Stereotypes

I feel that a stereotype is an idea that an individual holds or has created about another group from the information he or she has gathered from the environment that has been experienced. A stereotype could be negative or positive towards a group, but most often the negative is brought to light. Stereotypes can go so far as to create an idea that has no factual basis at all. For example, in Lippman (ch. 10), the idea of distance of the German army being 5,000 miles away. Lippman also says, "In putting together public opinion, not only do we have to picture more space than we can see with our eyes, and more time than we can feel, but we have to describe and judge more people, more actions, more things than we can ever count, or vividly imagine." The media has informed me that Colorado has a big city, Denver, with ski slopes, a college or two, and rolling hills after that. I imagine many people driving SUV's and Jeep's to handle the rough terrain of the state (most likely a schema I have developed from car commercials). However, Lippman instructs that when I form a idea of Colorado, I have to thirst for more information and question what my sources tell me. For all I know Colorado could be a desert if the terrain on the car commericals showed me so. It is easy for a gatekeeper to mold an individual's stereotype on about anything. Lippman explains that if an individual thinks something is true and can find one instance of it, then I, as a consumer of media, could be molded.