Representation Theory

• Stereotypes


  • Positive or negative limited representations that aims to fit everybody in a certain group
• Countertypes


  • Breaks and challenges stereotypes in an positive oppositional way
• Misrepresentation


  Something is presented in a wrong inaccurate way
• Selective Representation


  • Representing some events/conflicts, not all, sometimes chosen based on importance and audience preference
• Dominant Ideology


  The beliefs and ideas shared by the majority of people in a particular group
• Constructed Reality


  Developed over time, not born that way
• Hegemony


  The leadership or dominance in the media of a particular group that defines the norms and ideas of the culture
• Audience Positioning


  The way a media product addresses the audience to influence the way the audience will interpret the media product
• Encoding


  The act of communicating ideas and messages through a system of signs. Media producers make specific media language choices to encode their messages
• Decoding


  The process through which an audience interprets a message
• Male Gaze


  Media products are usually constructed using a male point of view and reflect male desires. Women, therefore are often objectified in representations, presented as objects of male desire
• Voyeurism


  The pleasure of looking at others whilst remaining anonymous. This is often associated with the idea of looking to gain an illicit pleasure
• Patriarchy


  A society within which men hold the power and is structured to benefit male interests
• Sexualisation/Raunch Culture


  A culture which promotes overtly sexual representations of women
• Post-Feminism


  Gender that acknowledge the changes bought about in society by second wave feminism
• Female Gaze


  Considers representations that subvert the male gaze and present ideas from a distinctly female point of view. Often misconstrued to refer to products targeting a female audience
• Gender and Power


  • Women tended to suffer from narrow set of representations in media compared to men
• Gender as Discourse


  • The discourse is defined as masculine values - Men – agency – heroes are imagined as men - Men seen as the protagonists in media products – more valued
• Intersectionality


  The ways that multiple forms of inequality or disadvantage sometimes compound themselves and create obstacles that often are not understood among conventional ways of thinking
• Sex and Gender


  Sex is not "a bodily given on which the construct of gender is artificially imposed, but... a cultural norm which governs the materialization of bodies
• Gender as performativity


  The idea that gendered behaviours come from lived experiences within a culture. Gender is something people 'do' rather than something they 'are'
• Gender as historical situation rather than natural fact

  Gender is by no means tied to material bodily facts but is solely and completely a social construction
• Subversion


  The undermining of the power and authority of an established system or institution
• Diaspora


  The dispersion of people from the same shared starting point
• Double Consciousness


  An individual sense of self is different to the way they are represented
• Cultural Imperialism


  The imposition of one cultures values on another culture
• Multiculturalism


  The state of a society or the world in which there exists numerous distinct ethnic and cultural groups seen to be politically relevant
• Imagined Communities


  The difference is ignored and diverse groups of people are represented as roughly the same
• Marginalisation


  The reduction of a group of people to "less than"
• Orientalism


  An inaccurate perspective
• Otherness


  The quality or fact of being different
• Fluidity of Identity


  • The changing representation of men and women in mainstream media. The depiction of the passive housewife throughout the twentieth century was increasingly being replaced by images of assertive women taking control of their lives
• Constructed Identity


  We value the ideas expressed by the contemporary opinion leaders who dominate our social media feeds. If an influencer on Instagram or TikTok suggests we should visit a particular shop or buy a certain brand, we might act on that advice. The representation of characters in a sitcom or a film could help us discover our own identity
• Negotiated Identity


  A balance between our own desires and meeting the expectations of others
• Collective Identity


  Our sense of belonging to group, especially because there is shared interest or love for a media text