Multimedia expression involves storytelling at its most advanced, whether it be for Hollywood big screens, apps on our smartphones or shiny and bright online advertising, a multimedia studies certificate affords a student entry into the world of cultural creation.According to the College of Marin Career Technical Education website,
Multimedia Entertainment Designers use design skills,equipment and technology to produce audio/video content, visual effects, 2D and 3D animations for use in video production, video games, presentations, marketing materials and educational training. They create moving visuals that excite, explain and entertain.Multimedia Entertainment Designers may work in the entertainment industry in video production, modeling or visual effect creation for movie, television, and game development. Or, they may work for schools,corporations or organizations to create eye-catching motion graphics and animations for use in presentations,marketing materials and educational training.(Multimedia–Entertainment, n.d.)
The variety and scope of what a certificate in Multimedia studies can lead to is clearly vast and highly relevant in our ever more digitally accessed world. Often, the type of imagery and storytelling afforded those who create media can and do fall prey to the tropes and stereotypes that so often perpetuate racist, sexist and heteronormative narratives. A 2015 study by Kassia E. Kulaszewicz at the School of Social Work at St. Catherine University and the University of St.Thomas St. Paul, Minnesota discusses just this and how the media influences perceptions on racism and racial biases. Historically, people of color (POC) were largely unable to portray themselves in the media. POC representations were not first-hand accounts of their own stories, beliefs, opinions, culture, or identities, rather an imagined creation by those who controlled the industry. The media was, and in most parts, still is, controlled by white elites at the head of media corporations, who have been able to solely dictate how people of color were portrayed in films, the news, literature, and other forms of media. The research done by Kulaszewicz also incorporates Bandura’s Learning Theory to understand how media messages can influence beliefs and values in the same way Bandura (and many others) postulates that social behaviors can be learned through others. (Kulaszewicz, 2015).
It is important to know what information is available to media consumers, and how the information consumed shapes, influences, and impacts individual agency, as well as thoughts,beliefs, and behaviors towards people of color. Kulaszewicz specifically focuses on the perceptions, stereotypes, racial micro aggressions, and perceived racial differences of African American males and finds that the skewed or limited information provided by media about a group a viewer otherwise does not have contact with leaves them only with what is provided in the media they consume which is often partial and filled with racial stereotypes (Kulaszewicz,2015).
Language or word choice is also of significance in terms of how stereotypes and racists beliefs are constructed in the media. The use of identifier word patterns, using the words “black” and“white” to depict things either seen as positive or negative help shape racialized beliefs.Onaverage, the word “black” is used three times more than the word “white” in the news. The constant usage of the word “black” in a negative connotation can extend into a micro aggression, as it conditions and socializes the mind to correlate the word to negative thoughts and ideas (Kulaszewicz, 2015). Black men are often criminalized in the media, and the research revealed patterns of criminalization and justification for this criminalization in the stories we are told. In contrast, in the case of police brutality, when a White officer shoots or commits other excessive and unnecessary acts of violence against a Black man, the officer and their actions are supported regardless of their own criminality. The research suggests that a correlation exists between the media and racism; specifically, media that reinforces racism and perpetuates racial stereotypes, thus exacerbating systemic inequality and racism (Kulaszewicz,2015). As multimedia students and scholars undertake re-imaging imagery and storytelling, they have an obligation to commit to changing the narrative so often found in mainstream media. Only then can we move past the damaging ways in which our systems of media have solidified the structures of racial and gendered inequality.
