With reference to any group you have studied discuss how their ‘identity’ has been mediated.

In our consumer media, obsessed, society much of what has come to past is influenced and produced by media institution. The things audiences know and care about are simulated by the media. They learn to construct their social identities, whether they are black, white, Asian, Arab or even poor or rich. Media, in short, is central to ultimately controlling people’s social realities as their influence helps people to make an overall conclusion about social aspects.

Many people and institutions have criticised the media for their negative depicts of black people in the lime light.  Challenging the media portrayals of black men as ‘Gangsters and hoodlums’ and black females as’ mammies and welfare mothers’ has frustrated most black actors and actresses as they would like to portray and play roles which inspire and help base their careers.  Author bell hooks (1992) contends that black representation “determines how blackness and people are seen and how other groups will respond to us based on their relation to these constructed images” (p. 5). This indicates that she agrees with the fact that people will make their overall judgement on a group of people from what they see in the media. Television, radio and magazines are a key catalyst for the influence and understanding of different social and race groups.

Black feminist have also discussed and challenged the idea of some media outlets run by black men hate the idea of women being successful in playing lead roles in which they are perceived to be good.  Burks (1996) notices and states that black cinema continues to have influences from white, male, heterosexual hegemony, although the black cinema is independent, however the industry is controlled by white hegemony and they also produce the same type films and portray characters of all nationalities in the stereotypical way. This brings about the idea that the change of roles portrayed by actors of different ethnicities could in some way jeopardise the way society views and takes their media products, which would then affect their income and profit from the public. “Black independent cinema is not necessarily free of the dominant white, male, heterosexual hegemony that has succeeded, at one point or another, in colonizing us all” (p. 26). This is the view from Burks as she believes that the black outlets are still influenced by upper class hegemonic people.

However the likes of spike lee have constructed films that portray the black man in a positive light, producing the roles of black men who want to achieve the best and become the best. These types of changes in the film industry that do not depict the stereotypical role of black men influence and change the perceptions of society. In Spike lee ‘s ‘Bamboozled’ he is committed to challenging and creating images which bring issues of racism on screen, however he does fall into the status quo by sexualising black females in his films in order to link with the main stream industry. The images portrayed of woman are not as challenged like they are with the males, the woman at the end of the film seem to be defined by the males. This brings forth the idea that, sexism in the movie industry is something that is not fully concentrated on and challenged.

Many groups of people are discriminated against; however the main catalyst for this discrimination is the media. The way the media portrays certain groups of people is to blame for the hatred against many social groups. Society has become lazy and does not go out and look for answers to current issues which they feel affect them, rather they take their information from the nearest more convenient source which is evidently the media. The division of world media is very apparent, western media is biased towards the Arab. In the debate the world media association stated that the US media in particular have to concentrate on freedom of speech and try to be none biased towards the Arabs. Mark Lynch a professor in political science stated that "After 9/11 a lot of Americans were not responding to the Arabic media, but to what they were being told about the Arabic media’’. This indicates that after terrible attack on America, the US media became biased against the Arabs in general and vice versa. People were no longer making their own judgements about the Arabs and the eastern world; however they were having their judgements made for them through the media and what they saw or read. This connotes that the media has dominant control in the way people construct their opinions and attitudes towards other countries. Many images shown on western televisions have become distorted and redundant, many people now when they see certain images  of groups of people and will not be affected by it or have any emotion towards these pictures. This creates the understanding that the media have portrayed these groups of people in a particular way so much that the images they’re showing have no power.

To conclude the media has sufficient amount of influence over the people, they help them in some way construct their opinions. However the issue with this is that the media can be biased and in some way influence the people by sharing their opinions with the world and not giving the full picture to some stories. The identities of certain groups of people have been distorted by the media and this has been happening for many years. Although in the earlier years the media was very blunt on who and what they agreed with and followed, however now the public have become more aware of the power the media has and they can leave the information they find biased or unbiased towards groups of people.