Media influence on the body image of children and adolescents

To study the media messages portrayed to children, 925 students, from 9 to up to 14 years of age, completed “The Sociocultural Influences Questionnaire.” The media section is the focus of this paper, and the responses from three questions were selected to examine the media's influence to be slimmer, increase weight, or increase muscle size. While the girls and boys exhibited different levels of agreement with each media influence, both genders disagreed that media messages were implying they should gain weight. This is in agreement with the belief that the media perpetuates the ideal of thinness and there is a negative stigma associated with being overweight.

Ethnic Print Media in the multicultural nation of Canada: A case study of the black newspaper in Montreal

This article explores the social and cultural roles of ethnic print media in the country within the prism of Canada's multicultural policy. Specifically, the article examines how the ethnic groups are framed in the mainstream national media in Canada and then examines how these ethnic media are [re]constructing their own identities in contrast to their framed identities in the mainstream national print media such as the Globe and Mail, National Post and Toronto Sun. In exploring the overall socio-political impacts of these ethnic print media on the social fabrics and cultural identity in Canadian society, Montreal Community Contact, an ethnic newspaper of the black community in Montreal, is used as a case study. Copyright © 2006 SAGE Publications.