Media Impact and Minority Representation Issues

Media has a huge impact in today’s society. From television shows, to movies, to the constant exposure to advertisements for things we know we don’t need but always end up wanting. In the society that we live in, it’s generally easy to relate to what we see in the media. There are people that look like us and that have the same problems as us, and so we are able to see these people and say: “Wow! That is so relatable and cool!”. But as cultures grow and become more diverse, there are more and more people who are unable to relate to these characters. The current lack of minority representation in media is a real issue for people in real life, for example women, and people of colour, and it can have many real life consequences.
There have been plenty of studies done over the years on how media affects the people exposed to it, for example one published in 2012 by two

Often times there will be harmful stereotypes perpetuated through the characters that we are shown, and although it is improving over time it is still rare to see people of various ethnicities shown as main protagonists in large scale movies even when they take place somewhere it would make the most sense. A study done from 2007 to 2014 showed that out of 700 popular mainstream movies, 73.1% of the characters were white, and that “[o]nly 17 of the 100 top films of 2014 featured a lead or co lead actor from an underrepresented racial and/or ethnic group.” In the same way that women are often depicted as sensitive and emotional, you will frequently see people of different races put into roles that play into common stereotypes surrounding them. Having these images shown not only to the people not represented, but also to young people looking for themselves in shows and movies and all things of the sort, can negatively influence the way that people see and act towards themselves and