Those in marginalized groups are often misrepresented by the media. One of the reasons as to why this issue arises is because they do not have the opportunity to speak out their side of the story. An example of a marginalized group is women. In this case, it will be from Yasmin Jiwani and Mary Lynn Young’s article “Missing and Murdered Women: Reproducing Marginality in News Discourse” and Maggie De Vries’ Missing Sarah. Considering that we live in a more patriarchal society, women are often disregarded and are sometimes forced to conform to what men believe is right.

Jiwani and Young’s scholarly article discusses how media represents missing and murdered women in society, in Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside to be specific. Jiwani and Young then further explores the different groups that exist. Within the marginalized group of women, there are different groups that divide them. For instance, there is a divide between white women and the Aboriginal women. Within the white women, there is also a divide that separates the lower and upper class, showing the existing hierarchy that exists. The media only tells the stories of those “positioning in ‘respectable’ societal roles — as mothers, daughters, and sisters.” (pg 903), they do not bother digging too deep into the stories of the missing or murdered Aboriginal women despite people reporting them in. Women in the minority group are often not acknowledged. This shows how the general population in society are misinformed  even though they feel like they are informed. The media decides which stories are told; this factor is quite scary, especially when thinking of what other stories are framed differently through leading words to make the audience have a certain perspective and thus leading to a bias?

Although feminists have already held uncountable protests regarding gender inequality, the conflict is still around. Jiwani and Young also points out how the media introduces the article when a marginalized person is biased so that the audience would lean towards a negative perspective. In their article, it is noticed how these marginalized women were often associated to be drug addicts and sex-workers. The media aims to increase its views by telling the sensational stories through the victims, only focusing on profiting from the story.

On the other side, Maggie de Vries’ memoir on her sister Sarah de Vries tells the story of Sarah’s life. Sarah was adopted to a white family and she was a mix of multiple races (de Vries, 1). The way the victims are represented to society differs depending on how well the author knows them. As seen for Jiwani and Young, the media do not know the victims personally so not much about their personal lives, or how the victims were prior to the lives the lead as sex-workers and drug addicts were told. de Vries, however, knew Sarah personally. Although Sarah also fell into the same lifestyle in being a sex-worker and drug-addict, de Vries told the story from a more well-rounded point of view.

Works Cited

De Vries, Maggie. Missing Sarah: A Memoir of Loss. Toronto: Penguin Group, 2008. Print.

Jiwani, Yasmin, and Mary Lynn Young. “Missing and Murdered Women: Reproducing Marginality in News Discourse.” Canadian Journal of Communication 31.4 (2006): 895-917.

Having read Yasmin Jiwani and Mary Lynn Young’s Missing and Murdered Women: Reproducing Marginality in News Discourse, I realized how there are individuals who do not get any say in how they are portrayed, individuals usually have the chance to say their stories themselves. Based on Jiwani and Young’s research in analyzing articles about stereotypes on women in Vancouver, I believe that it can be related to the materials we have studied in our Sociology class.

Mead’s “The Self” theory in which there is the “I” and the “me”, which was discussed in our Sociology class a couple of weeks back. Mead’s theory rose from the view that the self comes from how an individual interacts with society, meaning how they respond, react, and behave. According to Mead, the “me” is the socializing aspect. It is how the person has grown due to experiences and social interactions with society. The “I” is the reaction from the “me”, it is how the person follows social and cultural norms without needing anyone to explain the rules.

Going back to Jiwani and Young’s research, the women mentioned in the articles are the ones from the minority group. These women have a stereotypical label of being sex-workers and drug-consumers (899). Jiwani and Young first start off discussing about the women who have gone missing and the background hypothetical situations that could have happened to them, which is most likely done by aa serial killer (896-897). Multiple headliner articles have emerged from the stories of these women and yet, they do not have a say in what goes out. The headlines for these articles use loaded language to get to the point of the whole article. In my opinion, this can give the audience a perspective. For instance, the headline “…Women Have History of Drugs, Prostitution and Links to Downtown Eastside” (904), leads the audience to have the stereotype of how the “I” of the victimized women is. They are already generalized to have the association with drugs and prostitution. This can shift the audience’s perspective into the bias of the headline.

We also discussed the topic of race and gender in our Sociology class and I think that it links well to Jiwani and Young’s research. Race and gender discrimination will always happen. In this case, the discrimination occurs to the African-American and Aboriginal women. Jiwani and Young’s section on “Mediations of radicalized and gendered violence” demonstrates the newsworthy stories about violence against women, but are written differently by reporters. Black men’s stories are more likely to appear in the front cover news while Black women’s stories are barely even told. This signifies how the different genders are portrayed to society.

In sum, most minorities have little to no say on how they are portrayed to society, or how society views them. It is in rare cases where they are able to tell their story and it is important that those who write the story should have accurate information.

Works Cited:

Jiwani, Yasmin, and Mary Lynn Young. “Missing and Murdered Women: Reproducing Marginality in News Discourse.” Canadian Journal of Communication 31.4 (2006): 895-917.