Assignment 5: How the media construct identities of individuals / groups

1. Document of Loseke - refer throughout to concepts and categories that she
introduces:
As human beings, we are essential story telling animals, and story telling is a way through which we ( as people) make sense of our lives and those of others. Narratives create identities at all levels in social human life. Donileen Losseke discussion in this article, reflects or shows how identities can be constructed at a cultural, institutional, organizational and personal level in narratives. Cultural narrative identity: is a social classification of the imagined characteristics of the disembodied types of people in the complex world. The world is riddled with stories constructed by cultural identity. The media plays a significant role in the construction of these identities, because information regarding ethnic groups can be documented by the media. For example : In the Bollywoood films today, only actresses and actors from Indian participate in these films. These movies portrayed, events, in which the Indian culture, customs, clothing, food, festivals and languages are broadcast to the world. The focus point of these events are to illustrate or to show the "Indian cultural identity" to the world. These films transit culture and tradition that plays an important role in maintaining "Indianness",especially among the second generation of the Indian -Americains, who live in America. Institutional narrative identity: Loseke refers to this identity as constructed imagined characteristics of narratives, which is based on targets of policy and law of an institution. This identity shapes social world of it's inhabitants life chances,and the work done in this identity, is visible in it's policy. Institutional narrative identity are similiar to those at cultural level, because it will have "cultural resonance". South Africans policy of immigration Act , often refer to black and poor African immigrants as refugees or asylum seekers but not to white immigrants that come and stay in the country. Here we can seen how, the policy constructing black / poor African immigrants as undeserving and immoral individuals, in need. White immigrants are often portrayed as more deserving and moral, because they have not be given the identity of refugees or asylum seekers. Organizational narrative identity: are created by the organisers and workers in ongoing organisations, programs and groups, designed for people, who evaluate themselves or has been evaluated by others, as having troubled identities in the need of repair. Such places include schools, counselling centers and prisons, rape centers etc.Regardless of the origin of the organisational narratives of identity, ongoing services must have images of their " typical" client, because these images justify the organisational produres and services, by offering stock answers to important questions. Who is the client, what is his/her problems and what does the client need. Organisation narrative identity also shape social services. They serves as a day- a - day resource for workers, by offering a tool kit of symbols, stories , rituals and world views, in which varying configurations are given, to solve different kind of problems. For example, organisation such as the drug rehabilitation center provides help and learning the drug patients or addicts skills to cope with their drug problems. Personal narrative identity: Characteristics of industrial anfd post - industrial societies makes it difficult for individuals to construct a sense of self -identity. Constructing an identity in today's media saturated world is not easy, at all. There are many questions about a personal narratives,and the observers of a social movement. for example, It is important the the media, examine the conditions under which the social actors have told their stories, locating the self to the broader community or audience. Society in particular adds a lot of pressure on individuals, when constructing an identity, because there are certain expectations , that people need to live up to and as what is expectable of maintaining an identity. For example, the internet is a interesting meduim, that people use to construct an identity. They don't just make use of imagey derived from the internet but the internet provides a backdrop for representation of the self, on a home page or on a blogging site, if they created their own. But again, writer, or bloggers with their own blogging - sites, needs to be carefull, what they published on these sites, when they write about their personal life stories. Because at the end of the day, you don't want to harm your self image, or put your job on the line or at risk, discussing for example, an incidence, where you have been raped on the web - site to the world.


2. Article of the New York Times:Identity construction of Mr. Berlusconi & Boffo.

Mr. Berlusconi' s identity was portrayed by the media ( newspaper) as the Prime Minister of Italy, whose sex life stories were published in the Roman Catholic newspaper. These stories in the newspapers indicated, that Mr. Besculoni was romantically involved with other women. Mr. Dino Moffo was portrayed as the editor of Catholic newspaper, Avvenaire and as a priest of the Catholic church. His identity was constructed as a homosexual person, who was involved in a sexual harrassment case, with a woman of another man. The information published by both individuals Mr. Boffo and Berlusconi can not be considered as the truth. The fact that the media constructed their identities as that, does not necessarily mean, that they have these identities in real life. For example, Mr. Feltri, editor of the II Goirnale newspaper,published allegations acussing Mr. Moffo as a homosexual, who have been a culprit in a sexual harassment case. As readers of the newspaper, we cannot assume that the information published was correct, the fact that the information was published in the newspaper, does not mean that the stories are true. You see these allegations were published before the judge found Mr. Moffo guilty of anything. Eventually, Mr. Boffo was found guilty of harassment and not sexual harassment as pusblished by the newspaper. I think this type of journalism is very dangerous and this make the media ( in case of newspaper) a unreliable source to obtain information , about events that happened in the world and it's people, who live in it. In such incidence, the media ( in this case newspaper) can be sued up to millions of rand for publishing wrong information to audiences. I think that reports or information, that are collected by the media, whether it is a magazine or newspaper, etc. needs to carefully monitored and evaluated, by the editors, before information is published to the world. Just to make sure that correct information reached audiences, in the outside world and not information that are of speculative. I think publishing wrong information to the audience out there, makes journalism a debated occupation. It is important that the media publish facts and not myths about people and events that have occcured.