reality and representation

8/8/2019 Reality and Representation

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Reality and Representation


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What are media representations?

Representation refers to the construction in any

medium (especially the mass media) of aspects

of ‘reality’ such as people, places, objects,

events, cultural identities and other abstract

concepts. Such representations may be in

speech or writing as well as still or moving

pictures.


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Media representation

Product and Process


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Natural

A key in the study of representationconcern is with the way in whichrepresentations are made to seem‘natural’.

Representations which becomefamiliar through constant re-usecome to feel 'natural' andunmediated.


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Constructed

Reality is always represented -

what we treat as 'direct'

experience is 'mediated' byperceptual codes. Representation

always involves 'the constructionof reality'.


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Realistic

All texts, however 'realistic' they

may seem to be, are constructed

representations rather than simplytransparent 'reflections',

recordings, transcriptions orreproductions of a pre-existing

reality.


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Selective

Representation is

unavoidably selective,foregrounding some things

and backgrounding others.


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Approaches

• CLASS, AGE, GENDER, ETHNICITY

• IDENTITY, STEREOTYPING,

‘PREJUDICE’ (typically racial) or ‘BIAS’(typically political)


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News Values and Frames

• Conflict: ‘balanced’ journalism dictates that ‘each story has two sides’;when these ‘sides’ are in dispute, a sense of immediacy is likely to result atthe same time that potential interest is enhanced through dramatization.

• Relevance: the event should be seen to impinge, however indirectly, onthe news audience’s lives and experiences. The proximity of the event is arelated factor

• Timeliness: recent events are favoured, especially those that haveoccurred in the previous 24 hours and which can be easily monitored asthey unfold in relation to institutional constraints and pressures.

• Simplification: the significance of an event should be relativelyunambiguous; the diversity of potential interpretations may then be keptto a minimum.

• Personalization: an emphasis on human actors ‘coping with life on theground’ is preferred over abstract descriptions of ‘faceless’ structures,forces or institutions.


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• Unexpectedness: an event which is ‘out of the ordinary’ is likely tobe ‘novel’ or ‘new’, thereby enhancing its chances of being caughtin the news net. As an old cliché goes: ‘Dog bites man isn’t news;man bites dog is’.

• Continuity: an event should allow for the projection of a sense of

where it ‘fits in’ so as to allow for prescheduling, a significantconsideration for a news organiza-tion allocating its resources. Arelated factor is its consonance or conformity to the newsworker’s(and audience member’s) preconceptions about what type of ‘newsstory’ it is likely to resemble.

• Composition: a mixture of different types of events must be

processed on any given day, thus events are chosen in relation tofluctuations in the ‘news hole’ to be filled. Divisions between, forexample, international, national and local news are usually clearlymarked in regional newspapers and newscasts.


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• Reference to elite nations: a hierarchy is often discernible here which givespriority to events in those countries which are regarded as ‘directly affecting theaudience’s well-being’, such as the USA and other members of the ‘first world’.This is at the expense of those events taking place in other places, particularlydeveloping or ‘third world’ countries which only infrequently receive newsworthystatus

• Reference to elite persons: activities performed by politicians, members of themonarchy, entertainment and sporting celebrities, corporate leaders, and so forth,are far more salient in news terms than those of ‘ordinary people’.

• Cultural specificity: events which conform to the ‘maps of meaning’ shared bynewsworker and news audience have a greater likelihood of being selected, a formof ethnocentrism which gives priority to news about ‘people like us’ at theexpense of those who ‘don’t share our way of life’.

•

Negativity: ‘bad news’ is ordinarily favoured over ‘good news’, namely because theformer usually conforms to a higher number of the above factors. As thecelebrated media theorist Marshal McLuhan once remarked, advertisementsconstitute the only ‘good news’ in the newspaper.


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Frames

News accounts may be deconstructed in ideologicalterms so as to elucidate how these news valueshelp to rule in certain types of events as

‘newsworthy’ while, at the same time, ruling outalternative types.

At the heart of these processes of inclusion andexclusion are certain ‘principles of organization’ or

‘frames’ which work to impose order on themultiple happenings of the social world so as torender them into a series of meaningful events.


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Frames

News frames make the world beyond direct

experience look natural; they are ‘principles of

selection, emphasis, and presentation

composed of little tacit theories about what

exists, what happens, and what matters’


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Frames

”largely unspoken and unacknowledged, [frames]organise the world both for journalists who report it and,in some important degree, for us who rely on theirreports.

Frames enable journalists to process large amounts ofinformation quickly and routinely: to recognise it asinformation, to assign it to cognitive categories, and topackage it for efficient relay to their audiences.

Thus, for organisational reasons alone, frames areunavoidable, and journalism is organised to regulate theirproduction.” Gitlin


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Questioning representations (1)

• Who made this representation?

• Who or what is represented?

•

How are the people or objects represented?• Why was this image, or series of images,

chosen rather than another representation?

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Do I have an existing context which I can useto understand the representation?


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Questioning representations (2)

Look carefully at the images presented, then answer thefollowing questions:

• Describe the people in the images.

• Describe the setting.

• What kind of people are they?

• How do you feel about them?

• Would you like to meet them?

• What reasons can you give for your reactions?

• Can you say whether these are stills from documentaryor fictional material?

• Does it matter?

reality and representation

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