Reality and Representation

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.

Media representation
Product and Process

Natural
A key in the study of representation
concern is with the way in which
representations are made to seem
natural.
Representations which become
familiar through constant re-use
come to feel 'natural' and
unmediated.

Constructed
Reality is always represented what we treat as 'direct'
experience is 'mediated' by
perceptual codes. Representation
always involves 'the construction
of reality'.

Realistic
All texts, however 'realistic' they
may seem to be, are constructed
representations rather than simply
transparent 'reflections',
recordings, transcriptions or
reproductions of a pre-existing
reality.

Selective

Representation is
unavoidably selective,
foregrounding some things
and backgrounding others.

Approaches
CLASS, AGE, GENDER, ETHNICITY
IDENTITY, STEREOTYPING,
PREJUDICE (typically racial) or BIAS
(typically political)

News Values and Frames

Conict: balanced journalism dictates that each story has two sides;
when these sides are in dispute, a sense of immediacy is likely to result at
the same time that potential interest is enhanced through dramatization.
Relevance: the event should be seen to impinge, however indirectly, on
the news audiences lives and experiences. The proximity of the event is a
related factor
Timeliness: recent events are favoured, especially those that have
occurred in the previous 24 hours and which can be easily monitored as
they unfold in relation to institutional constraints and pressures.
Simplication: the signicance of an event should be relatively
unambiguous; the diversity of potential interpretations may then be kept
to a minimum.
Personalization: an emphasis on human actors coping with life on the
ground is preferred over abstract descriptions of faceless structures,
forces or institutions.

News Values and Frames

Unexpectedness: an event which is out of the ordinary is likely to
be novel or new, thereby enhancing its chances of being caught
in the news net. As an old clich goes: Dog bites man isnt news;
man bites dog is.
Continuity: an event should allow for the projection of a sense of
where it ts in so as to allow for prescheduling, a signicant
consideration for a news organiza-tion allocating its resources. A
related factor is its consonance or conformity to the newsworkers
(and audience members) preconceptions about what type of news
story 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 to
uctuations in the news hole to be lled. Divisions between, for
example, international, national and local news are usually clearly
marked in regional newspapers and newscasts.

News Values and Frames

Reference to elite nations: a hierarchy is often discernible here which gives

priority to events in those countries which are regarded as directly affecting the
audiences well-being, such as the USA and other members of the rst world.
This is at the expense of those events taking place in other places, particularly
developing or third world countries which only infrequently receive newsworthy
status
Reference to elite persons: activities performed by politicians, members of the
monarchy, entertainment and sporting celebrities, corporate leaders, and so forth,
are far more salient in news terms than those of ordinary people.
Cultural specicity: events which conform to the maps of meaning shared by
newsworker and news audience have a greater likelihood of being selected, a form
of ethnocentrism which gives priority to news about people like us at the
expense of those who dont share our way of life.
Negativity: bad news is ordinarily favoured over good news, namely because the
former usually conforms to a higher number of the above factors. As the
celebrated media theorist Marshal McLuhan once remarked, advertisements
constitute the only good news in the newspaper.

Frames
News accounts may be deconstructed in ideological
terms so as to elucidate how these news values
help to rule in certain types of events as
newsworthy while, at the same time, ruling out
alternative types.
At the heart of these processes of inclusion and
exclusion are certain principles of organization or
frames which work to impose order on the
multiple happenings of the social world so as to
render them into a series of meaningful events.

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

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 their
reports.
Frames enable journalists to process large amounts of
information quickly and routinely: to recognise it as
information, to assign it to cognitive categories, and to
package it for efcient relay to their audiences.
Thus, for organisational reasons alone, frames are
unavoidable, and journalism is organised to regulate their
production. Gitlin

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

Questioning representations (2)

Look carefully at the images presented, then answer the
following 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 documentary
or fictional material?
Does it matter?