Media influences in audience - Case Study

1. Representation Theory - Stuart Hall

- Stereotypes are used as a result of a lack of diversity in production. 

- Meaning is created by hegemonic groups (rich, white, straight men) in order to maintain power.

- Top Boy season 2 (2022) (distributed through Netflix) 

-> shows white people wearing expensive suits and going to work on huge building, urban area with good infrastructure (high social class)

-> shows black people in a poor rural area, jobless, consuming drugs (low social class)

- Audiences creates their own meaning with these stereotypes. They create assumptions about black and white people according to representations showed on media.

2. Social Learning Theory - Albert Bandura

- After consuming media, the audience might go on to repeat what they have seen (in particular violent acts). Bandura admitted that there may be other processes that contribute to behaviour)

- Deadpool 2 (2018) (20th Century Studios) is full of profanities and inappropriate jokes, children may repeat Deadpool's action in real life.

3. Post-Colonial Theory - Paul Gilroy

- Post-colonialism is the representation of white, British people in the media after the colonization to make them look superior and stay in power against the others. 

-White, British people are represented as heroic, clean, polite, strong, while the others are represented as exotic and barbaric.

- Although in Black Panther (2018) there are good representations of black people, it is mentioned that Wakanda (the country of Black Panther) is a third world country and they are shown as the "other" ones. It is shown that American are more superior than Wakandans. America is described as a developed and powerful country while Wakanda is described to have a conservative society and a weak power in the political world despite them having the best technology in the world.

- Although the fight takes place in Wakanda, at the end it's the white man who saved the day.

4. Male Gaze Theory - Laura Mulvey

- Women are passive in a narrative, and their only purpose is as an object for the male characters to look upon. 

- This is shown through camerawork (angles, close-ups, slow movement), Mis-en-scene (revealing clothing), eye contact (sometimes looking at the camera directly)

- Food Wars! (last season 2020), features female anime characters with big boobs and wide hips to satisfy male viewers. They feature montages of revealing the female character's body parts. Female characters also uses revealing clothes such as bikinis during some scenes although it is totally unnecessary. They are portrayed as a sexual objects through different camera angles and movements such as close up and zoom in shots that focuses on the female's body parts and their lustful facial expressions.

5. Cultivation Theory - George Gerbner

- Exposure to media over time will reinforce existing ideologies. People will choose to consume media that already agrees with their opinions. 

- Euphoria (2019) (Warner Bros. Television Distribution) tells a story about a life of a group of high school students facing the issues of drugs, sex and violence which leads to high school viewers to normalize those issues.

6. Moral Panic 

- Irrational fears or threats that has been spread and exaggerated by the media.

- 5 Stages of moral panic by Stanley Cohen: Concern, Hostility, Consensus, Disproportionality and Volatility.

In 2020, news outlets are broadcasting news about the newly found Covid-19 virus which created a moral panic between the audience. As the virus was first founded in Wuhan, China, Chinese people all over the world are seen a the the ‘Folk Devils.’ Fox news, a right wing news channel, featured president Trump speculating that the pandemic is a hoax in their news which has caused confusion between audiences. Trump and right wing news channels used the term ‘China virus’ to show a negative stereotype of Chinese people on the media which have led the number of asian crime in 2020 to spike up. While American news outlet are reporting about negative speculations about China and the virus, news outlet in Asian countries are broadcasting useful informations to minimize the spread of the virus. According to George Gerbner’s Cultivation theory, viewers of Fox News which are mostly on the right wing have been exposed to negative stereotypes of Asian people and the news about Covid-19 will reinforce their ideology about them. Fox news maintains their audience by broadcasting news that their audience would want to see and these news stories are mainly selected based on negativity, proximity and recency.