Klein Hugh, Shiffman Kenneth S
Kensington Research Institute, Silver Spring, Maryland, USA and Morgan State University, Baltimore, Maryland, USA.
Cable News Network, Atlanta, Georgia, USA.
Howard J Commun. 2009;20(1):55-72. doi: 10.1080/10646170802665208. Epub 2009 Jan 30.
For many years, the mass media have been accused of providing negative and potentially-damaging messages to viewers. Some have complained that the media are replete with too much violence while others have lamented on media stereotyping of various groups. In this article, the authors examine the issues of underrepresentation and symbolic annihilation as they apply to one particular medium-namely, animated cartoons-to which people are exposed early in life, typically on a regular basis for many years. Our principal research questions are (a) To what extent do cartoons underrepresent and/or symbolically annihilate social groups that are not considered desirable in society-at-large? (b) Has underrepresentation and/or symbolic annihilation changed over time? and (c) When social "out groups" are shown, how are they depicted vis-a-vis "in groups"? To examine these questions, the authors examine portrayals based on gender, age, race, and sexual orientation. The data revealed that animated cartoons have a long history of underrepresenting and symbolically annihilating socially devalued "out groups" and that little has changed over the course of the past 65+ years. When "out group" members are included in cartoons, however, their portrayals tend not to be dramatically different-not better and not much worse-than those typical of their "in group" counterparts.
多年来，大众媒体一直被指责向观众传递负面且可能具有破坏性的信息。一些人抱怨媒体充斥着过多暴力内容，而另一些人则对媒体对不同群体的刻板印象表示哀叹。在本文中，作者探讨了代表性不足和象征性消灭的问题，这些问题适用于一种特定的媒介——即动画片，人们在早年就接触到动画片，通常多年来定期观看。我们的主要研究问题是：（a）动画片在多大程度上没有充分呈现和/或象征性地消灭社会中不被普遍认可的社会群体？（b）代表性不足和/或象征性消灭是否随时间发生了变化？以及（c）当展示社会“外群体”时，相对于“内群体”，它们是如何被描绘的？为了研究这些问题，作者考察了基于性别、年龄、种族和性取向的描绘。数据显示，动画片长期以来一直存在对社会价值较低的“外群体”代表性不足和象征性消灭的情况，并且在过去65多年里几乎没有变化。然而，当“外群体”成员出现在动画片中时，他们的描绘往往与“内群体”成员的典型描绘没有太大差异——既没有更好，也没有更差。
