"Media simply represents collective identity, they don't create it"

How much do you agree with this statement?

A collective identity refers to the shared definition of a group that derives from its members, common interests and experiences. Gender is defined as the sociological differences between being male and female, societal attitudes would describe a male as strong character, often dominating females who will be seen as weaker. The mediation of gender has influenced the way audiences view different genders and can be seen to have shaped societies opinions of how each gender should be treated. The hyperdermic needle theory (1930s) would assume that what is being fed to the audience will be taken as fact, therefore if stereotypes of a collective identity is used as fact, this can lead to the misrepresentation of a group of people. As David Buckingham (2008) once said "Media do not just offer us a transparent 'window of the world' but a mediated version of the world. They don't just present reality, they re-present it."

Only 22% of media is occupied by women, therefore we are being fed news from a males point of view. If media is run by white middle class men, it is their values and opinions that will be put across,  this patriarchy will mean that only one side of a story is being across to audiences. Across all BBC channels there are only 12 female reporters compared to 16 males, within this statistic the stories that females reported on were not breaking news or main stories. What this means for audiences, if the people they see on TV are dominantly males, is that we will begin to sink back into old fashioned societal issues in which females are the lesser sex.

It is not just within the news that this divide between men and women is seen. Magazines and newspapers often represent different genders in different ways. If we take a look at the popular magazine Men and Women's health as an example, the front cover of Men's Health will show the man looking strong and often with a women wrapped around him like an accessory. The Women's Health front page however will show the women in a more sexual and objectifying way. Its not just the images which cause controversy, the subheadings surrounding the men are all about getting fit and healthy whereas for the women will be about getting that 'summer body' and about looking hot and sexy. Laura Mulvey suggested that the reasoning behind this was what she called the male gaze. This is the theory that suggested that women are simply made as objects for men to look at.

It is not just women that find themselves being misrepresented, however. Earp and Katz, 1999, suggested that men within media are defined as being violent, dominant and aggressive. For example, in films such as James Bond, Bond is the hero, the powerful, masculine man who defends the enemies and always gets the girl. In recent years we have seen an attempt to recover this in films such as Pirates of the Caribbean in which captain Jack Sparrow has more of a fluid gender. According to Judith Butler (1990) the 'queer theory' challenges the traditionally held assumptions that there is a binary divide between gay and heterosexual, and suggests that sexual identity is more fluid.

Gender fluidity can, however, go too far the wrong way. By this I mean that men who behave in a more feminine way can be treated like stereotypical women in that they are sexualised and objectified. For example in Angus, Thongs and perfect snogging, the gay character is used as someone for the characters to gawp at, he is seen with his top off in most scenes, even though he was only a minor characer. Steve Neale (1992) called this idea the gay gaze, we see men in passive, submissive, sexualised poses,lying down, looking up at the camera so that the viewer is dominant.

So why is there such a difference in the representation of men and women? Vern and Bonnie Bullough (1993) suggested that gender roles are acquired with masculinity and femininity, males as the provider and females as the nurturer. These two concepts can help us understand how gender is a social construction directly linked to heterosexuality roles. Anthony Giddens structuration theory stated that human agency and social structure are in a relationship with each other, and it is the repetition of the acts of individual agents which reproduces the structure. For example, in the newest fairy liquid advert (2016) even though its the man who is the main character, the wife can be seen in the background, without a face, doing all the washing up. Unless media are to show males doing female stereotypical roles and vice versa, the structuration of genders will always remain the same. Gauntlett suggested that the public have their own diverse set of feelings. The media and media consumers are engaged in a diologue in which neither overpowers the other.