The Influence Of Stereotypes In The Media

What happens when you use stereotypes is you draw on predetermined notions about certain racial or ethnic groups to define a person or group of people. These prejudiced views may not be entirely true based on our readings. An example of stereotypes is taking Latin Americans to be drug addicts as we discussed in class. Stereotypes of indigenous peoples are prevalent in the media like our ‘Ethnic Notions’ documentary in class of African Americans being perceived in film and media. Most often, the stereotypes that we formulate in our minds are what we decode from the media.

Spread of negative stereotypes Negative stereotypes have been created by us, as a society, we have allowed ourselves to live with this misconceptions that impact all of us in a certain way. We have contributed to those beliefs that say that social status, income class and ethnicity define our identity. In fact, we have been and also have prejudged others at a certain point in our lives, we prejudge people we don’t know and also the ones we think we know like our own family members. In “The Achievement of Desire” by Richard Rodriguez he discusses his personal experience on how he stereotyped himself and also his family.

Our society today relies heavily on mass media for communication. Through these mediums and others, like television and printable sources, information is spread worldwide. Depending on how the information is presented cultures and overall, households can be persuaded into perceiving other groups of individuals in specific forms. In recent news reporting, there has been a portrayal of police brutality within impoverished communities of color. This has caused an uproar all over the United States.

The media today plays the greatest role in creating stereotypes in our society. Quite often, these stereotypes do not correspond to reality, showing it in a distorted way. However, many people accept that distorted reality as a truth. The reasons for establishing such generalizаtions and categorizations often lies in political or corporate interests.

Stereotypes in media have been around since the earliest cartoons were drawn. The media gives supposedly identifying traits with images of the stingy Jewish man, the single Hispanic woman cleaning homes to raise her three children, and the “butch” lesbian falling for the beautiful blonde who just happens to glance at her every day in the hallway. These portrayals make up general knowledge about minorities for a lot of people, but their accuracy is questionable at best. While production companies have been making strides towards the better, insufficient representation in the media tends to portray minorities as their negative stereotypes rather than as people.

Society has been influenced by the way in which people identify themselves and one another. Some of those influences are positive, while some are negative. Stereotypes are people’s prejudices toward the people in minority groups that are not fully understood by the majority of society. Hence, stereotypes make people wrongly consider some individuals as the epitomes of a whole group of people. Therefore, the identities, opportunities and decision-making of different individuals of the minor groups are limited.

There are stereotypes between individuals, in the media, and in education. There is a lot of psychological

Stereotypes are simple images or beliefs over the attributes assigned to a particular social group, are models of behavior that become schemes deeply rooted in our mentalities to the point that we adopt them as part of human naturalness. Stereotypes can be racial, religious, sexual and social. These could be the caused of a known incident or attitude years earlier, or simply the result of frequent rumors. Stereotypes can affect different spheres of society. These assumptions can filter into many aspects of life.

Dating back to the 1800 's, blacks in entertainment have been portrayed very negatively for decades in the media. Blackface was a form of theatrical makeup used by actors to represent a black person. Stereotypes imbued in the characters who practiced blackface also popularized black culture, although in a negative manner however. This practice was very popular in the 1800 's and early 1900 's, contributing to the proliferation of the stereotypes that black people are subhuman. By the mid 1900 's, attitudes about race and racism were changing, which effectively ended the prevalent use of blackface and other negative black stereotypes portrayed in the media.

In today’s society, individuals and groups are labeled with either positive or negative stereotypes. People encounter stereotypes everyday and everywhere. It is the picture people paint in their minds when approaching a group or individual when in fact it may be different in reality. Stereotypes affect a person’s way of living and thinking either in a negative or positive way. Stereotypes are based on truth but in an exaggerated way, while misconceptions are formed from having stereotypes.

Life is a symphony composed of three distinct movements, a lot of people, a few people, and almost no one; each of them is affected by stereotypes. "Stereotypes may be defined as popular beliefs about specific social groups or types of individuals and are broadly standardized or simplified conceptions of groups based on some prior assumptions,"*Stereotypes are present an incomplete, subjective and sometimes false image of the reality. They are often based on traditions and are resistant to change. Although they can have positive and negative effects, ; the last is much more common and easily spread throughout social institutions, such as mass media, that which is using stereotypes, based on the assumption , that they are well known to everyone and help the receivers to understand the content of the message. Stereotypes have a negative effect when it published throughout the mass media.

Stereotypes are widely believed mental pictures of a categorized group of people. People learn stereotypes from family members, social media, and entertainment. Family members are a person’s first and most important influence about life. Social media is the currently the way of communication and it satisfies the needs to understand the social world. No longer do people have to view a person as an individual, but now as a group member.

Marwa Alkafaji UPGR001A-academic writing 31/7/2015 Cause and effect essay -Final Draft Stereotypes Life is a symphony composed of three distinct movements, a lot of people, a few people, and almost no one; each of them is affected by stereotypes. "Stereotypes may be defined as popular beliefs about specific social groups or types of individuals and are broadly standardized or simplified conceptions of groups based on some prior assumptions. "*Stereotypes present an incomplete, subjective and sometimes false image of reality.

Today, we are living in a very complex social environment. In today’s society, people are stereotyped in many different ways depending which category an individual is located in. Haven’t you been stereotyped at some point in your life? Or you may have stereotyped someone without even noticing it. Stereotyping is actually more serious than we thought and it is becoming a major problem in our society today.

Since the concept of stereotyping holds a broad scope, the essay will narrow down the focus to ethnic groups and their culture. If we assume that the use of stereotypes helps us to gain an understanding of the world, we may establish different profiles and characterizations on certain groups of people. For example: Jews are greedy, Muslims are terrorists, black people are criminals, Americans are obese, homosexuals are weak and so on. These assumptions are typical examples and have become so common today, that people may mistake them to be correct classifications of the certain groups and types of individuals, because they have been misunderstood or generalized due to one incident as well as influenced by certain factors.