Representation

KEY THEORISTS:

• David Gauntlett (Identity)
• Judith Butler (Gender as performance)

David Gauntlett

• The media provides a variety of role models and lifestyle templates that audiences use to guide their own outlooks
• Audiences are constantly revising their identities
• The media mirrors the fluidity of identity

Fluidity of Identity encompasses the idea that identity is everchanging, (and can even change on a daily basis), especially as we are influenced, as we adapt and experience new things. 

Constructed identity is the idea that the public is passive and don’t think for themselves, they are influenced by powerful opinion leaders (such as the Media, and social influencers who people trust the opinions of). Constructed identity follows along with archaic stereotypical binary. For example, the constructed belief that heterosexuality is the ‘perfect’ sexuality. 

Negotiated identity is the ‘middle ground’, in which we (as people with personal identities and self-expression) can decide how we present ourselves whilst also being influenced by the identities projected by the media, meeting the expectations of societal norms and those around us. 

Collective identity is the theory that groups of people who share a similar interest or personality are often stereotyped together and are categorized and defined by this shared identity. As an example, football fans are grouped together as supporters of their team and given a typecast identity.

“Audiences are active, they control the representations they want to engage with” – Even though audiences are passive in a sense and are manipulated by opinion leaders who project representations which are made out to be ‘right’. Audiences are also active and can decide which of these representations they are influenced by, often the one that relates to themselves the most suitably. 

Judith Butler

• Sex is different to gender —> Sex doesn’t define our gender identity
• She expresses the idea that gender identity is volatile and changeable: we ‘perform’ and display different elements of our gender identity at different times, in differing situations and around different people.
• Butler says that gender is a social construct which categorises everyone into a stereotype.
• Personal gender identity is constructed through a series of ‘micro-rituals’ —> “repetition and ritual”
• She suggests that society projects a ‘binary’, heteronormative gender and that identities other than this are marginalised. The media aids this by lacking representation of subverse identities