ABSTRACT
This chapter investigates how discourses have been manifest in media images, particularly in the representations of race and ethnicity in film and television. This area of research forms a basis for critically analysing depictions of difference on the World Wide Web. The chapter begins by reiterating the reasons for using media studies as a foundation for theorising the construction of race and ethnicity on the Web. It examines research on race and representation in the media, exploring the methods by which it has been studied in relation to the structures of the media industries as in the images produced. Media studies have investigated the operation of racism in the media using a variety of strategies which could be adapted in the much-needed further empirical research on race and ethnicity on the Internet. The chapter discusses contemporary examples of media representations which contain legacies of colonialism, as those which have been found in new media.
