advertisements were found amongst only three magazines showing that there is a
significant amount of derogatory messages in advertising. Advertising is a
large part of the media and often considered the mist powerful because of the
messages it conveys. There was one area of improvement which I found in
?Function Ranking? however the message is only so strong because it is so
controversial which takes away from the whole point of presenting women in a
different light.Comments From Questionnaire Question 10 in my questionnaire asked if their were any
further comments about the portrayal of women in the media these were the
results of that question. I found that many thought that the pressure on men is
not as much as that on women but that it definitely exists however it is not
based on such a physical sense and is not portrayed highly through the media.
There pressure on men lies more on their personality, it is important to be
funny, to have a good car, to be good at sport etc. Another strong comment that
came out was that too much attention is paid to celebrities bodies and not
enough to their personalities and this is what causes negative social effects.
They are successful and they have good bodies that is all we see of them,
therefore in order for us to be successful we must have nice bodies.There was a definite vibe through the comments that the
media?s portrayal of women needs to change, they need to start representing
?real women?. Women?s true achievements are not focused on enough either.
Apparently women?s sport is not highly covered and when it is it concentrates
on people such as Anna Kornakova, who is glamorous but a far less talented
tennis player than say Venus Williams. Some believe that almost as if the pressure begins to ease
off women it is focusing on men. These comments are very valid because they give me a deeper
understanding of the way people actually feel, reinforcing that the problems
with images of women is not just another media hype, which in itself would be
very controversial. EvaluationI will evaluate my research chapter by chapter. My rationale
states my hypothesis, ?The portrayal of women in the media causes negative
social effects in young women?. Starting with analysing my hypothesis, in
retrospect I believe that my hypothesis is too wide. The media is such a vast
area, and such a powerful tool that its effects are widespread. I should have
narrowed my hypothesis to a specific negative social effect, i.e. eating
disorders, suicide, sexism etc. Also I could have looked at a specific media
for example the television. As I feel my research was too generalised. However
I think that I made a good decision in concentrating on young women but I do
feel that at points my research strayed off this subject. Although in my
rationale I did establish that I planned to do this I think my rationale should
have been worded more specifically.It was however a good choice to look at the media because it
is a growing tool, with the internet fast approaching and all its dangers to
society. I could have looked further into the internet because concerns about
it are growing rapidly. Questions which I asked in my rationale, were; ?Does the
media help to cause eating disorders? and ?Is there something inside the young
women that triggers the effects and is stronger in some girls hence the effects
is more serious?? I think that I answered these questions well using Fallon and
Rozin?s, survey about body shape and image. This looked at the actual
perceptions young women have about themselves. My aims were to prove or disprove my hypothesis, I believe
that I strongly proved my hypothesis but also presented a balanced view by
using different research studies. I did find that the research in to disprove
my hypothesis was very limited because if people don?t believe that the media
has an affect then they are unlikely to conduct research on it.I have compared my findings with sociological research, this
is best shown when using Fallon and Rozins study to conduct my own primary
research.I produced reliable data as it was easily quantifiable and
could be put into graps and analysed effectively. My questionnaire produced
some excellent data but the questions were not as objective as they possibly
could have, possible because my aim was to prove my hypothesis. In question two
of my questionnaire the internet should be mentioned as well as newspapers and
friends because of its rapid growth as a media source. Question seven should
have been asked after question eight because if they had said yes to the first
then they are compelled to say yes to the second as the effect is worse.
Retrospectively question nine was badly worded because it assumes that they
believe there is a problem in the pressures of the media and there is no option
for them to say they believe there is no problem. Although this was a small
minority of people, I did not give the option, again because my aim was to
prove my hypothesis. Question nine also does not give the option for people to
say that the medias effect does not apply to women at all and only effects men.
Conclusively the questionnaire assumes too much. The comments gained from
question ten support my hypothesis, however those who did not have anything to
say may not say anything because they don?t see it as an issue, therefore I
would only get comments which support my hypothesis. I should have looked at
men?s views more and perhaps opened up the questionnaire to men. If I had the
chance to further my research study I would include this.My body image survey produced some valid and reliable data,
Distortions in body image survey however there are of course some improvements
in retrospect that I could have made. I could have compared height/weight
against average and healthy to see if they were actually overweight even though
they were saying that they were. I could have used a selection of 5 body shapes rather than 3
because although people didn?t always think that they had the figure of option
2 they weren?t prepared to say so chose option three whereas they may have gone
for something in between. It is important to recognise that people weren?t
always honest with me because there is an image that it is wrong to think that
you are the perfect size, in order not to sound egotistical.Using Goffmans study I analysed some advertisements of my
own to test his theory. I found that he was right. I also found that although
we can look at the negative social effects of these advertisements it cannot be
assumed that everyone deconstructs them in this way, perhaps this is why they
are so dangerous, but it is important to remember that the purpose is to sell
products and this is overwhelmingly achieved. I can see that my own values, pre-conceptions and ideas
played a part in my research but I think that to passionately want to discover
the results you need to have values to a certain extent. If I had no
pre-conceptions then choosing questions to ask in a questionnaire would be very
difficult and would make the results hard to analyse. I have a friend who
became very ill and suffered with anorexia, after being with her throughout
this, I am convinced that the media had a big part to play in her illness, this
has given me values of my own and therefore made me less objective to people
who thought that people who suffered from illnesses were simply unstable than I
perhaps should have been.Time was a great limitation when conducting my research. My
subjects were easily available girls at school, my school has a good reputation
for results meaning that they are all generally intelligent enough to be able
to deconstruct the media and understand its effects, so my research was not
particularly widespread across young women.Overall my evidence supports my hypothesis, I have found out
that people have distorted images of themselves and concluded that part of this
is because of the media. I have also discovered that young women are generally
critical of the way others look and that this plays a big part in perceptions
and self esteem. Through my findings I believe that there should be tougher
regulations within the media. The problem is money, ?mind game? adverts and
images of beautiful women sell products, the government gain money from these
products so social policy would be very hard to implement in the media. The
Internet will soon pose a real problem because it is so hard to monitor that
even if a social policy were implanted, advertisers would still get their
message across and girls would still be left feeling inadequate.I have learnt a lot about the research process as a whole. I
have learnt that objectivity is fairly impossible and that in research some
subjectivity is necessary. I have leant the process of triangulation is
important because it is difficult to conduct research which is either valid or
reliable, and quantitative methods are equally as important as qualitative
methods. I have also learnt that with the best of intentions, changes do need
to be made from the original rationale and that these changes are significant
and it does not make your research invalid, if anything it opens up your
knowledge and understanding. Theories from other sociologists give you a good
grounding to research and play an important part in giving you ideas and
methods.
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