Media Messages Section A - News

Stereotypes and Cultivation Theory

Media Representations are:

- Powerful

- Appear truthful

- Saturate our lives

- re-cycle existing ideas in our society 

- appear natural

Construction - The most Basic use of our media language - the layout of the page, the balance of image to text and the prominence that a story is given. If the lead front page is always dominated by stories by stories of asylum seekers and problems of illegal immigration then this will come to be seen by readers as the most important issue. The fact that such stories are repeated day after day reinforces this idea

Mediation - How newspaper or magazine photographs are cropped and captioned; how real life events are portrayed in a news report - which image is selected; what the caption says; amount of space allocated; front page or page 4

Selection - This refers to what has been selected to include in a media product. Stories that might offer a different view to that of the newspaper are often not reported or reported with a different spin

Stereotypes - The simplified representation of a person, groups of people or a place, through basic or obvious characteristics - which are often exaggerated. They can be used to describe people quickly, relying on existing audience recognition. Stereotypes are dangerous as they can lead audiences to generalise about people or places

Ideology - The ideas and beliefs, held by media producers, which are often represented in their media products*: IN a newspaper, the ideology of the owner or senior editors could influence the way stories are represented, such as leading support to a particular political party 

Cultivation Theory :George Gerbner - The idea that exposure to repeated patterns of representation over long periods of time can shape and influence the way in which people perceive the world around them (i.e. cultivating particular views and opinions). The idea that cultivation reinforces mainstream values (dominant ideologies)

Reinforcement Theory - 

Mean World Syndrome - Mean world syndrome is a cognitive bias where people perceive the world to be more dangerous than it actually is due to long-term, moderate to heavy exposure to violence-related content on mass media, mainly television.