As media becomes an ever more powerful force in shaping the world's perception of itself, an individual's struggle to maintain a unique identity and self-understanding apart from media influence becomes increasingly difficult. Damaging to the idea of the self are the racial, gendered, and class-based stereotypes (always artificial and frequently physically, fiscally, and emotionally unattainable), which are broadly perpetuated and, because of their persistence, are apparently not broadly questioned.

Over the years there has been a fairly constant critique of the content of television. Sometimes it rises to near social movement status, while at other times it recedes more into the background – but it’s always there. Sometimes it is about violence, sometimes about commerce, sometimes about sex and sometimes about intellectual emptiness. Meanwhile, academics and representatives of various groups are represented on television.

Given the pervasiveness of gender differentiation, it comes as no surprise that the media also participate in dividing up the world in ways that both reflect and perpetuate stereotypes of gender. Stereotypes play an important role in today's society and particularly in Propaganda - force which can influence and affect everyone; bringing changes in behavior, attitudes and ones beliefs. Stereotypical images of women and minorities exist in the news, in magazines, in movies, and on television. Such images depict cultural groups in a manner that is negative, unrealistic, and often degrading. The media often uses and misrepresents stereotypes and acts as the mythmaker; however, they are significantly accepted by people among society.

Gender portrayals in 2,209 network television commercials were content analyzed. To compare differences between three day parts, the sample was chosen from three time periods: daytime, when the audience is mostly women; evening prime time, when the sex of the audience is more evenly distributed; and weekend afternoon sportscasts, when men are a large percentage of the audience. The results indicate large and consistent differences in the way men and women are portrayed in these three day parts, with almost all comparisons reaching significance at the .05 level. Although ads in all day parts tended to portray men in stereotypical roles of authority and dominance, those on weekends tended to emphasize escape from home and family. One of the concerns about the ways women are portrayed in mass media has to do with the ways their bodies are objectified- how they are made to appear as things rather than human beings.

All men and all women are aware of the cultural prevalence of traditional gender stereotypes, and television contributes to this awareness. Sex roles involve cultural expectations, such as that men will seek achievement and dominance, and that women will be compliant and supportive. The relationship of individuals to these expectations often involves tensions. TV and film heroes represent goodness, power, control, confidence, competence and success. They are geared, in other words, to succeed in a competitive economic system. There are few women in the heroic role played by Sigourney Weaver in Aliens. Men tend to be shown as more dominant, more violent and more powerful than women. Men on TV are more likely to disparage women than vice versa. They drive; drink and smoke more, do athletic things, and make more plans. They are found more in the world of things than in relationships. Women on TV tend to be younger than the men, typically under 30.

So TV images largely reflect traditional patriarchal notions of gender. Stereotypical masculinity, for instance, is portrayed as natural, normal and universal, but it is fact a particular construction. It is largely a white, middle-class heterosexual masculinity. This is masculinity within which any suggestion of feminine qualities or homosexuality is denied, and outside which women are subordinated. The notion of 'natural' sex differences help to preserve the inequalities on which our economic system continues to be based.

One critique of television is that it presents a distorted demographic view of the real world. That is members of a particular race, gender, social class, age, or occupation may not be represented in numbers corresponding to their presence in the real world. This is a problem because it is argued; television provides the central social discourse of our society. It is the primary storyteller, the supposed mirror of society. Thus, according to this rationale, to be invisible on television is to be invisible culturally and socially.

Because of complex methodological problems involved, it is difficult to draw firm conclusion from mass media effects research. For example, it is often the case that independent variables in mass media studies are poorly measured. A measure of television exposure is as crude as asking respondents how many hours per week he/she watches. It seems almost certain that it may be more important what someone watches, what they are doing while they are watching, in what context they watch and so on. Such information is difficult to obtain. People don’t always remember what they watch and have difficultly estimating how much they watch.