Journalism and Society- Part II: Stereotypes
Stereotypes have shaped our society for many decades and have always put people into a category. They suggest how somebody should act, who somebody should be, and what they should be interested in. They make assumptions about someone because of their sex, their class, their sexuality, their religion, or their ethnicity. My question is- do stereotypes still exist now? In this modern era of acceptance and a more diverse society who fight to be themselves and do not conform, are there still stereotypes represented in journalism and the media?
CLASS
The class system is something that has always been present in the journalism industry. Primarily in magazines, by using the ABC1 or C2DE demographic. With this though, it’s not necessarily stereotypes. Where the stereotypes occur is in the content and advertisement. There’s a certain stereotype in the fact that if you are of the ABC1 category, you will be mostly exposed to the more higher class and expensive products. The ABC1 demographic consists of people with carriers in supervising, managing, teaching, medical industry or have a professional connotation. These people all typically have more money and will be advertised higher standard products. The C2DE demographic is the manual workers, skilled jobs and lower-class careers. These people are usually advertised cheaper options, more deals and offers etc. The stereotype here is that people of a certain class aren’t able to buy items or products that aren’t aimed for them and that people who are lower class can’t afford the more luxury products.
There are two sides to this though- while it can be seen as a stereotype by assuming what someone can afford, its also understandable and makes sense why you would target advertisements this way. This is also quite a dated issue in journalism. The modern era of journalism is primarily digital and online, where class isn’t as big of an issue anymore. Anyone can access any website, it all comes down to content preference. It becomes someone’s personal choice on what content they read, and they aren’t constrained by the price of the content. In addition to this, a lot of digital advertisements are now directly targeted to everyone individually using ‘cookies’ to select adverts suited for that person based on what they have been browsing on the internet, and so this eliminates any stereotype around class as the internet itself is choosing some of the advertisements.
I think this shows that class stereotypes no longer exist to the extent that they used to, especially in journalism and the media. The only time I think they still exist would be readers of certain newspapers/magazines such as The Economist and The Financial Times, but again that is mostly down to personal preference.
SEX
There has always been an assumption that there are many stereotypes around the sexes, and that a man or woman should be and act a certain way. I personally think these are very dated assumptions and I don’t think that there are as many stereotypes in the media or journalism that suggest a man or woman should be interested in a certain topic. However, I do think that there is a fine line between demographic and stereotype. I think a lot of people would misunderstand a demographic for a stereotype, but this is something that would need more investigation to prove. The modern era of magazines has seen more men’s fashion and style content, as well as more women’s sport content, and this is evident with publications such as GQ and Men's Health. There is also the assumption in society which isn’t as present in the era we are in but there are still assumptions that a man who is interested in fashion and style is ‘gay’, which tarnishes the stereotype of the LGBT community- stating that all gay men are interested in that topic. I wrote a piece on how the LGBT community is portrayed in journalism which discusses this topic more.
I think that journalism has played a big part in breaking other stereotypes such as in feminism and most of the stories written about this topic portray women as strong and independent, and they have encouraged feminism to move forward and support women striving to be themselves. An example of this is an article I saw on the independent earlier this month with the headline “Feminist organisation publishes guidelines to reporting domestic violence’ in a dignified way’” which suggests how a journalist could improve their skills on reporting this topic. I think that articles like this really show how far we have come in journalism with pushing female stereotypes to the side.
RACE
I think in terms of actual journalism publications, there are no longer stereotypes- but in the actual content, I think that they exist more clearly. For example, there was an American study back in 2015 that showed more white athletes were featured in stories over black athletes, and there were more negative connotations around those black athletes which resulted in a certain stereotype around that group of people. The study said that most of the stories written about black athletes were criminally focused and commented on subjects relating to this while white athletes were always seen positively. Having said that, I don’t think that this group of people are misrepresented, and I don’t think that there is a stereotype around black athletes. Just from looking at the coverage of sport on BBC Sport’s website, there are countless articles praising the success and victory of black athletes such as Mo Farah, Usain Bolt, and Serena Williams.
OVERALL
From looking at how different stereotypes have changed in the journalism industry, I think that we are at a very good point and there aren’t many stereotypes being enforced or assumed by publications in the industry. I think that society is not only pushing the audience and public opinion to change for the better but is also pushing journalists to be more sensitive and representative in their work and fairly present different subjects and stories in a fair, non-bias and diverse way. Though it may be a bold statement from a young journalist like me just starting out, I would confidently say that I don’t think stereotypes exist in the era we are in. I think there are things that could be mistaken for stereotypes, but in truth, I just think they are assumptions and in most cases a case of having a specific demographic.
