Documentary and Stereotypes: Reducing Stigma through Factual Media

Catalin Brylla

2023 abu. · Springer Nature

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This book studies how documentaries, and factual media in general, can contribute to the reduction of social stigma and prejudice. It adopts models from social psychology, media studies and cultural studies and is intended for scholars and media makers who aim to increase social inclusion and diversity by deconstructing harmful boundaries between social groups. Such boundaries may be based on the stereotyping of ethnicity, culture, age, dis/ability, gender and sexual orientation, for example. The first part of the book outlines the functionality of stereotypes as essential processes for social cognition both in real life and during documentary viewing. The second part establishes a classification system for stigmatising media stereotypes and formulates a methodology based on critical discourse analysis to analyse them in narrative and audio-visual representations. The third and final part of the book conceptualises a set of methodologies to reduce stigmatising stereotypes. These methodologies are based on 1) representations that prompt perspectival alignment with screen characters, and 2) the perceived salience of multiple, intersecting social identities.

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Catalin Brylla is Principal Lecturer in Film and TV at Bournemouth University, UK, where he is Deputy Director of the Centre for the Study of Conflict, Emotion and Social Justice. He also chairs the Diversity, Equity and Inclusion Committee of the Society for Cognitive Studies of the Moving Image, and he has co-edited Documentary and Disability (2017) and Cognitive Theory and Documentary Film (2018).