Abstract:

Aim of research: To identify whether the influence of media representation of minority groups will affect youth self-perspective using two case studies: racial representation in US media, and LGBT representation in Chinese media. Independent variable: factors (gender identity, sexual orientations, social media, age). Methods implemented: quantitative questionnaires and qualitative unstructured interviews. This research will give more insight on adolescents’ sexual orientations and how media can influence representation can influence minority groups.
Significance: media representation of minority groups affects youth self-perspective using two case studies: racial representation in US media, and LGBT representation in Chinese media
 
Background information
After reading a lot of previous research papers, we have a certain understanding of the influence of the media on the minority group of teenagers. Because there is no direct literature that can provide information about the influence of media on adolescent minority groups, the main research is about the media on adolescents and sexual minority groups respectively.
 
More frequent social media use is associated with a smaller difference between how adolescents rate themselves and how they think peers will rate them. Lower social media use was linked to more positive ratings from participant’s own compared to the reflected-peer-perspective. (sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1878929321000128 Social media use and the not-so-imaginary audience: Behavioral and neural mechanisms underlying the influence on self-concept S.Peters; R.Van der Cruijsen; L.P.E.van der Aar; J.P.Spaans; A.I.Becht; E.A.Crone  2021.4)
 
The Internet plays an important role in the sexual identity of gay teenagers, strengthening their sexual identity, gaining a sense of belonging, increasing their awareness of their sexual identity and the gay community, and understanding and learning about gay culture. 

The findings suggest that access to social media, articles, novels, and comics are contributing to teenagers' awareness of their sexual orientation. In China's Hunan province, teenagers who were more exposed to articles, novels and comics published by online media about sexual minorities were more likely to identify as such. 

Contrary to our expectation, perceived online social support via Weibo is not positively related to psychological wellbeing for LGBT in the present study. However, longer history of using Weibo is associated with better psychological well- being, which means the benefits of social media use on psychological wellbeing for LGBT may not be achieved through perceived online support.   
 
Significance
The significance of studying LGBT representation in Chinese media can help find out how Chinese adolescents who have different sexual orientations were influenced by social media. Since topics of homosexuals are often avoided in China and hence it’s difficult for Chinese adolescents to face their sexual orientations clearly. If adolescents failed to face their sexual orientation in a proper way. They may be confused and unwilling to tell the real situation to their parents. This would cause further social problems which is complex. We hope that this research can help us to find out the major impact of media on the formation of adolescents’ sexual orientations. Chinese adolescents nowadays have access to different culture and different ideologies through the internet. As they receive different perspectives on LGBTQs, they will be uncertain about themselves. We hope that this research can help us to find out the major impact of media on the formation of adolescents’ sexual orientations. By helping Chinese adolescents to face their sexual orientations in a proper way to make sure that they can be confident and not confused any more. In this way several possible social problems can also be solved. For example, the problem of “homowives” which means that those women who got married to a gay. Also, one point I would like to mention is that since not everyone’s sexual orientation is formed by the social environment., those naturally formed homosexuals are excluded in this research.
 
Design
independent variables: online articles or comments designed by medias. Dependent variables will be people’s attitudes or action changes according to these articles. To operationalize the research, we designed questionnaires and interviews. They can provide me with both quantitative and qualitative data. Different people will have different actions towards different attitudes of the media. For example, one interviewee claims that the discrimination that media hold will make him realize that homosexuals’ behavior should be hidden in China. However, if the media tries to encourage the behavior of sexual minorities. He will trust the media.
In this research, we will assume that media won’t affect the perception of Chinese adolescents. Chinese adolescents’ perception may be change by some professional research papers or some experts.
We will combine the use of qualitative data and quantitative data. Since our topic is to solve the problem of family conflict caused by different sexual orientation of adolescents. We plan to make questionnaires and spread those questionnaires to sexual minorities. By getting some brief data of how sexual minorities cope with family conflict. We can have a basic understanding of the situation of sexual minorities adolescents in China. Then, we will choose one of the typical examples to do the unstructured interview to get qualitative data and deepen our understanding of adolescent sexual minorities in China. We plan to hand out the questionnaires in those sexual minorities on the internet.
About 20 people of different ages will receive the questionnaires to increase the representativeness of the questionnaires. Since one of our group members is homosexual, it will be easy for us to find sexual minorities in China. Since questionnaires can only produce quantitative data which means that the data we got is only a brief situation of sexual minorities. We planned to do an unstructured interview from about 3 people of different ages in order to get a more precise result.
 
Questionnaire
The sample of the questionnaire and the result we collected
Here is the sample of our quantitative questionnaires.
 
Background
 
What is your gender？
 
What is your age?
 
1. Do you consider yourself a member of a sexual minority? (Yes, No)
1a. If yes, what sexuality do you identify with?
 
2. How did you realize you were a member of a sexual minority? (Online articles, psychologists, daily interactions, others)
 
At what age did you realize this?
 
4. In which context do you meet the word “sexual minority”(Wechat (like Facebook), Weibo(like Twitter), Zhihu (like Quora), magazines, TV news and so on)
 
5. Which media do you use frequently?
 
When you see articles about sexual minorities what will you feel (positive/negative/neutral)
 
7.Do you feel that depictions of sexual minorities in the media are (positive/negative/dismissive (neutral))?
 
8. Are you affected by these kinds of depictions (If so, please elaborate)
 
After days of collecting data. Here is the result of the questionnaires. (Chinese version)
 
 
1.   What’s your gender?      single choice
 
 
 
 
Male
11
55%
Female
6
30%
Unwilling to tell
2
10%
Other
1
5%
 
20
 
 
 
2.   Are you a member of sexual minorities       single choice
 
 
\
 
Yes
16
80%
No
4
20%
 
20
 
 
 
3.   If yes, which kind of sexual minorities you are?      single choice
 
 
 
 
Homosexual
8
40%
Bisexual
6
30%
Pan sexual
1
5%
Transgender
1
5%
Others
4
20%
 
20
 
 
 
4.   When did you realize that you were a member of sexual minorities       single choice
 
 
 
 
Articles online
3
15%
Psychologist
0
0%
Interaction between people
15
75%
Others
2
10%
 
20
 
 
 
5.   At which circumstances will you get the information about sexual minorities       multiple choice
 
 
 
 
Interaction in daily life
11
55%
Online chat
14
70%
Online articles
13
65%
Newspaper
2
10%
Courses in school
5
25%
Other
2
10%
 
20
 
 
 
6.   When did you realize that you were a member of sexual minorities       single choice
 
 
 
 
Below 12
5
25%
12-15
5
25%
15-16
9
45%
16-18
1
5%
18-22
0
0%
Above 22
0
0%
 
20
 
 
 
7.   What’s your frequency of using different media       Matrix single choice
 
 
Never
Seldom
Sometimes
Often
Always
Telephone
3(15%)
4(20%)
7(35%)
3(15%)
3(15%)
Newspaper
10(50%)
7(35%)
2(10%)
1(5%)
0(0%)
Wechat (medias that used for chatting ）
0(0%)
0(0%)
0(0%)
4(20%)
16(80%)
video platforms (such as YouTube)
0(0%)
5(25%)
1(5%)
5(25%)
9(45%)
Weibo(Such as Twitter)
1(5%)
5(25%)
4(20%)
7(35%)
3(15%)
 
 
8.   Such kind of information are often       single choice
 
 
 
 
Objective
8
40%
Subjective
5
25%
Neutral
7
35%
 
20
 
 
 
9.   What will you feel seeing such kind of information       single choice
 
 
 
 
Positive
5
25%
Negative
4
20%
Neutral
11
55%
 
20
 
 
 
10.   Will the news affect your own perception?      single choice
 
 
 
 
 
No
15
75%
Yes
5
25%
 
20
 
 
In this research we collected 20 valid answers total. Most of them are sexual minorities and provided me with valuable information. In twenty people who received the questionnaires. Sexual minorities take up about 80 percent. Most people who did the questionnaires are male. They tend to be homosexuals or bisexuals. Only one person in the questionnaire is transgender. They realized that they are sexual minorities in different ways. Mostly, they realized their gender identity through interaction with people. This takes up 75 percent of the total answer. It’s also surprising to find out that non of them realized that they were sexual minorities through psychologists. This may indicate that their gender identity may be inaccurate. Also, according to the research, it’s surprising to find that most people will discover the information about sexual minorities through interaction between friends, online chat and articles online. However, they can hardly have access to such kind of knowledge through class in school, newspapers. Same as the assumption we made before, China has always tried to avoid talking about confusion of sexual minorities and their sexual orientations. Most people in the research are adolescents and get to know that they are members of sexual minorities at a very young age. Most of them realized their gender identity when they were only about 14 -18years old. According to the questionnaires, they tend to use some new media that mainly spread through mobile phones. For example, some websites that allow different uploaders to upload different video clips.(similar to YouTube). They also tend to use media to chat with friends. However, traditional media are not given enough attention to. For example, most people are not interested in getting information from the newspaper or telephone. Different people will have different feelings towards articles about sexual minorities. People will not change their thoughts about homosexuals, either.
 
Interview
We focused on interviewing four teenagers. And found that they had very similar behavior when they were exposed to the media.
They may feel disappointed, confused and saddened by the criticism and negative news about minority groups in the media, but the news from the media rarely changes their mind.
 
“There will be some effects. For example, when I find out that the passage about homosexuals on the internet often misunderstand the situation that homosexuals are facing. I will feel quite upset. Since I realized that I was a homosexual when I was only 14 years old, I was quite unsure as homosexual has always been a controversial topic in China. I started to find out some tests about the sexual orientations. I also began to find out that I tend to like male instead of female. However, the social environment in China determined that homosexuals cannot get married. As he read the articles on the internet about homosexuals. I just got increasingly confused about myself.”
 
“I will read the media's remarks, and then pay attention to the society and the opinions of some people around me on this minority group. For example, a mother, on the "Tiktok", made homophobic remarks, then probably content is said, if you are the homosexual, if you were in a short video platform or this is a fair place to publish your support for this matter, or share your daily, He thought it would have some effect on teenagers or young children (people who don't have their own mainstream ideas).
In my opinion, the media talk, but it's not going to have a real impact on me. I'll get to know it, but it's not going to change my behavior.”
 
 
 
Their behavior is slightly influenced by the media. They both understand the opposition to sexual minorities, and they accept the opposition. In the face of criticism and negative news in external media articles, they generally choose to avoid their sexual minority status in public. Some interviewees also said they would not read what the media said about sexual minorities in order to avoid being confused and annoyed by the negative news.
 
“I'll start by dividing them into two categories: those with moderate attitudes towards homosexuality (i.e., reporting homosexuality and encouraging self-expression) and those with negative attitudes. The latter is more common. They would tell me to avoid being identified in public; Or if they believe it will not cause harm to them. So, on many occasions, my behavior became more hidden.”
 
“When the media on the Internet start blaming sexual minorities, I hide like an ostrich.”
 
“I don't read comments or comments about minorities that are spread in the media. Because I did see some relatively negative comments about minorities before, and I thought it would make me unhappy, so I stopped reading them after that.”
 
 
Most people appreciate comments that are supportive of sexual minorities, or that remain objective and neutral. The interviewees felt that the article gave them a lot of respect, and they also felt a lot of respect for the supporters. Others said they would be neutral or skeptical about the information.
 
“I am grateful for the articles and authors who have supported us. They really encouraged me and made me feel like I wasn't alone.”
 
“I would trust the media more. In some cases, I spread the content to the people around me. In addition, I will get close to the media's information channels and spend time with them. Or try and improve the model of life in the way of media.”
 
“I would be neutral or skeptical about the news, because I don't know what the purpose of such articles is, maybe just to get some clicks and likes.”
 
 
Those authoritative and professional articles in the network will have a great influence on their behavior. Because sexual minority is small group, they are very confused about their behavior. They tend to be exposed to scientific, professional knowledge to guide them on the right path on LGBT.
 
“What changed my mind was the professional academic and popular science, not the media. -- They let me know who I am, why we are, and what we should do about it.”
 
“What will affect my cognition of myself are some scientific articles of popular science, or some articles explaining this homosexuality from the perspective of psychology. Because our group is relatively small, so some of my behavior may not be the same as normal people. I don't know how to correct it, so I'm going to rely on authoritative scientific articles. I would trust them, or I would say they changed me. For example, I think, the advice that my psychiatrist gave to me, is scientific and useful, since he's authoritative, and then he's grounded, and I believe him.”
 
Discussion
The limitation of our research is very obvious. For example, the questionnaires we collected is not enough at all. We only collected about 20 different answers and this may lead to the inaccuracies of the paper. Also, the problem of Hawthorn effects is also obvious. Since interviewees know that their answers will be used as research data. They tend to hide their true thoughts and try to express their feelings in a positive way. As a result, the data may be invalid.
 
Conclusion
To sum up, our research data are mainly obtained through questionnaires, interviews and other forms. After further analysis, we come to the following conclusion: The media has little influence on the self-perception of Chinese teenagers' sexual minorities. It can only make young sexual minorities avoid these messages and identity exposure. The main way to influence their self-perception is authoritative, such as professional papers. Meanwhile, the awakening of gender consciousness among Chinese teenagers is early. But there is little popularization of professional relevant information in society. China should popularize the relevant aspects more widely so that children can realize the difference between their own sexual orientation and others at an early age.
 
 
Reference
l sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1878929321000128
S.Peters; R.Van der Cruijsen; L.P.E.van der Aar; J.P.Spaans; A.I.Becht; E.A.Crone
Social media use and the not-so-imaginary audience: Behavioral and neural mechanisms underlying the influence on self-concept 2021.4
 
l cnki.com.cn/Article/CJFDTotal-XBYA201904030.htm 
张爱迪;黄耳;谭思敏;严谨 互联网对青少年同性恋身份认同发展的影响研究进展 2019.4
 
l ixueshu.com/document/07ab6bb454441f2031ff02fb08ad6078318947a18e7f9386.html 
欧阳思敏;梁琪;满伊君;满延泽;张爱迪 湖南省部分青少年性身份认同现状及影响因素分析 2017.8
 
l schlr.cnki.net/zn/Detail/index/SJES_03/SJES1274963E99DC68AC8122C18D67961BBC 
Xi Han; Wenting Han; Jiabin Qu; Bei Li; Qinghua Zhu  What happens online stays online? —— Social media dependency, online support behavior and offline effects for LGBT 2018.12