A Socio-Semiotic Study of Media Gender Misrepresentation Impact on Youth’s Cognition and Ideology

According to Cook (2001), the advertising content influences and persuades people and contributes to shaping perceptions and attitudes. Advertisers and image producers depict human figures on billboards to develop social affinity between images and viewers. This study aims to explore the patterns of gender misrepresentation in Pakistani print advertisements over socio-semiotic perspective. It focuses on its impact on Pakistani youth’s cognition about the self and other gender dichotomies and gender-based ideologies. This qualitative study employs a descriptive approach to examine semiotic choices made in billboard advertising media. The interviews were led to get deeper insights into impact of gender misrepresentation on youth. Purposive sampling technique is adopted for data collection, while the convenient sampling technique is chosen for interviews. The study results entail that the image producers make explicit and implicit semiotic choices to ascertain gender stereotypical representation of both genders. It is recommended that advertisers and image producers pay heed to this serious issue and portray both the genders positively and neutrally, that can help in establishing an inclusive & progressive society where both genders are respected and play their parts equally.