Media Stereotypes

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Media Paper In today’s society, when we turn on the television or read the front page of the news, there is a 61% percent chance that the first story we see is about crime (Gerbner). In one new episode 28% of the stories were about different crime. Ever since 1995, people have been more aware of how much the media focuses on violence. This creates and uneasy feeling in the public. It is not only the media; an increasing amount of children’s shows, video games, and movies are being revolved around violence. The over-representation of crime in the media has negative effects on the public because it installs an overwhelming sense of fear, has an unwanted short term reaction by it readers, and incorrectly stereotypes different races. In…show more content…
News channels report incidents that make up only a very small percentage of the overall statistics. Gerbner states, “More than five hundred stories about workplace violence appeared in the newspaper along during 1994 and 1995… Of about 121 million working people about 1,000 are murdered on the job each year, a rate of just one in 114,000,” (Gerbner 27). In addition, most of these deaths are “committed outsiders who come to rob” (Gerbner 27). This shows how when one incident occurs the media jumps on it and everyone starts to think that workplace murders happen all the time; however, they are actually very rare. The stories get blown up and everyone makes a huge deal about it. Another story discussed the false statistics about deaths of children during Halloween, “in recent years, several children have died and hundreds have narrowly escaped injury from razor blades, sewing needles,…show more content…
Sparks, the author of the article “Media Effects Research” has addressed multiple concepts dealing with the public reaction to the media. Media is controlled by current events, whether that is a car crash that happened earlier in the day or a war in another country, the news channels always has a common theme. Sparks mentions the agenda-setting theory, which states, “The press may not be successful in telling its readers what to think, but it is stunningly successful in telling readers what to think about,” (Sparks 212). However, when something big happens in the news, it is all anyone can talk about. Unless they are really interested in the topic, they watch the news and a majority of the time, their views are the views of the newscaster. Which means technically, the news tells people what to think about because everyone is relaying the information they learned. This is bad because people do not make up their own opinions. Sparks also claims that when a suicide story is released, it is obviously sad, but it is the reaction of the public which is interesting. Following a suicide story is in the news, there is a higher rate of suicides, this is called the imitative-suicide effect or the Werther effect (Sparks 227). It is the same for other topics too for example car crashed or plane crashes. Sparks would also agree that the media has negative effects on the

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