Portrayals of Disabled Individuals in Media

Introduction

Our purpose in researching the effects that different media has on disabled individuals was to bring more awareness to the lack of representation in magazines, film, social media, and so many more forms of media. This survey and research was done to determine how it affects individuals, if people are aware of it happening, and how much people with disabilities feel the effects of media. Many people with disabilities do not feel seen or a part of society due to their lack of representation. Many individuals tend to feel isolated from society as stated here, " media technologies (from radios to computers) have been understood as both causes of social isolation among youth with disabilities and a means of connection and belonging" (30 Aper). We wanted to bring attention to this due to not only personal experience but also friends and family's experience. Even with the little representation people with disabilities get, there are also a lot of stereotypes that come along with it. Bringing awareness to this topic will not only help put an end to these stereotypes but will also help bring more positive representation into media.

Methods

To distribute and advertise our survey, we posted the link to multiple different social media sites including Instagram, Snapchat, TikTok, and the CCGA homepage. We created an enticing photo backdrop which we had hoped would encourage people to participate in our survey. We also used our flyer to post on these apps. We posted them 3 times over the course of a week to gather our data. Out of the 40 respondents, 28 of them were Caucasian, 3 were Hispanic or Latino, 1 was Asian and 1 was Black or African American. The majority of participants in this survey were female leaving only 4 males and 1 non-binary individual. Most participants reside in the state of Georgia which comes to no surprise as the majority of participants in this survey were CCGA students.

Discussion

Our surveys got quite a bit of feedback, and this allowed us to have a large pool of answers to analyze. Our findings showed that a fair percentage of people thought that better representation of disabled individuals in media was needed. Surprisingly, many people thought that there was a lot of positive representation in media. There are many counter-arguments stating that media can actually be beneficial towards individuals with disabilities such as this excerpt from an article about medias empowerment of disabilities."(Buhler 17). Social media can empower people to act as social innovators and help people with disabilities." For our first survey, 72 % of the individuals partaking said they agreed that better representation was needed. This was not surprising as much of the research we had conducted indicated that there was not much representation in media. Some individuals also said that they had probably seen disabilities depicted in media, but not in a fair light. In our second survey question, it was 44% that thought this. These findings support our ideas that better representation of disabled individuals is needed in media, and that it needs to be better spread across all types of media.

Conclusion

While we did get a fair amount of responses, there is more room for improvement. Most of our survey takers came from CCGA itself, and we don't know how many are disabled, or if any were disabled individuals at all. We also don't know if any of our responses came from people who were influenced by ableism or other societal factors. This could end up skewing their responses on if they thought better representation was needed for disabled individuals. We could improve on this by allowing the surveys to be broadcasted to more people, as well as getting involved with programs that are run by or included disabled individuals in their work. Our results are not perfect, but they can be improved upon by a few simple tweaks. However, that doesn't detract from the data we found, or the answers given from the people who participated.

References

Apler, Meryl. Digital Youth with Disabilities. John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, 2014, https://library.oapen.org/bitstream/handle/20.500.12657/26046/1004039.pdf?sequence=1&isAllowed=y.

Buhler, Christian, and Bastian Pelka. “Empowerment by Digital Media of People with Disabilities.” SpringerLink, Springer International Publishing, 2014, https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-3-319-08596-8_4.