Week 4 Blog Post

Being a person without a disability, it is hard to put myself in the position of a disabled person and truly know what hardships they face every single day. Often times, when we do not understand things or a situation we either ignore it, or stereotype it. I read the articles "Breaking the Spiral of Silence: Altering Media Portrayals of the Disabled" and "How the Media Portray the Disabled". In the first article, they discussed the various types of media that can stereotype, which is something we have been discussing in class. In this case, the disabled are stereotyped in a wide variety of platforms and in a wide variety of ways. Disability stereotypes can be found in television shows such as the FOX network's Glee and AMC's Breaking Bad. They can also be found in classic movies such as Peter Pan or Forrest Gump. Disability stereotypes can even be found in the Bible. The stereotypes also vary depending on the medium. The disabled are often depicted as evil, pathetic, nonsexual or burden. There are cases where they are portrayed positively, however, the disabled are stereotyped because we do not understand enough about it. It is as simple as that. In order to give the disabled the equal and fair publicity they deserve, we must try to put ourselves in their shoes and try to understand what life is like for them. The second article I read focused on how the media portrayed disabled people as either victims, heroes or villians. This again, is a very wide range of stereotypes and it shows how little we realize that there are people who have to deal with disabilities for the rest of their lives. One thing I thought was very interesting from this article was the idea of mental illness being stereotyped to result in violence. Mental illness is a very up and coming topic in today's society and is something that we as a society should learn about and support. Overall, these articles relate to our class discussions on race and gender because all three characteristics (race, gender and disability) involve stereotypes in multiple forms of the media. Although there is more variety in some characteristics, there is still stereotype and it is our job as communicators to learn more about the minority and prevent stereotypes in our mediums of communication.

Bibliography:
        "Breaking the Spiral of Silence: Altering Media Portrayals of the Disabled." Bitrus Paul Gwamna. Amiso M. George.
        "How the Media Portray the Disabled." Media Awareness Network.