Mass Media

Mass Media

Topic Number One
Bianca Gallardo
SOC202

Abstract
In choosing and displaying what comes through our televisions, magazines, video games, and films, broadcasters play an important role in shaping the norms, behavior and expectations of everyone watching. Viewers and readers learn not only how to behave and their expectations, but also how to expect to be treated and how to treat the opposite sex. In reflecting what each gender says during the show, the mass media may well determine the important characteristics each gender should contain.

The study of mass communications is a broad, multidisciplinary field to which sociology has made major contributions (Holz, 1979, p.17). Televisions are turned on daily in most households. Televisions are left on for countless hours day after day. They are left on while people study, cook, clean, and in many cases for no reason at all. The television set was invented for entertainment purposes but serves much more: gender messages. Gender messages have been present in the television shows for as long back as I can remember and even before then.   One show after another would come on the television set and demonstrate how each gender should behave. It has become increasingly clear that a psychological model of the human communication process, deliberately engaged in the transmission of a message that he or she hopes will be received, understood and acted upon by another person (Sussman, 1979, p. 211).
The media will emphasize the representation of stereo-typical gender roles.   Women and girls involved in everything from comic books, advertising, newspaper and magazines, popular music, video games and films are more likely to be shown in the home, performing domestic chores such as cooking, cleaning and laundry, as objects of sex who exist to service men, as victims who are incapable of protecting themselves and are natural recipients of beatings, sexual assault and murder.
Young girls watch cartoon shows and are...