Rolul Mass-media în formarea stereotipurilor. Comunicarea de masă
The Role of Mass Media in Developing Stereotypes. Mass Communication

Summary/Abstract: Mass media play a significant role in a modern world, by broadcasting information in fast pace and giving entertainment to vast audiences. People organize their knowledge about the world around them by sorting and simplifying received information. Therefore, they create cognitive schemes, which are certain representations of the reality displaying its most typical and fundamental elements and properties. These schemes are responsible for defining the essence of our worldview and have a significant influence on social cognition – understanding, anticipation, situation and emotion control. One of the most important types of schemes used for orientation in the social environment are the stereotypes, representing the opinions among members of a certain group about the other groups. They are often based on tradition and are resistant to change. There are different types of stereotypes. Political stereotypes shape attitudes to the countries or to the leaders of the country. Ethnic stereotypes reflect both the emotional and evaluative attitude towards representatives of ethnic groups and the knowledge itself of this group. Gender stereotypes form notions of feminine and masculine social roles. Stereotypes are an integral part of the mass consciousness. Due to the fact that the stereotype is closely connected with the life of society, and separately with different groups of people to manipulate the mass consciousness becomes easier. Therefore, the information broadcast media, has turned into a kind of instrument of manipulation and the imposition of a certain relationship to the different events and social activities, as well as broadcasting stereotypical attitudes.

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