Ma Collins Mass Communication Prof. Kari Cameron
Does the Mass Media Encourage Stereotypes?
As the number of available media outlets increases due to various new media technologies, the
impact that mass media has on its users also changes. This paper will focus on how the various sources
of mass media influence its consumers and more speci&cally whether or not these outlets encourage
stereotypes. This relationship is referred to as “mediated culture” where the media creates the culture
that consumes it. This is something that is quite common in the advertising world in which celebrity
endorsements create a culture that is insecure about their personal appearance resulting in a culture
that feels as though they need a product to be accepted by their peers. From a marketing standpoint this
is a great problem to have, but when this type of thinking leads to stereotyping in outlets such as news
aggregators and public service announcements. An example of a mass media outlet that has a great deal
of influence is Fox News. Fox News has been accused by many of being biased in their reporting,
speci&cally toward conservative values. While this may not necessarily be an issue to have a news
channel that speaks to a certain group of people, it could become a problem if stereotypical ideals were
being pushed on its consumers.
In order to examine the e0ect of mass media on people we &rst need to understand how it
e0ects di0erent people. Julia Wood (2011) examines how women and men perceive information from
media. She says that in general males use and treat media as a source of entertainment and women see
it as a tool to aid in relationship building. What this means is that women tend to take the relationships
they see on television and integrate them into their own interpersonal communications. This is why,
Hannah Goodall (2012) says, we need to embrace media literacy similar in the way that we do for wrien
literature. Anyone who is relatively literate can easily tell the di0erence between a &ctional sci-& novel
and a bibliography of one of our nation’s leaders. These two types of writing have di0erent values
Ma Collins Mass Communication Prof. Kari Cameron
associated with them and we would read each to gain that particular value associated with it. Wood
notes that this is not the case with media. Consumers of media feel as though they are una0ected by its
messages and therefore they can consume anything without being influenced either way. This
perspective can be problematic because people are in fact unconsciously being a0ected by the media
they are consuming and it may be causing them to passively form uneducated opinions. The idea of
media literacy would seek to help viewers to identify messages that are stereotypical in nature and allow
them to ignore them rather than absorb them. Until this idea can be quanti&ed and embraced there will
always be the issue of negative in%uencing of stereotypes in the media.
The psychological e0ect that a media message has on the individual can be narrowed down to
more of a science according to Florian Arendt (2013). He explores the e0ect that “media priming” has on
its consumers and outlines a few di0erent variables that, if perfected, can have a very powerful e0ect on
