1. Representations of ethnicity

2. What do we know about
representation?
• The term representation refers to “the way
the media constructs aspects of real life”
• Point of view, messages and values often
underlie media representations.
• Representations often reveal the dominant
ideology of the culture which created them

3. How do we define ethnicity?
The term ethnicity can often be confused with
‘race’, a word often used to categorize large
amounts of people by factors such as skin
colour.
Ethnicity is:
identity with or membership in a particular
national, or cultural group and observance of
that group's customs, beliefs, and language

4. Task:
What picture would you expect to see
underneath these tabloid newspaper headlines?
‘KEEP OUT, BRITAIN IS FULL UP’
‘THE FEDS ARE CHASING ME’
‘ONE IN 5 BRITONS WILL BE ETHNICS’
You have 3 minutes

5. The feds are
chasing me..
Last words of
'gangsta' who was
shot by cops

6. What kind of world is being
constructed by these media
representations?
What does this tell us about some
media representations of ethnicity?
Remember: points of view, messages and values
often underlie media representations

8. The feds are
chasing me...
Last words of
'gangsta' who
was shot by cops

9. Audience positioning
Stuart Hall (1973)
1. Preferred or dominant reading
2. Negotiated readings
3. Oppositional or resistant readings
Can you think of examples where audiences
adopt these readings of media texts?

10. •
•
•
•
•
Films
Newspapers
Charity campaigns
Television programmes
News

11. Remember...
Stereotypes are widely circulated ideas or
assumptions about particular groups.

12. “Stereotypes and mis-representation are even
more dangerous when dealing with ethnicity
compared to gender.”
Do you agree? Why?

13. The representation that is constructed
through the media is often the only
experience of different cultures that some
audiences will encounter

14. Watch the following clip carefully
Analyse the way in which camera angles/shots
and audio codes are used to construct
representations of ethnicity.
Audio codes:
Diegetic- sounds within the context of the world
on screen. E.g. Dialogue
Non-diegetic- sounds that are outside of the
onscreen world. e.g. Music

16. Changing representations of ethnicity
The representation of people from other cultures
in the media has changed dramatically since
earlier days where they were defined in terms of
their potential for comedy or ‘foreignness’
Ethnicity is still, although perhaps less
frequently, represented in stereotypical ways or
as ‘other:’ as something different from the
mainstream or the norm - suggesting that the
dominant way of seeing things is still white