Media representation

This week I watched three very interesting and informative videos about media representation.my first thoughts about media representation before watching the three videos was how the media tends to represent topics in ways that are unrealistic and tend to give the public a better impression than it actually is. The first video I watched was called” why representation matters” this video informed me about the factors of the importance of different cultures being represented in the media and by doing this to the best ability it is ideally portrayed by people who are in the same boat as what they are essentially trying to show the media. They also talked about the different body types that are shared across different media sources. In my opinion I think that over the past couple of years body positivity has been talked about so much and there is defiantly a greater acceptance of the different types of bodies and the ideal “perfect” body for women in movies has definitely changed it’s a lot broader than years ago when every person in the public eye were slim and this was idea of “perfect” body was being portrayed across everything movies and magazines for example which would make more women feeling insecure. 

The second video that I watched was called “Stuart halls representation theory explained” in this video it was discussed about how people in the public eye are represented and how people have formed an opinion based off the media before even realising what the person has to offer and forming your own opinion. It was also talked about the representation of stereotypes in society and the examples given were the stereotype of gays always being this “feminine” main character type of person and the other was an advertisement of a women cleaning a kitchen promoting cleaning supplies. Now these aren't taken literal through the public eye but it is still showing this stereotype idea that is represented in the media. Int the third video called “miss representation female leadership” they were talking about women playing a role in leadership and having power. It was talked about how discouraging it is to young girls to aim to achieve one of these roles one day as most women are a mockery and sexualised by men who have any source of a platform. Some men who have these platforms claim that the women who have gained power haven't gotten there by their hard work and effort and perhaps some just have connection therefore they aren't given enough credit to where they have come it is just excused. The level of abuse that women in empowerment get is so high and so public too comments are made left right and centre and are all published online for everyone to see. 

I also had to research an informative image that I felt represents the topic “media representation” the best. I chose this image from “womensagenda.com” after learning more about the topic I chose to go with this image as I found the topic about women being represented in the media the most interesting and this image shows how women are portrayed in films and it includes informative statistics. 

 

References video one “why media matters” 

Video two “Stuart halls representation theory explained” 

Video three “miss representation female leadership” 

Image source “www.womensagenda.com”