Question 2: How does your media product represent particular social

groups?

My video represents computing. The dominant representation of computing from this video is that

computers are basically nothing but trouble. They cause people to act in ways that they wouldn’t otherwise do.

The dominant representation supports residual ideology because there are people in the world that think that

computers cause trouble and are better off not existing. These sorts of people would take a preferred viewing to

this video as it supports their ideology of computing.

The video also represents computer hackers. The stereotypes of computer hackers is that they are all

teenage, live with their parents, hack from their bedroom or a dark basement and have computer parts everywhere

around the room. This film supports that dominant ideology as it shows the room with the hacking computer

in it as a messy room full of wires and computer components. Hackers and enthusiasts would probably take

an oppositional reading to this as they would not like being compared to a ‘messy teenager’ (if they weren’t a

teenager).

Another social group that is represented by this video is the ‘normal’ home computer user. The dominant

representation of this group is that they are victims because it is an ‘ordinary’ computer in an ‘ordinary’ home being hacked into. It also makes them look like they don’t

know what they are doing because it is them that is targeted. This supports dominant ideology because most people think that most people don’t know much about

computers. Arguably, these users would take a preferred reading to this text as most freely admit that they know

nothing about computers.