Online Media | Revision Activity - DesiMag and Pointless Blog

Stuart Hall suggests that the media, and the power of media representations, plays an important role in defining the ideological thinking of audiences regarding specific social groups.

Hall’s work focuses on the use of stereotypes by the media - arguing that stereotypes work by reducing characters to simplistic physical characteristics and behaviour traits. Hall argues that stereotypes reflect the amount of power that social groups have within society, and that negative stereotypes reflect, in Hall’s view, social inequalities or the wider views of society. In other words, the construction of specific groups as ‘outsiders’ or ‘others’ mirror their exclusion from wider society.

Historical representations of Asians, for example, within the media offer a great deal of evidence to corroborate Hall’s thinking. Historically speaking, the immigrant status of the Asian community in the UK meant that they were economically powerless. The relative powerlessness of the Asian community arguably contributed to the widespread construction of negative Asian stereotypes of the 1970s and 1980s that emphasised predominantly comedic traits. One might also argue that Hall’s concept of the ‘other’ can be found in mainstream contemporary stereotypes that represent Asians as terrorists or as religious others. It is important to also note, the lack of heroic Asian characters across all western media forms.

DesiMag, published by Syed PR and Publishing for a specialised Asian audience, resists some of the stereotypes offered by mainstream culture. Its editorial mix offers a hybridisation of Bollywood celebrity culture mixed with celebratory reportage of UK based Asian culture. In contrast to most mainstream media, the webzine offers ideal versions of Asian identity - recognising iconic Asian models and in, so doing, actively deconstructing Western-centric beauty myths. The online magazine also foregrounds the work of political figures like Sadiq Khan and Keith Vaz whilst also providing coverage of Asian cultural highlights. The overall effect is to construct Asian representations that highlight the economic and cultural power of the Asian community.

Extension task:

Find an example from DesiMag to support each of the following points:

DesiMag constructs ideal versions of Asian identity.

DesiMag represents Asian political figures and cultural issues in a positive manner.

The representations in DesiMag communicate messages about the economic and cultural power of the Asian community.

PointlessBlog is a little more complex in terms of the challenges Alfie Deyes' uploads make to gender based stereotypes. The narrative concerns of his work often reinforce traditional male gender based expectations, reinforced further by the defined role he plays in the Zalfie partnership. Where Zoella is confined to domestic and beauty based activities, Alfie is often portrayed as the technology obsessed geek. Zoella is simply referred to as the ‘girlfriend’ in his widely popular series Girlfriend vs Sister, whilst his collaborative work with Joe Thatcher often descends into laddish humour. However, PointlessBlog does more than offer us a simplistic two dimensional portrayal of gender. In the upload ‘Cooking with Alfie’ we are given a counter typical feminised view of Alfie - here his t-shirt message ‘romantic’ coupled with his cooking skills suggests a softer, domestic orientated, alternative to his laddish persona.

Extension Task:

Find examples from PointlessBlog to support the following points:

Alfie’s representation reinforces masculine stereotypes, such as the ‘technology obsessed geek’ and the ‘lad’.

Alfie also subverts some gender stereotypes through a more ‘feminised’ representation (romantic, domesticated etc.).

DesiMag can be seen to be forging some powerful alternatives to established stereotypes, whilst PointlessBlog offers, to some extent, a less subversive representation of masculinity.

David Gauntlett argues, in contrast to Hall, that the effect of contemporary media representation can't be explained by the singular effect of one set of stereotypes and that contemporary audiences play an active role in choosing and decoding those representations.

The contemporary media landscape, for Gauntlett, offers audiences a diversity of identities that they can consume. The process of digitisation and the sheer volume of media channels, Gauntlett argues, gives us the means to resist the fixed identities that society constructed for us in the past.

DesiMag and PointlessBlog exemplify the plurality of identities available for audiences to consume across online media products. PointlessBlog constructs gender representations, including Zoella’s preoccupation with feminine beauty and her heterosexual relationship with Alfie Deyes, that contrast with the variety of ideal and real Asian identities celebrated in DesiMag. Gauntlett argues that the proliferation of media afforded by new technologies allows for the creation of a diverse range of representations within the media. The ease with which contemporary media can be made and distributed allows, in Gauntlett’s view, for a much wider range of representations to be present across the media landscape. This ‘something for everyone’ approach empowers audiences to take control of the construction of their own identities.

Gauntlett suggests, furthermore, that traditional identities relating to ethnicity and gender have been eroded by contemporary media products which offer ideological complexity as a result of this burgeoning media plurality. Certainly, there is lots of evidence to suggest the erosion of simplistic traditional stereotyping within PointlessBlog. Indeed Alfie offers his audience a contradictory view of masculinity: a representation that is both feminised and resoundingly laddish in its concerns, whilst DesiMag’s editorial mix ensures that audiences have a wide range of cultural, political and fashion oriented celebrities to calibrate their own identity construction by.

Gauntlett’s ideas clearly delineate the potential effects that online texts can have on identity construction, if we are to believe that audiences are playing an active role in the texts they are choosing to consume. Certainly, the range of material available to contemporary audiences allows for a much wider range of representations to take place in terms of ethnicity and gender.

Paul Gilroy offers an interesting contrast to the largely optimistic application of Hall and Gauntlett’s ideas - a contrast that contextualises the process of representation within the wider race based narratives constructed by a white centric media industry.

Gilroy suggests that media products often work by setting up racial binaries - by making a deliberate demarcation that contrasts the world of white European culture (associated with ‘civilized’ society) with that of the exotic or savage world of the non-white. Gilroy roots this construction within the West’s colonial past, but maintains that the discourses of that era persist within contemporary culture. Western culture, he argues, maintains an imagined ideological superiority by subtly positioning itself as morally dominant.

PointlessBlog’s marginalisation of non-white participants supports a segregated view of UK society - a view that associates expressions of mainstream culture as belonging to white only groups. The almost total absence of non-whites from the blog potentially constructs an imagined version of UK society in which whites and non-whites live and work in mutually exclusive communities, however contemporary Britain is in reality much more integrated and inclusive.

Gilroy also draws attention to the ways that media products construct non-white culture as exotic, and, in so doing, reinforce the otherness of those cultures. DesiMag certainly plays up to that view of the East. Who is this Goddess? asks one article from the site - photographing actress Mahira Khan in an exotic beach shoot replete with traditional Indian costume. Gilroy argues that such depictions are far removed from the everyday humdrum experiences of real ethnic minority groups in the UK, and reinforce cultural myths that depict the East as a place of mystery and intrigue.

Extension task:

Can you identify any other examples of similar – or different – representations of ethnicity in DesiMag?

It can be argued that both DesiMag and PointlessBlog unwittingly reinforce cultural binaries - the latter product through its total exclusion of non-white participants, the former through its accidental reinforcement of the East as a source of exoticism.