Representation:

Representation refers to the construction in any medium of aspects of ‘reality’ such as people, places, objects, events, cultural identities and other abstract concepts. The representations may be in writing as well as still or moving pictures. 

Stereotypes is one way in which we understand how representation works; we can link different people with each other, and understand them in a  sense that we know what their character will be like because it's stereotyped to be like that.