Representation

Representation is the way in which people, events and ideas are presented to the audience.
The media breaks it down and takes something that is already there and represents it to us in they way which they choose. e.g. Stereotypes are an example of this.


Stereotypes - Media Institutions use stereotypes because the audience will instantly understand them. They are 'visual shortcuts' and there repeated so often that we assume they are normal or 'true'.

Archetypes - This is the 'ultimate' stereotype. For example a French man wear a bureau and has red wine.

Countertype - A representation that challenges tradition stereotypical associations of groups, people or places.

Producers - Representations are created by the producers(anyone who makes a media text) of media texts. This is then controlled by Gatekeepers.

Gatekeepers - is any person involved in a media production with the power to make a decision about something the audience are allowed to read, hear or see or not get to see due to the gatekeepers having the power to overide.

Moguls - these have the overall power to let the article be shown or not, the person who owns the newspaper. e.g.Rupert Murdoch who is one of the most powerful people in the world.

  

Media consumers are given the news to us and they give us a version of the world and this is strongly influenced by gatekeepers decisions. They can make a person given in a good light or bad light.
Richard Dyer argues that how we are seen dterminds how we are treated and how we see them. This comes from our representation of them. This comes down to Power, from people such as Rupert Murdoch he has the power to create someone that comes across as good or bad.

The Male Gaze (Laura Mulvey)

The cinema puts the audience in a male's position with the women on screen seen as an object of desire.  Mulvey suggests two distinct modes, "voyeuristic" (women as whores) and fetishitic (women as unreachable madonnas). Howeber recently this has been changing e.g. with the new James Bond movie.

The Bechdal Test

1. It has to have at least two (named women in it)
2. who have a conversation with eachother
3. about something besides a man

Myths (Roland Barthes)
The media often gives us mythic representations or a fairtytal- like portrayal or a particulatr place or person.