What Are The Challenges And Opportunities In The Media

Challenges and Opportunities in Our Media Environment

Mass media infiltrates every aspect of our lives, whether we want it to or not. This is the age of information, technology and entertainment. The media communicates its messages through multiple sources, some direct and some subliminal. While the benefits of 21st century mass media far outweigh the disadvantages, there are real challenges with the messages the media sends to the public and the public needs to be aware of the potential consequences. This paper will focus on the problems of gender stereotyping in the media, the negative impact of media conglomerates, like Disney perpetuating gender stereotypes and the emergence of innovative ideas to transform gender and cultural related

The media uses language, visuals, codes and conventions, to tell us stories about who we are and how we are suppose to behave.” (Campbell p.221) Does the media reflect life or does life reflect the media’s version of life?

Gender stereotypes in the media continue to impact child development into the high school years and beyond. TV shows and movies, such as Glee, Mean Girls, Freak and Geeks, etc. “reduce the stories to stereotypes so that the audiences can label them.” (Campbell p.228) These TV shows and movies portray dumb jocks, dumb blonde cheerleaders, nerds and others typecasts. Although the intend is to be entertaining, it tends to “reassert dominant ideologies and hegemonic power.” (Campbell

The media needs to be cautious to not typecast genders and restrict options for each gender. There must be a variety of different female heroines to model and different heroes for boys to aspire to become portrayed in movies and TV shows. Mass media has the power to influence attitudes and shape opinions and must do so responsibly.

So how are people changing gender stereotypes? Debbie Sterling, the founder of GoldieBlox and engineer graduate from Stanford University, has designed a toy that allows girls to become more interested in engineering. Sterling is trying to encourage young girls to become interested in engineers, a field dominated by men. “89% of engineers are male, so we literally live in a man’s world, yet 50% of the population are women” says Sterling. ( )When she was at Standford, she was always bothered by how few women there were in the program. In 2012, she released a prototype for GoldieBlox. Two years later, it won toy of the year and educational toy of the year. Creating this toy has allowed young girls to grow up and not be brainwashed by Disney movies. Sterling explains, “These toys develop spatial skills and gets kids interested in engineering and science.” ( )Sterling believes young girls do like pink and dressing up and reading, so she incorporated these into her design. But Sterling