The Sublime Ways Of Media In Shaping Common Minds

Dailycsr.com – 10 July 2015 – In the turn of the 21^st century, while given the present pace of technological growth, whereby the media celebrities are becoming popular even in remote corners of the world, it hardly comes as a surprise that media does shape and affect the human mindset and their lifestyles.
 
In order to uncover the quantitative figures as to how much and to what extend media affect women’s behaviour, the Women’s Foundation, reports Media OutReach, conducted a survey in Hong Kong, China. The Women’s Foundation is among the leading N.G.Os who works towards “advancement of women”.
 
The survey conducted at Hong Kong was a “representative” one, whereby the N.G.O strove to figure out what kind of effect does the “portrayal of women” in the medias have on the normal girls’ self-esteem and behaviour. However, the said study declared that the women portrayal of media leaves a negative impact on the life of common women.
 
According to the findings of the study, in Hong Kong, 57% of women think that media’s influence spreads a negative portrayal of women, whereby people judge the rest by the standard set on media thus the “media exposure” shape:

 
The responsibility of conducting the survey poll in Hong Kong was on YouGov firm, whereby it study incorporated over five hundred women of Hong Kong between the age group of eighteen to thirty, as a “representative sample”. Yougov is a data research firm which was recently placed among the top twenty five in the world by the “American Marketing Association”. The said survey revealed that 87% percent of women were conscious about their almost all the time; various social gathering or school activities were skipped by 58% of women because they thought they were not good looking; while the another 11% “skipped” their classes and avoided from attending school “because of their appearance”.
 
In Business Development & Client Operations’ assistant manager of YouGov, Michael Fu’s words:

 
Moreover, according to the C.E.O of the Women’s Foundation Su-Mei Thompson, this genre of in-depth research have done been done before which can help one to analyse how spell can the media exposure cast on the societal attitude and the behaviour of common women and girls. It is has been a “troubling” issue especially for the Women Foundation which strives to shatter the prevalent wall of “gender stereotypes”, which in fact can cause “potentially harmful consequences”.
 
It should be taken into note that there is an exponential increase in the ratio of eating disorders among women which has “significant ramifications for our health system”. However, the surprise ends soon, when one glances through the pages of “entertainment magazines” publishing slimming advertisements targeting women, whereby building an unseen pressure on them “to live up to often unrealistic ideals”. Moreover, the “sexualisation” of women by the media, exposes young boys of even eleven to “sexually explicit materials”. Consequently, these days, there is a growing number of young “sex offenders”.
 
In an attempt to “advocate a greater sensitivity and responsibility on the part of content producers”, the Women Foundation is busy in making a documentary film, titled “She Objects”, highlighting the scale on which media influences women. Furthermore, the foundation also plans to promote “media literacy” through this documentary by conducting training sessions in secondary schools from next year onwards.




References:
http://theindependent.sg/blog/2015/06/24/the-womens-foundation-yougov-polls-hk-women-on-the-media-portrayal-of-women/