How Media Affects Our Views of Diversity
Begin by asking students to name their favourite TV shows. (This can include shows on streaming services such as Netflix.)
Make a list on the board and have students vote for the top four favourite comedy shows, top four dramatic shows and top four reality shows (eliminate any that are entirely unfamiliar to a significant number of students). Then do the same for the top four video games, top four recent movies and top four favourite online streamers, influencers or creators.
Introduce the idea that media are constructions that re-present reality. You may choose to show your students the video Media Literacy 101: Media are Constructions as a way of doing so.
Afterwards, explain that this means that media texts are created – every part of a media text is the result of a decision made consciously or unconsciously regarding what to include and exclude as well as how to present what is included – and that audiences perceive media products as representations of reality, correctly or not. (You may choose to illustrate the later point by showing the video Media Literacy 101: Audiences Negotiate Meaning.)
Give students the example of a documentary: we accept it as a representation of reality, but the director had to make decisions about what footage to include and what to leave out, what music to use on the soundtrack, and even where to point the camera – pointing a camera in one direction automatically means you’re leaving out everything that camera isn’t pointing at.
Remind students that people who make media are not necessarily media literate: They often use tropes and cliches without realizing they are harmful stereotypes, and like most of us base their understanding of areas like medicine or law enforcement more on media they themselves have seen than on reality. Ask students how a media producer’s decisions and assumptions might influence diversity portrayal (they may have an assumption that a particular type of character must be White, male, heterosexual, etc.; the media they create might be based on their own experience, which might not include certain groups, etc.)
Introduce the idea that media communicate values and messages (even if these are just the creator’s unquestioned assumptions) and have social implications (because we base our view of the world in part on the media we consume). (You may choose to illustrate this point by showing the video, Media Literacy 101: Media have social and political implications.) Ask students how the portrayal of diversity in media texts can influence how we see the world (we might have an inaccurate view of certain groups or associate them with stereotypes).
Stereotyping means portraying members of a particular group in just one or a small number of roles, treating all members of a group as being the same, or emphasizing the ways in which a group is different from the (presumed) audience