MEDIA: STEREOTYPES of CLASS, AGE & DISABILITY

Class

Marxists argue that the media reflects the class interests of it's capitalists. Mass media representations of social classes rarely focus on the social tensions or class conflict that some critical sociologists see as underpinning society. 

The upper classes are rarely portrayed in a negative light. For example, any media coverage of the Queen's life. It is often nostalgic and romanticised. Middle class are over-represented as most editors are whitle, male and middle class themselves. Finally, lower classes are portrayed as a problem, for example chavs, who are shown to be a part of the rise of poverty ****, which can be defined as "any type of media, be it written, photographed or filmed, which exploits the poor’s condition in order to generate the necessary sympathy for selling newspapers or increasing charitable donations". 

Owen Jones, in his book 'Chavs' claims that the working class people do not have a voice - that it's been taken away from them. They are 'an object of fear and ridicule'. The chav stereotype, he argues, is used by governments as a convenient figleaf to avoid genuine engagement with social and economic problems, and to justify widening inequality.

According to Althusser, the media is an 'Ideological State Apparatus' - it can spread the dominant ideology of capitalism via this intuition and the upper class is able to maintain hegemony(dominance over the working class), by influencing our opinions/beliefs.

Age

The…