Watch out -TIGER! Relax, there’s not a tiger in the room, but you just imagined one. The ferocious carnivore has been represented by a five-word code. It wasn’t a real tiger, just the letters EGIT and R placed in a specific order which you understood. The media reduces real events or complex abstract ideas into representations (or re-presentations). Most of these representations are made by a handful of global media institutions. History teaches us that representations can be gross distortions used for sinister purposes by masters of propaganda. Television programmes, films, songs and newspapers are skilled and structured ways of reforming events and ideas for mass-circulation. We have to consider the validity of these representations and remain alert to the meanings – overt or hidden – which these representations contain.
Representation
(or re-presentation) in the media refers to the idea that
aspects of a reality (gender, race, class etc) can be "re-presented" by
a media producer to construct a text which creates meaning
for an audience. This process is cyclic as each element of
the diagram below (Producer, Audience, "Reality")
is affected in various ways by the other. The relationship
is invariably linked by ideology - the ideas and beliefs
of individuals, groups of people (often within institutions),
and the society in which we live.
For
example, a photographer may witness a demonstrater throwing
a brick
at the police (a reality). The photographer may work
for an organisation which wants him to show the demonstrator
as being in the wrong as they believe people should not do
this (institutional ideology). Therefore, what the audience
see through the photograph produced is someone doing something
evil against the police who are only doing their job. However,
the demonstrator may believe that what they are doing is right
because they see the police as being upholders of unjust laws.
The "reality" of the demonstrator has been represented
to offer a completely different meaning/reality to the audience.
This is an extreme example and most representations are much
more subtle than this. For example we may see a woman washing
up and think nothing of it. However, the representation here
is very ideological - that women exist to serve men. We read
this in this way because we are awre of our social ideology
which is very male centred.
The
YouTube movie below is of Professor Stuart Hall (a famous
Media/Cultural studies theorist) talking about representation.
