Misleading Media

Everyday we are in contact with media and ads that might influence the way we look at things. Media is a powerful source that will tell you how to think and what to believe. Therefore, we need to become media literate, developing our ability to be critic. There are three things that are commonly portrayed in media that might influence us; these are: representation, stereotypes and  bias.

A representation is the way the producer shows reality. They do not open a window to reality, they represent it, showing the things they want us to focus on. For example, in the ad below we can see that a person who has aged is represented as very old and extremely wrinkled, a mummy. This image is a representation and an exaggeration. You may probably feel this way about your skin. Therefore, you feel attracted to the article and try to solve your skin wrinkles. We need to be critic about what is being represented and not get influenced about how things are being depicted.

Stereotypes according to the Oxford Dictionary is a  widely held but fixed and oversimplified image or idea of a particular type of person or thing:sexual and racial stereotypes. For example, when you think of a banker, you would normally picture him as wealthy. If you pictured a librarian, you would think of a very thin, quiet, serious looking person who wears glasses. However, not all librarians are skinny, or serious or wear glasses and not all bankers are wealthy. Therefore, media has been feeding us through out our lives with certain images that fix a particular characteristic on something or someone. For example, on the picture shown below we can see a group of older ladies. The advertisement  stereotypes older ladies as being serious, drinking tea or coffe, having a pet and perhaps living all together in a home. This is clearly just a fixed image that society might have about grandmothers. 

The third type of influence that is shown commonly in media is bias. This is frequently shown in graphs in articles that try to show some statistics. However, they are usually biased or with tendency to make the reader agree with what the writer is saying. Most of the time they use graphs with pictures instead of numbers and these do not show the reality. Those graphs tend to exaggerate on the size of the picture to make it clearer, but at the same time it becomes biased. The real numbers are not shown. The picture below shows the sales between two years and the sales in 2001 is NOT really 6 times more.

Learning about media and how it works, as well as the characteristics of it shown above will allow us to be more critic and able to have our own thoughts on things. Students should be shown how to appreciate and assess media.