Representation in Media

Media is the means of communication to influence or send a message to people widely. Some media forms include radio, television, newspapers, and magazines. All media texts are representations of reality. They are artificial versions of the things that are actually happening around us. Without media, we would know very little of what is happening around us, but since we have media, we know a lot about the things that are going on in this world.
Media in any form extend experiences of reality by giving audiences information. If you watch a World War II documentary or read a newspaper article about political events happening in another continent, it helps us extend our knowledge about this planet. The down side is, the producers of the media have selected the media we see, so we don't get every piece of information on a topic and we also don't know if the information is true or not.
Gender is used to categorize human beings, and is also one thing used in media representation. Humans aren't the only things represented as masculine and feminine, objects too. 
Feminine characters are often represented as being part of a group (e.g family, friends) and working in a team. Representation of women focus on beauty, size, emotions, relationships, and sexuality. In drama, they usually have a passive role rather than an active role. Masculine characters are often represented as always being alone and not needing to rely on others. Representation of men are focused on strength, power, attractiveness, and physique, and independence. 
The media use these stereotypical characters to make the viewers feel insecure because they don't look or act like the character they are seeing.