5 issues and debates which link to my critical investigation

Issues/Debates

• Repesentation -

· a presentation to the mind in the form of an idea or image

· a creation that is a visual or tangible rendering of someone or something

· the act of representing; standing in for someone or some group and speaking with authority in their behalf

http//www.aber.ac.uk/media/Modules/MC30820/represent.html

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.

The term refers to the processes involved as well as to its products. For instance, in relation to the key markers of identity - Class, Age, Gender and Ethnicity (the 'cage' of identity) - representation involves not only how identities are represented (or rather constructed) within the text but also how they are constructed in the processes of production and reception by people whose identities are also differentially marked in relation to such demographic factors. Consider, for instance, the issue of 'the gaze'.

• Stereotyping -

• pigeonhole: treat or classify according to a mental stereotype; "I was stereotyped as a lazy Southern European"

• - a conventional or formulaic conception or image

• http://changingminds.org/explanations/theories/stereotypes.htm

• Media stereotypes are inevitable, especially in the advertising, entertainment and news industries, which need as wide an audience as possible to quickly understand information. Stereotypes act like codes that give audiences a quick, common understanding of a person or group of people—usually relating to their class, ethnicity or race, gender, sexual orientation, social role or occupation.

  But stereotypes can be problematic. They can:

  • reduce a wide range of differences in people to simplistic categorizations
  • transform assumptions about particular groups of people into "realities"
  • be used to justify the position of those in power
  • perpetuate social prejudice and inequality

  More often than not, the groups being stereotyped have little to say about how they are represented.

• Media effects - Media influence or media effects are communication theory and sociology to refer to the theories about the ways the mass media affect how their audiences think and behave.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Media_influence

Media effects: advances in theory and research By Jennings Bryant, Mary Beth Oliver - book source

Theories

• Marxism -

  the economic and political theories of Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels that hold that human actions and institutions are economically determined and that class struggle is needed to create historical change and that capitalism will ultimately be past it by communism.

  http://www.allaboutphilosophy.org/what-is-marxism-faq.htm

• Audience theories - A text is classified in a genre through the identification of key elements which occur in that text and in others of the same genre.

http://www.mediaknowall.com/alevkeyconcepts/genre.html