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Encyclopedia of Gender in Media



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Author: Mary E. Kosut

Publisher: SAGE Publications

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Publish Date: May 18, 2012

ISBN-10: 1412990793

Pages: 528

File Type: PDF

Language: English

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Book Preface

The phrase the media is commonly employed both inside and outside the academy as a cultural and technological catchall. It is referenced to describe a range of media, both old and new. For example, I have heard college students use this generic term in relation to the content of Hollywood films and national newspapers, as well as social networking sites like Facebook. Often, when we think of the media, we consider the importance of the meanings of popular messages and images that are consumed by a mass audience. In this context, and at its most benign, mass media may be viewed as an outlet to provide us with information, or as a source of entertainment, pleasure, and escape. Conversely, “the media” has been criticized as politically liberal (or conservative), pornographic, superficial, and ultimately too influential in the daily lives of children and young adults. Intuitively, we know that all forms of media matter at the start of the 21st century, as they structure and saturate both the public sphere and the most personal aspects of our lives. As media scholar Douglas Kellner asserts, media culture provides the “materials out of which we forge our very identities, our sense of selfhood, our notion of what it means to be male and female, our sense of class, of ethnicity and race, of nationality, of sexuality, and of ‘us’ and ‘them.’” Clearly, the relationship between gender and media is a significant subject within academia and in the everyday lives of women and men.

While this work examines mass media as a social institution and diverse media texts produced from within cultural industries, its focus is on gender in media. Over the last 30 years, technological changes have broadened our conception of, and relationship to, media in terms of both form and content. The advent of the Internet has ushered in a new relationship between media and user. As discussed in the articles on social networking sites, dating sites, and online video games, these platforms provide space for interaction, creativity, and what scholars have termed a “bleed” between real-world activities and those that occur within mediated environments. At this historical moment, more people not only use some kind of media everyday (from reading a magazine to searching for a word on Google) but also produce media in the form of texts, images, and videos. Given the ubiquity of cameras and video technology in cell phones and the interactivity made available via the Internet, there is a new generation of media users who are simultaneously media creators. People post updates of images on their Facebook walls and upload home videos onto YouTube. Others blog about their personal experiences, create online dating profiles, or debate whether or not we have entered an era of “postfeminism.” Thus, media is a multifaceted rubric that includes not only forms of media—from cable television and college radio to multi-user online video games—but also the production, consumption, and creation of media content.


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