Nowadays, the media representation of women and femininity is widely discussed and analyzed by both scholars and the public. However, people often neglect the fact that men and masculinity are also being represented in the media and those representations also bring some problems. While the media representation has a crucial impact on shaping the notion of ideal feminine beauty, men also encounter similar issues, as media portrayals of male characters reinforces some stereotypes of men. Media portrayal of masculinity is usually associated with power, control, aggression and violence, financial independence, and physical desirability. Moreover, as the society develops, there is also a transition from traditional media representation of masculinity to the so-called "modern" concept of maleness represented through media. In my first hyperessay, I will explore more about the media representation of men and masculinity.
The gender representation in media has been intensely discoursed in recent years. However, people usually discuss and analyze the gender representation of women in media, but ignore the media portrait of men and masculinity. For my first hyperessay, I want to explore more about the representation of men and masculinity in media in an attempt to find how that influences people's perspective of masculinity. I will talk about how media defines masculinity and show some common stereotypes of men in media. Also, there are some specialized areas in media that contributes to the representation of men and masculinity. They will be addressed respectively in section "masculinity and advertising", "masculinity and magazines", and "masculinity and films". Moreover, male authority in media news coverage and masculinity in sports media are also two special cases that will be discussed in my hyperessay.
The article “Does That Face-'Book' Come in Braille: Social Networking Sites and Disability” addresses the problem that there is an inaccessibility for people of disability in the popular social networking site, such as Facebook.The author not only traces back to the inception of Facebook, but also the origin of using internet as a place of social activities. He points out that the social networking sites are very useful and helpful for youth with learning impairment. Since people are more willing to share some personal information on the internet rather than in face-to-face conversation. Regarding to this point, I think even though the inaccessibility for people of disability exists as the author describes in the article, there are at least one part of disable people( youth with learning impairment ) who can benefit from the internet in the beginning period of the social networking sites. While the author firstly states the problem that people with disability have little access to social networking sites like Facebook, he also uses the changes made from Facebook to illustrate that this kind of problem is being relieved by many efforts from society. The efforts and changes make me feel that the story presented in this article are more complete than the former three, since the solutions to the problem is shown in the article.
Furthermore, I really have something to say about one point the author proposes. He states that “disability exists in society and is a negative interpretation of impairment that empowers dominant groups and institutions”. Besides the inaccessibility of social networking sites for people with disability, I also want to talk about some negative social attitudes, misperceptions and misinformation of people with disability. People often view those of disabilities as the objects of pity, thus holding a negative interpretation of their impairment. In media, people of disability are usually depicted as having the same attributes and characteristics no matter what the disability may be. Therefore, they are usually stereotyped in many social media. For example, in many movies, the person of disability usually sit on a wheelchair, since they are an iconic sign of disability. The wheelchair allows the character to be obviously disabled, whilst still looking ‘normal’, and does not therefore present any major challenges for audience identification.However, this common representation fails to reflect the full range of disabilities and also forms a stereotype. Therefore, as the author points out the need to offer more access to people of disability, we should also prevent some misinterpretation and misperceptions of people with disabilities. ------- Response to "Connection at Ewiiaapaayp Mountain: Indigenous Internet Infrastructure” by Christian Sandvig In the article “Connection at Ewiiaapaayp Mountain: Indigenous Internet Infrastructure”, Christian Sandvig reveals a fact that the internet infrastructure in the Indian reservations is fundamentally incomplete.Native Americans living in those reservations have little or no access to internet, whereas the internet has already been very popular in other areas of United Stated. Thus, the author points out that this difference in the internet accessibility forms a racial issue in regard to the cyberspace. While the inequality in the access to internet makes me really concerned about the racial issue displayed in native Indian reservations, I also noticed the reason behind this inequality.
First of all, the landform of those native lands are not desirable for building even some basic infrastructure. As a matter of fact, the native Indian Americans living in those reservations not only have problem to Internet access, but also telephones. Furthermore,since those areas are usually surrounded by mountains, even roads and power are more difficult to construct there than in other areas. Given this circumstance, I think the difference of living a life between native Indian Americans and other American citizens, especially white people as the article points out, is not just limited in their access to the Internet, but their access to the outside world. Thus, I think that the racial issue proposed by the author goes far beyond the Internet accessibility in those native Indian reservations. Besides the internet, government of United States should also complete other basic infrastructure facilities, such as telecommunications and electrical power. Furthermore, what interests me most among the facts brought from the author is that some native Indian Americans actually holds resistance to the Internet. While through the Internet tribe people can get access to many useful resources like some educational materials, they are also able to approach to some harmful information which is quite prevalent on Internet. More importantly, the traditional tribal knowledge and culture may be lost through the process of getting access to internet. With the Internet, what the tribal people see and know is no longer just their tribal culture, but tons of miscellaneous content. Attentions and interests of the tribe people may be drawn from their tribal knowledge and culture to some other culture or fashion. For example, through Internet, some children in the native Indian reservations may play many kinds of computer games and watch a lot of Disney’s cartoons. Undoubtedly, the openness to all kinds of culture will broaden people’s horizon in some ways. However, if that is too much, people who used to live in a relatively traditional culture will eventually lose their identities. Then the assimilation takes place. Therefore, in my opinion, even when the basic Internet access infrastructure has been completed, there are still a lot of ethical things need to consider. |