Tag: stereotypes

  • Not All Afghan Women Feel Oppressed by the Taliban…

    If you want an alternative point of view on the Taliban’s take over of Afghanistan, you should try following @janeygak on twitter. She is pro-Taliban, anti-American, anti-liberal, and very active on twitter – constantly putting out tweets and re-tweets, such as this, stating that she doesn’t care about inclusivity or diversity in the Taliban government…..…

  • Representations of men in the media

    This post focuses on traditional representations of men as reinforcing aspects of hegemonic masculinity before considering some of the changes to male representations in more recent years. Traditional representations of men reinforce hegemonic masculinity Traditional representations of men have ascribed certain attributes to male characters such as strength, power, control, authority, rationality and lack of…

  • Applying material from Item B and your knowledge, evaluate the view that the media portray women in a stereotypical way [20 marks]

    An essay plan covering some of the knowledge and evaluation points you could use to answer this question for AQA A-level sociology paper two: the media option. You might like to review this post on how women are represented in the media before going through the plan below. The item refers to three main types…

  • Representations of Ethnicity

    Van Dijk (1991) conducted content analysis of tens of thousands of news items across the world over several decades and found that representations of black people could be categorised into three stereotypically negative types of news: Ethnic minorities as criminals Ethnic minorities as a threat Ethnic minorities as unimportant. Minority groups as criminals Wayne et…

  • Media representations of social class

    How are different social classes represented in the mainstream media?  This post looks at how the monarchy, the wealthy, the middle classes, working classes and benefits claimaints (‘the underclass’) are represented, focusing mainly on British television and newspaper coverage. Generally speaking the ‘lower’ the social class, the more negative the media representations are, arguably because…

  • Media representations of benefits claimants

    In this post I summarize some recent sociological research which suggests newspapers and ‘reality T.V. shows represent benefits claimants in a limited range of stereotypical ways, focusing on them as lazy, undeserving scroungers engaged in immoral, wreckless and criminal behaviour. A lot of the research below also reminds us that media representations in no way…

  • Representations of sexuality in the media

    Media representations of sexuality have historically been mostly heterosexual, with LGBT representations being largely invisible. Batchelor et al (2009) found that when gay representations did appear in the mainstream media, they weren’t generally ‘integrated’ into plot lines, but rather gayness was part of the plot, seen as a source of anxiety, or as a target…

  • No More Boys and Girls

    No More Boys and Girls (BBC, August 2017) BBC programme documents a 6 week experiment in gender neutrality carried out with one year 3 primary school class in primary school on the Isle of White…. Can our kids go gender free? Doctor Javid Abdelmoneim (*) believes that these attitudes are not just the result of biology,…

  • Do teachers stereotype students according to sex and gender?

    GCSE and A level statistics show us subject choices are very gendered – even in 2017, boys tend to choose typically male subjects and girls tend to choose typically female subjects. Interactionist theory points to teacher stereotyping and labeling as one of the main explanations for these gendered differences in subject choice, but what evidence…

  • Gender Norms and Stereotypes – A Visual Representation

    Men are simple and straightforward: they just want quick sex with porn-star lookalikes, exaggerate the number  of sexual partners they have to gain status and need women to give them space to get on with the important matters of  football, beer and sleeping. Women are more complex. They prefer wining, dining and love-making, feel the need…