued to reaffirm this narrow view of beauty.

Changing how we see images is clearly one way to change the world. bell hooks

Since the media perpetuates the existing ruling ideology of the white supremacist capitalist patriarchy, black female spectators need to develop a more critical engagement with films in order to resist identifying with the male gaze and white womanhood . This is the oppositional gaze.

bell hooks argued mainstream films were such an effective mechanism of control that even people of colour were dissatisfied when they saw more challenging and diverse representations on the big screen. Therefore, we all need to be “enlightened witnesses” and critically assess the representation of people and places in the media.

hooks, bell (1996): “Reel to Real: Race, class and sex at the movies”.

bell hooks Fan Page

The Beauty Myth

Key Concepts in Post-colonial Theory

The Representation of Women on Magazine Covers

Stuart Hall and Representation

What is Media Framing?

Agenda-Setting Theory

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Representation Theory: How Does it Appear in the Media?

What is representation theory.

Representation Theory is the theory used to explain how humans may visualize images in pictures and how the image in a picture may relate to previous knowledge that has already been obtained. The Representation theory is useful when trying to explain how an object and a meaning relate to each other. For example, if a person sees a portrait of their grandmother, their mind will automatically recognize that the portrait is the grandmother, but to a person that has never seen the grandmother in the portrait before, they will be unable to understand the significance of the portrait. Understanding the object in a scenario and the meaning behind it can vary from person to person because we all have different background knowledge. Most of the time, authors and artists may have various meanings in their works of paintings or photographs, so there is no correct answer on what the significance of the work is. However, in the world of journalism, although journalism is supposed to remain unbiased, people may find small hints of associative words and phrases to subjects in their work.

Why is Representation Theory important in Media?

In the media, the description of a subject may make it difficult to separate from the common stereotype of the subject. When the media publishes multiple stories concerning subjects with a specific gender, race, or ethnicity while using all of the same description of the subject, then people begin to associate that certain type of personnel with the description that is being used to describe the subject.

For example, racism has been a prime issue for decades, but it has especially escalated within the past few years after the wide range of “police brutality” incidents that have happened. Majority of the victims in these attacks are black males while the police officer is a white male. At the first report of the incident, people will either assume the police officer was acting in self-defense or that the police officer acted wrongly. The media paints an image of the scenario whether they mean to or not. The descriptions of both the victim and the police officer creates an image in a person’s mind. These images will not only appear again at the sight of another story, but also in reality too, which may lead to an escalation of an already heated incident.

The idea of the representation Theory can be seen in the article “ A white cop shot an innocent man in his own home. The “Castle Doctrine” nearly protected her .” Amber Guyger, a white female police officer, shot Botham Jean, a black man, in his own apartment in September 2018. A week after the murder happened, police forces searched Jean’s apartment for marijuana, which many activists claimed was a “character smear.” There was also a claim of special treatment for Officer Guyger since it was released that the officers responding to the scene turned off their cameras and spoke with her in a police car instead of immediately arresting her. Although Guyger claimed she entered the wrong apartment and believed it to be her own, she was charged with murder.

As seen in the scenario above, there are multiple actions that took place due to the representation that had been previously associated with the subjects’ persona. For instance, after Jean was shot, police continued to search the apartment for marijuana. Why did they do this? Jean was not doing anything obstructive at the time that he died, but people have come to associate certain characteristics with specific personas. Along with the “character smear” of Jean, the police officers responding on the scene gave Guyger a relaxed treatment when taking her in. Most of the police officers most likely knew Guyger personally, so it was hard for them to arrest a friend.

Representation in media is a hard subject to control. The media’s job is to report on the event that occurred, and by doing so may create unintentional stereotypes that humans may use. The representation theory provides an explanation for why society uses stereotypes as a way to identify people. If we consistently see terms, words, or phrases associated with a specific persona, then we will subconsciously make the distinction every time we view that same persona.

Why Representation Matters and Why It’s Still Not Enough

Reflections on growing up brown, queer, and asian american..

Posted December 27, 2021 | Reviewed by Ekua Hagan

Positive media representation can be helpful in increasing self-esteem for people of marginalized groups (especially youth).
Interpersonal contact and exposure through media representation can assist in reducing stereotypes of underrepresented groups.
Representation in educational curricula and social media can provide validation and support, especially for youth of marginalized groups.

Growing up as a Brown Asian American child of immigrants, I never really saw anyone who looked like me in the media. The TV shows and movies I watched mostly concentrated on blonde-haired, white, or light-skinned protagonists. They also normalized western and heterosexist ideals and behaviors, while hardly ever depicting things that reflected my everyday life. For example, it was equally odd and fascinating that people on TV didn’t eat rice at every meal; that their parents didn’t speak with accents; or that no one seemed to navigate a world of daily microaggressions . Despite these observations, I continued to absorb this mass media—internalizing messages of what my life should be like or what I should aspire to be like.

Because there were so few media images of people who looked like me, I distinctly remember the joy and validation that emerged when I did see those representations. Filipino American actors like Ernie Reyes, Nia Peeples, Dante Basco, and Tia Carrere looked like they could be my cousins. Each time they sporadically appeared in films and television series throughout my youth, their mere presence brought a sense of pride. However, because they never played Filipino characters (e.g., Carrere was Chinese American in Wayne's World ) or their racial identities remained unaddressed (e.g., Basco as Rufio in Hook ), I did not know for certain that they were Filipino American like me. And because the internet was not readily accessible (nor fully informational) until my late adolescence , I could not easily find out.

Through my Ethnic Studies classes as an undergraduate student (and my later research on Asian American and Filipino American experiences with microaggressions), I discovered that my perspectives were not that unique. Many Asian Americans and other people of color often struggle with their racial and ethnic identity development —with many citing how a lack of media representation negatively impacts their self-esteem and overall views of their racial or cultural groups. Scholars and community leaders have declared mottos like how it's "hard to be what you can’t see," asserting that people from marginalized groups do not pursue career or academic opportunities when they are not exposed to such possibilities. For example, when women (and women of color specifically) don’t see themselves represented in STEM fields , they may internalize that such careers are not made for them. When people of color don’t see themselves in the arts or in government positions, they likely learn similar messages too.

Complicating these messages are my intersectional identities as a queer person of color. In my teens, it was heartbreakingly lonely to witness everyday homophobia (especially unnecessary homophobic language) in almost all television programming. The few visual examples I saw of anyone LGBTQ involved mostly white, gay, cisgender people. While there was some comfort in seeing them navigate their coming out processes or overcome heterosexism on screen, their storylines often appeared unrealistic—at least in comparison to the nuanced homophobia I observed in my religious, immigrant family. In some ways, not seeing LGBTQ people of color in the media kept me in the closet for years.

How representation can help

Representation can serve as opportunities for minoritized people to find community support and validation. For example, recent studies have found that social media has given LGBTQ young people the outlets to connect with others—especially when the COVID-19 pandemic has limited in-person opportunities. Given the increased suicidal ideation, depression , and other mental health issues among LGBTQ youth amidst this global pandemic, visibility via social media can possibly save lives. Relatedly, taking Ethnic Studies courses can be valuable in helping students to develop a critical consciousness that is culturally relevant to their lives. In this way, representation can allow students of color to personally connect to school, potentially making their educational pursuits more meaningful.

Further, representation can be helpful in reducing negative stereotypes about other groups. Initially discussed by psychologist Dr. Gordon Allport as Intergroup Contact Theory, researchers believed that the more exposure or contact that people had to groups who were different from them, the less likely they would maintain prejudice . Literature has supported how positive LGBTQ media representation helped transform public opinions about LGBTQ people and their rights. In 2019, the Pew Research Center reported that the general US population significantly changed their views of same-sex marriage in just 15 years—with 60% of the population being opposed in 2004 to 61% in favor in 2019. While there are many other factors that likely influenced these perspective shifts, studies suggest that positive LGBTQ media depictions played a significant role.

For Asian Americans and other groups who have been historically underrepresented in the media, any visibility can feel like a win. For example, Gold House recently featured an article in Vanity Fair , highlighting the power of Asian American visibility in the media—citing blockbuster films like Crazy Rich Asians and Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings . Asian American producers like Mindy Kaling of Never Have I Ever and The Sex Lives of College Girls demonstrate how influential creators of color can initiate their own projects and write their own storylines, in order to directly increase representation (and indirectly increase mental health and positive esteem for its audiences of color).

When representation is not enough

However, representation simply is not enough—especially when it is one-dimensional, superficial, or not actually representative. Some scholars describe how Asian American media depictions still tend to reinforce stereotypes, which may negatively impact identity development for Asian American youth. Asian American Studies is still needed to teach about oppression and to combat hate violence. Further, representation might also fail to reflect the true diversity of communities; historically, Brown Asian Americans have been underrepresented in Asian American media, resulting in marginalization within marginalized groups. For example, Filipino Americans—despite being the first Asian American group to settle in the US and one of the largest immigrant groups—remain underrepresented across many sectors, including academia, arts, and government.

Representation should never be the final goal; instead, it should merely be one step toward equity. Having a diverse cast on a television show is meaningless if those storylines promote harmful stereotypes or fail to address societal inequities. Being the “first” at anything is pointless if there aren’t efforts to address the systemic obstacles that prevent people from certain groups from succeeding in the first place.

Instead, representation should be intentional. People in power should aim for their content to reflect their audiences—especially if they know that doing so could assist in increasing people's self-esteem and wellness. People who have the opportunity to represent their identity groups in any sector may make conscious efforts to use their influence to teach (or remind) others that their communities exist. Finally, parents and teachers can be more intentional in ensuring that their children and students always feel seen and validated. By providing youth with visual representations of people they can relate to, they can potentially save future generations from a lifetime of feeling underrepresented or misunderstood.

Kevin Leo Yabut Nadal, Ph.D., is a Distinguished Professor of Psychology at the City University of New York and the author of books including Microaggressions and Traumatic Stress .

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Media Representation
Representation and Audience Theory ... One step further
Media Representation and Audience Theory
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LaASmedia: Theories of Media Representation
Stuart Hall's Representation Theory Explained! Media Studies revision

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INTRO Representation Theory of General Linear Lie Algebra
Lec 17 Basics of Representation theory (continued)
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An introduction to the theory of representation
RECEPTION THEORY BY STUART HALL || UGC NET MASS COMMUNICATION || CUET PG UG MASS MEDIA STUDIES

COMMENTS

Stuart Hall
Representation is not about whether the media reflects or distorts reality, as this implies that there can be one 'true' meaning, but the many meanings a representation can generate. Meaning is constituted by representation, by what is present, what is absent, and what is different. Thus, meaning can be contested.
Stuart Hall and Representation
Stuart Hall believed representation was the "process by which members of a culture use language… to produce meaning". It is the organisation of signs, which we use to understand and describe the world, into a wider set of values of ideologies. These meanings are not fixed or "real"; they are produced and defined by society.
Stuart Hall's Representation Theory Explained! Media Studies revision
SUPPORT ME ON PATREON!To support this channel and access content early, visit:http://www.patreon.com/themediainsider-----...
Media Studies
A simple and easy to understand guide to Stuart Hall's Representation Theory to help students and teachers doing Media Studies at A-level, or even at GCSE. ...
Representation
Representation matters. The media can have a significant impact on how we see and understand each other. This is particularly important when the narratives convey hurtful and damaging misrepresentations. The following critical frameworks examines how ethnic-racial groups are depicted in the media.
Stuart Hall
Thus, Hall leaves a lasting impact on the field of media and communications. Stuart Hall on Media Representations. According to Hall, media plays a crucial role in shaping our understanding of the world. He believes that media representations are not neutral, but rather they are constructed based on social and cultural factors.
PDF Media Education Foundation Transcript
think to try and take the idea of representation to the image is an important question. Cultural studies has paid a tremendous amount of attention in one way or another to the centrality of representations and of the practice of representation. And media studies itself is, in an obvious sense, concerned in
Representation & the Media: Featuring Stuart Hall
http://www.mediaed.orgIn this accessible introductory lecture, Hall focuses on the concept of "representation"-- one of the key ideas of cultural studies-- a...
PDF Stuart Hall's Reception Theory Media Theories
Stuart Hall's Representation Theory. Stuart Hall's representation theory comes in three separate parts. The first part is that the Media often use stereotypes: ... The Hypodermic Needle Theory implies that the media has a powerful, immediate and direct impact on its audiences. The theory suggests that the
PDF Stuart Hall
1. Representation: •Media re-present real life. An imitation (with an agenda). •Representation constructed through media language (codes, MECS etc). •Media representations influence peoples opinions about real life. 2. Stereotypes: •Stereotypes are constructed for quick understanding. •Stereotypes strip groups down to basic traits.
Stuart Hall lives: cultural studies in an age of digital media
The second group of articles delves more deeply into Hall's work on representation and identification through media texts. Travers Scott reads "Signification, representation, ideology" (Hall, Citation 1985 ) against the grain to consider its opposition of materialism and discourse and apparent dismissal of post-structural critique.
Representation Theorists
Representation Theorists Baudrillard - Hyper Reality: "Some texts are difficult to distinguish in terms of the representation of reality from a simulation of reality e.g. Big Brother. The boundaries are blurred as codes and conventions create a set of signifiers which we understand but in fact the representation is a copy of a copy".
Representation theory
Representation theory studies how algebraic structures "act" on objects. A simple example is how the symmetries of regular polygons, consisting of reflections and rotations, transform the polygon.. Representation theory is a branch of mathematics that studies abstract algebraic structures by representing their elements as linear transformations of vector spaces, and studies modules over these ...
Library Research Guides: Media Studies: Representation in Media
This box serves as an introduction to the concept of representation in media featuring academic texts and scholarly articles on the topic. In the broadest stokes, representation refers to the portrayal of people, groups, and communities in the media (including television, film, and books). Recently, audiences have asked for increased ...
PDF Mass Media Representation, Identity-Building and Social Conflicts
in media studies, I explore connections between the theory of recognition and the slippery realm of mass media representations and discourses and their impacts on one's self-perception and cultural milieu. First, I point out why fictional and non-fictional representations matter for a recognition-theoretical approach as a social research agenda.
Media Constructions of Culture, Race, and Ethnicity
Furthermore, a racial group's lack of representation can also reduce the group's visibility to the general public. Such is the case for Native Americans and Asian Americans.Given mass media's widespread distribution of black and Latino stereotypes, most research on mediated racial portrayals focuses on these two groups.
Representation Theory of Stuart Hall
Stuart Hall's Representation Theory is a framework for understanding how meaning is created and communicated through culture, specifically through media repr...
(PDF) Media and the representation of Others
Based on a review of the scholarly debate on media representations of Others, it identifies current obstacles to fair representations in media production, content and reception.
Simon Dawes: What is Media Theory?
Kendall, G. and Wickham, G. (1999) Using Foucault's Methods, London: SAGE. Simon Dawes is the founding editor of Media Theory. He is Maître de conférences (Lecturer) at Université de Versailles Saint-Quentin-en-Yvelines (UVSQ), France, and the author of British Broadcasting and the Public-Private Dichotomy: Neoliberalism, Citizenship and ...
Stuart Hall's Reception Theory
Encoding and Decoding. In 1973, the cultural theorist and political activist, Stuart Hall, presented his model of communication in his essay "Encoding and Decoding in the Television Discourse". His reception theory describes how producers use various signs to encode a programme's meaning, according to their ideologies and resources, which ...
bell hooks, intersectionality and representation in the media
Representation. The representation of people and places on the big screen may look "familiar", but films give the audience a "reimagined, reinvented version of the real". That mixture of reality and fantasy makes the narratives wonderfully "compelling". However, bell hooks criticised mainstream Hollywood for not conveying the ...
Representation Theory: How Does it Appear in the Media?
Representation in media is a hard subject to control. The media's job is to report on the event that occurred, and by doing so may create unintentional stereotypes that humans may use. The representation theory provides an explanation for why society uses stereotypes as a way to identify people. If we consistently see terms, words, or phrases ...
Why Representation Matters and Why It's Still Not Enough
Further, representation might also fail to reflect the true diversity of communities; historically, Brown Asian Americans have been underrepresented in Asian American media, resulting in ...