Western Media Essay

I have chosen the movie Signs to do my worldview analysis on. First, I will discuss the worldviews that the main characters in the movie have. I will then answer the question of if the characters were true to their worldviews. I will also discuss the obstacles that the main characters faced that deterred the character or characters from living out their worldview. Lastly, I will describe mental, emotional, or spiritual reactions I had to the movie as well as explain if I agree or disagree with the worldview present in the movie.

There are many misconceptions that have been universally accepted mentioned in Curtis Keim’s book Mistaking Africa, many of which are based on biased and incorrect accounts and are extremely offensive. Three important myths are that Africa is a land of cannibals, it is backward and very uncivilized, and that it is one country where everyone and the climate are the same all over. These will be explained, refuted, and the detriment to the people of Africa will be discussed.

Africa is an enormous continent, no less than three times the size of the United States. Africa contains numerous countries that all have unique cultures, people and ways of life. Despite the fact that Africa is massive, many people have predisposed ideas of the continent and the people that inhabit it. Mass media generally leads us to believe that Africa is a single culture, and the people are nothing but hopeless savages. Chinua Achebe wrote an essay named “An Image of Africa”, the essay aimed to debunk many of the misconceptions about Africa due to plain ignorance.

Between America and other European nations, stereotypes and misrepresentations have ultimately plagued the continent of Africa. To every side there is often another story, yet unfortunately for the many countries of Africa, they are ultimately victimized and suffer through further oppression. According to Curtis Keim’s book Mistaking Africa, Keim suggests that Africa is essentially under the public microscope, it tends to be scrutinized, and compared to European nations and America. Keim elaborates on human natures need to group people, places, and things, which creates the theory of superiority or dominance over races, cultures, and even religions.

Media Analysis ‘Media’ is the plural of the word ‘medium’, which often refers to different ways of communicating with other people; if the target is a large number of people, then it is called ‘mass media’. There are many types of media, such as TV, radio, films, newspaper, Internet etc. The main purpose of media is to entertain; however they can also be used to persuade, inform, explain and advice. Media can be very powerful; therefore people are influenced and affected by them.

In the midst of slavery’s storm, European slave traders used sales tactics that catastrophically diminished Africa’s reputation and African’s humanity. In the process, they destroyed Africa’s historical truth; and created images that Africans were unrefined savages that mindlessly roamed the grasslands with bones jutting from their noses, in loincloths, and spears in hand…simply as if they were mere human and behaved as untamed animals. Classifying Africans as inferior and uneducated is racist in theory

Nelson Mandela spoke, “I dream of an Africa which is in peace with itself”. Africa did have that peace, that sense of disclosure. Africans lived in a time when they did not have to worry about anyone else's religion, politics, or culture but their own; however, due to the European nation’s thirst for power, Africans now had to face those realities. Their individual countries began to turn against one another because of European influence. Some countries lost their roots and modernized to the European standards. Some countries, even lost hope in regaining the freedom they once had. Europeans wrote Africa’s single story through colonization, which left long lasting cultural, dehumanizing, and emotional effects upon each culture, furthermore changing

When learning about the history of the world, we can not ignore the fact that Africa plays a significant role. Many believe that Africa is the birth place of all races, and although that is true, the history and cultures of Africa and its natives are misunderstood among Americans. People do not take the time to expand their knowledge about Africa, yet they create their own perceptions of the continent based upon the image that America created. America creates this stereotype that Africa is inferior to the other continents by picturing them as savage like individuals who live an insufficient life. To truly understand Africa, you must understand these two important elements: the demographics of Africa and the true history of Africa

There are many myths and stereotypes of how the media portrays Africa to be. The media has stereotyped Africa to be poor, hazardous, hot, underdeveloped nation, violent and spiritual country (p, 37). In the chapter “How We Learn”, Curtis Keim focuses on the specific sources that stereotypes Africa to be over populated country with exotic animals. Also stereotypes the people to be illiterate and not well educated people. People take negativity from different sources of media and base their opinion upon the information given and that is how people learn about Africa.

Most of what's presented in U.S. media is enthrocentric because it presents the americans as more dominant in any culture in the world that's what makes it ethnocentric. Media is used as a tool to share different ideas, information, and opinions. Our opinions are influenced by factors of media. The media has a strong influence on our lives as much as we deny it. Whether its television broadcasts, books, magazines, music; they’re all different branches of media. Media doesn’t only reflect reality, but also creates something new; doesn’t always create something good. The audience takes in what the mass media is feeding them, without responding to the information being fed to them. “Mass media as a speech without a response” (Baudrillard,

Africa is a continent plagued by misinformed and false stereotypes, rarely being seen or portrayed as what it really is. Countless amounts of myths and ideas are formulated based off of single stories or one-sided stories from the region, often without a second thought. These stereotypes give Africa an overall negative image to the rest of the world and suppress the reality that is hidden behind the slew of stereotypes. The belief that all of Africa is poor and undeveloped is an uninformed statement that harms the reality and worsens the image of the continent by perpetuating an incomplete idea into the world.

This chapter in Africans and Their History by Joseph Harris presents some of the roots of the stereotypes and myths about Africa in the past and for the most part are still held today. Harris discusses how the “greats” of history, geography, and literature starting a path of devaluation of Africans that writers after their time followed. Harris also denounced the language that these “greats” used to describe and talk about Africans. He asserts that this language inherently painted Africans as inferior and subhuman.

Mass media is the methods of communication, including television, radio, magazines, films, internet and newspapers, that have become some of society’s most important agents of socialization. In this paper I will talk about media and its effects on society today, things such as stereotypes the media portrays, the way media illustrates women and what that does to body images of women. I will also be talking about medias effects on teenagers, and sexualization in the media.

Have you ever had an original thought? Why do we dress the way we do, watch what we watch or even live the way we do. Through our means of entertainment, it is almost a guide in how one should live their life. With the technology we have in our world we are persuaded to believe what is right and what is wrong. Although we create our own world, our thoughts were imposed upon us since the day we are born. “What if the world is some kind of show. What if we are only talents assembled by the Great Talent Scout Up Above! The Great Show of Life! Starring Everybody! Suppose entertainment is the Purpose of Life,” says Gabler. We wake up in the morning where most of us have a daily routine we go through. Why do we put on

New media has emerged from the print media. But its target audience is different from that of print media. Today, we have young readers getting attracted towards new media. This is because they feel that they really don’t need to waste their time reading when they