This course has helped me understand and analyze media in ways that I was not doing so before. I believe that the content we have learned specifically about racial and gender stereotypes in the news and other media have shown me that there is still a lot of work to be done by journalists and media scholars. The amount of hidden messages and framing that is happening right in front of us is alarming. We are made to believe by some media channels that we are progressing as a society in contexts of diversity, equity and inclusivity. But, in my opinion, these negative frames are still happening but are likely being targeted either through algorithms or other newer technologies to be shown to the specific audience that the media is intending to speak to.
Take the case of Facebook or any of the popular social media platforms, at times, it may feel like they are actively listening to some of our conversations. In reality, they are simply connecting the dots from the websites we visit, what we spend more time watching on their platform, and other tracking tools such as cookies. They compile these data points and then show you what you didn’t know you wanted to see but were subconsciously gravitating towards.
In some cases, the content shown to us is exactly what we like to see, at times it fails, but we make it smarter when we tell it that we do not want to see that post or image.
All of this to say, that I believe a lot of these stereotypes are not necessarily being reduced, rather they are even more directed to their intended audience to the point of an almost one on one connection that others are not seeing. Creating the illusion that these displays of racial and gender stereotypes are being reduced from the general public view.
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