Age and Gender Representations in the Media


The purpose of this assignment is (1) to make you more aware of the age and gender images in the mass media and (2) to encourage you to critically analyze social institutions.  Gender and age identities are socially constructed phenomena, and this exercise is designed to encourage you to observe and analyze the way the American public is routinely encourage (or socialized) to think about the dual effects of age and gender. 

  The research method you will be using is content analysis.  You are to study the way different media promote stereotypes and reinforce identities.  This means that the group will need to compare and contrast different forms of age presentations found it magazine advertisements, comic strips, film, song lyrics, the photographs in new magazines, television programs, and so on.  How does each medium promote "what it means to be young or old" or "what it takes to be a man or a woman"? 

There are numerous types of media.  Develop two-person teams within the broader group, and each team should select one type of media.  Once the medium is selected, compare two social groups--elderly men and women, older women in the 1960s vs. 1980s, older working-class men v. older middle-class men, middle-aged women v. women of college-age, and so forth.  The objective is to go beyond merely reporting in a descriptive way the media presentations you see.  You need to compare the presented image of one group with another or compare one social group across two types of media.  For example, you could examine how adult men and their fathers are presented in magazine advertising and television advertising, or how grandmothers are presented in situation comedies and magazine advertising. 

You are free to select your medium -- television, newspapers, magazines, billboards, songs, fliers in the mail; and, you are free to select parts of a medium -- cartoons in the newspaper, Dear Abbey columns, only situation comedies on television, advertising during day time soap operas, and so on.  Be sensitive to the limits of your "data" and how the data restrict one’s ability to generalize findings. 

Each working group ought to collect a number of observations to support whatever interpretation you offer.  For example review at least 30 "still" or "single" presentations--that is, 30 cartoons, 30 magazine advertisements, 30 TV commercials, 30 songs, 30 newspaper articles on family life, etc.  The number thirty is not magical, rather it is a message that you do need to assess if an observation is consistent across media presentations or unique to a type of presentation.  Second, you need to ask yourself, if what you find is a relilabe.  If you collected only five examples of media presentations and find one image that you want to address, you are not sure if one example is it a reliable finding.  If you find something four times in thirty observations, you can more easily conclude that it is "common". 

While studying the way age-identity is constructed and reproduced through the media, sort through the information you collect and pay attention to stereotypes, to what words and phrases are used, to the way the different characters interact, and to the characters' occupation.  What are the major "messages"?  Do they differ for men and women?  Are messages tacitly stated in the characters’ occupations?  in their body language? 

Avoid the strategy of selecting from the pool of media presentations the most "deviant" cases.  You goal is to discuss the patterns within presentations.  A good strategy is to develop a hypothesis around which you organize your research.  I recommend you consult the professional journals to help you review what other researchers have discovered. You also can follow aging as portrayed in mass media web-links established by Trinity College, or you can begin with the more general links set up by the U.S. Administration on Aging, Gerontological Society of America and National Council on Aging.  Also consider exploring web-based reviews of films. 

If you elect to present you work as a research paper, be sure you link the research you've done with either the work found in professional journal articles or with course readings. 


 

  Selected References 

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